Over the past 40 years, I’ve learnt a lot about investing effectively. Some of the lessons have been financially painful ones – for example, selling at a loss investments I should never have bought in the first place.

However, I believe they have made me a better, shrewder investor. You learn from your mistakes.

Despite hitting my ‘senior’ years and having less time on my side (if you know what I mean), I’m now a more patient investor than I have ever been – and less inclined to be ‘greedy’: that is, seek quick profits or jump on the back of investment fads just as they are about to implode.

Back in the early 1990s, I won a journalism award and was given a prize that had to be invested in a Barclays investment fund.

Being…