Real world investing.

The best qualities for investors are the ones Aristotle admired: moderation, common sense, restraint, modesty, and integrity. It's rare to find a successful wealth accumulator who isn't a solid citizen in the classical sense. Contrary to popular opinion, sharp dealing and a gambler's lust for the main chance are not the soul of good investing.

After all, saving begins with delayed gratification. Having earned $10, you really have only two choices: You can use it for consumption--getting pleasure or comfort right now from a movie ticket or plate of sushi or plaid shirt--or you can invest it. When you invest, you turn your money over to be transformed into a factory or a ton of steel or the windows of a new school. There is no immediate benefit for you.

Investing also rewards faith and trust. Since you are handing over your money to someone else, you can't be completely sure what will happen to it. For that reason, investing is closely linked to the rule of law and a culture based on honesty and accountability.

The hope is that if you put your money away, you will have a good deal more of it in the future, so that, having postponed your purchase, you will, be able to buy two movie tickets, a plate of sushi plus shrimp tempura, and a classier shirt. The longer you hold your investments, the more valuable they become. Patience pays--literally.

Investors come in two varieties. Outsmarters think the way to make money in the market is to beat the system, buying on tips, selling (somehow) just before the market falls. They don't much care about which companies they choose, only which stocks.

Partakers, on the other hand, try to find good businesses and become partners, sharing in corporate fortunes over the long haul. The reason most outsmarters don't win at finance is that it's not a game you can beat. Yes, a very small number of exceptional traders may get returns a few percentage points better than the market as a whole. You might be born this way, or you might decide to devote your life to becoming a professional stock picker as others become golfers or neurosurgeons. But why? As a partaker, you get nearly all the benefits with little of the risk.

You should also resign yourself to the fact that you cannot predict what stocks will do in the short term. Admitting ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. Burton Malkiel, a Princeton University economist, famously showed that stocks move in a "random walk"--a pattern "in which future steps or directions cannot be predicted on the basis of past actions."