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Are you satisfied with your investing acumen?

I don't know too many people who answers yes to that question.

What I do know is that in order to improve quickly, the best way is learn from others.

Next is to examine the mistakes and lessons learned by people who have found success.

It's a lot cheaper and quicker this way instead of waiting to make the same mistakes yourself.

Then applying these lessons into a hands on approach is crucial. No matter how much theory you soak up, it's worthless if you can't apply it in the murky waters of the markets.

Investing is already such a complex subject. The successful investors focus only on the essentials and simplify.

In sports, you hear a common phrase.

“Slow the game down”.

It means to control the game instead of letting it control you.

Yet in the markets, it's too easy to get swept up with the tempo of the market and before you realize, you're sitting on losses exceeding thousands of dollars.

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.” – Warren Buffett

All successful investors have systems in place. All of them also have investing principles to make things easier.

Guy Spier is another investor I follow.

The fund manager for Aquamarine Fund, and author of The Education of a Value Investor which I highly recommend (here's my book review).

But I'll let the numbers talk.

Aquamarine Fund Performance. 1997 to 2014 and 2000 to 2014.

The above chart is from Guy Spier's 2014 letter I received in the mail.

But what I particularly liked about the letter is that instead of simply discussing stocks and performance, he lays out his investing principles which everyone should read.

So here are Guy Spier's 10 investing principles.

The 10 Investing Principles of Guy Spier and Aquamarine Funds

1. The Miracle of Compound Interest

The topic of compound interest is ignored or forgotten in the world of investing.