Aswath Damodaran: "I tell people, look, there is no right investment philosophy, but there's one that's right for you.

When you look at the most successful investors over time, you've got value investors, you've got growth investors, you've got traders. There are multiple ways to win. What do they have in common? One, they have a core philosophy that remains unchanged over their investing lifetime.

I've had disagreements with Warren Buffett, but you got to give him credit. He has a core philosophy, you know exactly what it is, and it guides every strategy he adopts. There's a core philosophy built around beliefs about markets and data that makes sense. Second, they have personalities that match up that philosophy.

We talk about everybody wants to be a long-term value investor, especially after you read three books on Warren Buffet. Very few people succeed. What goes wrong? To be a long-term value investor, you've got to be incredibly patient, which often is not under your control. Warren Buffett has insurance capital; you and I might be investing our own money or clients' money. Second, you have to be able to withstand peer pressure because you're often moving against the crowd. Those are psychological factors. If you're naturally inpatient and swayed by the crowd, I don’t care how many books about Warren Buffet you read, you're not going to be a successful value investor.

To find that philosophy, the person you've got to understand is you, not Warren Buffett, not Peter Lynch. Spend less time reading about other successful investors, spend more time looking inward at the things that make you comfortable and uncomfortable because that is at the heart of building a successful investment philosophy that you can stick with in good times, which is easy, but also in bad times, which is not that easy."