What does an aspiring personal investor need to do?

It is important to learn the trade. Then you apply the knowledge. Many will fail because they stop after reading a blog or buying the course.

Is investing difficult?

No, it is not. Learning to invest and the investing process take little of your time.

What are the sirens to a personal investor?

In general terms it is new products, shiny, having an allure of fast and big gains. Giving the idea of a shortcut to investment success.

Personal Investing and Odysseus

Dobromir Risov
20 hours ago
3 min read

Mag. Dobromir Risov, BSc. June 2026

A personal investor must protect himself from fantastic promises like Odysseus protected himself from the Sirens. — Ulysses and the Sirens, by Herbert James Draper, 1909

Introduction

This blog applies to the aspiring personal investor and to the one who got already burned in the financial markets. Today I talk about the challenges personal investors are facing. While those challenges are not a phenomenon of the present, they are probably more dominant today. To facilitate the content I will make references to a tale from ancient times. I talk of Odysseus and his tavels, written by Homer.

Challenges from the outside - the Sirens

When Odysseus´ ship was sailing by the Island of the Sirens, he asked a mate from his crew to tie him to a mast of the ship. Odysseus had good reason for that. The Sirens were beautiful women who had a sweet voice singing beautiful songs. Upon hearing their songs sailors relaxed, fell asleep and were killed by the Sirens. To guarantee his survival, Odysseus asked to be tied with a rope by a mast. He knew he would otherwise go to the Island of the Sirens. In this comparison Odysseus stands for the personal investor. You are on a journey yourself. You don´t want your investments to incur unnecessary risks. But what are the Sirens for a personal investor?

For example what it is to make out of cryptocurrencies, in particular Bitcoin. The personal investor hopes to ride the next wave of Bitcoin. I wrote about how well forecasts work in this blog Forecasting Markets & Stocks. Read it first, before you follow financial market forecasts.
Is investing in data centers the next big thing? Data centers are needed for Artificial Intelligence. Or invest in Artificial Intelligence companies whose stocks are forecasted to rise even higher?
The challenges do not stop there for the Personal Investor. I showed in Investment Fund Map of Europe the vast amount of funds available to the investor. Not only are there more than 60,000 of them, their number grows every quarter. Likely the abundance of investment funds is similar in other parts of the world. This is to say, a personal investor is overwhelmed by choice. A rigourous concept applied in advance cuts through the vastness of products. Unfortunately a personal investor faces more challenges.

Challenges from the inside - your behaviour

An aspiring personal investor faces multiple internal challenges preventing him from succeeding:

First, personal investors say they want to start investing and yet don´t start investing. With one investor he bought a book and did not read it. Another investor bought this course yet did not applied the knowledge for more than half a year. Answer this question for yourself. How many times did you want to do a task and postponed it? And then postponed it again?
Second, after you have overcome the first challenge, rookie personal investors need to develop a realistic link between their aspirations and their time investment. So to say between input and output. Dedicating an hour per month is little time, yet doing so on a continuous basis is going to pose a big hurdle for many personal investors. And yet the same rookie investor can have expectations of becoming financially independent in one year time.
Thirdly, a personal investor faces this challenge: to hold a steady course. This means to stick to his carefully selected portfolio based on a rigourous concept. To use the Odysseus tale, to not allow the Sirens take over your investment portfolio.

You see, it is not necessary for promoters or bad advisers to promise fantastic gains in short periods of time. The personal investor allows his fantasy (without the work) does the harm to his finances.

Final words

In summary the challenge to the personal investor is not investing successfully. That is simple. The challenge for a personal investor is to behave successfully with regards to above challenges. That is for a personal investor to choose boredom rather than excitement. The personal investor is going to learn here Courses (List) how to come up with an investment portfolio based on selected professional literature. Further he is going to learn key research facts about investing. That helps him assess new investment products and take clear decisions.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What does an aspiring personal investor need to do? It is important to learn the trade. Then you apply the knowledge. Many will fail because they stop after reading a blog or buying the course.
Is investing difficult? No, it is not. Learning to invest and the investing process take little of your time.
What are the sirens to a personal investor? In general terms it is new products, shiny, having an allure of fast and big gains. Giving the idea of a shortcut to investment success.