Over a lifetime, a person might find many inspirations that influence their decision to play tennis. Some of those inspirations might come from a parent at an early age because they are the most focused on their children keeping fit. When children display a talent for hitting a tennis ball with a racquet, the parents are inspired to make sure that their child succeeds with their talent and enrolls them in formal training classes that they can go to every week.
Young tennis players might get more inspiration from a high-ranking tennis player than from any motivational lecture that their parents might give. When they follow the career of one player, they can readily tell how much hard work goes into creating such a champion. They might be inspired to gain more energy by certain words spoken by such a player on the importance of good nutrition.
A tennis game can be very grueling and a tennis player might be very inspired by the amount of effort that goes into serving at every match. The hard muscled bodies of other tennis players might inspire the aspiring tennis star to go to a gym and work out with some weights. While on the machines training for greatness, they can receive further stimulation to play the game properly by watching a tennis match on the television.
Most tennis players will get a lot of inspiration from the inbox on their home computer. They may have signed up to be part of a newsletter group and get inspired by the content it contains each week. They might realize that tennis players play tennis on grueling schedules and must travel to foreign countries halfway around the world, but still find the time to keep in touch with fans through blogs that are set up with web addresses that bear their names.
Most fans realize that keeping that kind of pace up on a day-to-day basis requires professional tennis players to be in top physical condition all of the time. Those tennis players that are not playing at the professional level get inspired by just thinking about how committed their tennis idols are to the game of tennis. That kind of dedication requires nerve of steel and a heart made of gold. That is probably why most tennis fans have a lot of respect for the people that they watch on television playing tennis in such harsh conditions.
Young people can also purchase video games for tennis and play them with children with the same game system through an internet connection. They can get very inspired by seeing their character go through the grueling action on the court. They can see first hand what it takes to get the ball over the net, and the sounds that come from the players on the tennis court are so intense that the game player will know that playing tennis requires a lot of effort. They might even be inspired to play more tennis when they have successfully beat their opponent soundly during the game.
I'm not a professional tennis player. I'm not even a tennis player. The last time I touched a tennis racket was 5 years ago. But I did read about how a professional tennis player aims to hit as many balls to the opponent to make him miss, in order to win. An amateur , on the other hand, aims to try to catch as many balls as possible, aiming not to make any mistakes till his opponent eventually makes a mistake and causes himself to lose. That's defensive playing.
I'm not a professional stock investor either. I admit neither have the time nor the patience to go through every financial report, visit the companies I'm interested in buying and whatever else it takes to be really confident enough to put a huge chunk of my hard-earned money into the stock. So I have to invest defensively. I aim to minimise my losses while riding the general upward trend of the stock market, rather than maximising my gains on the individual hot stocks. It may limit my gains a little, but in the event of a crash, I hope to come out relatively intact. I basically expect a crash, even in the longest bull run ever. It's like having a Plan B even though you hope you never have to use it, or buying insurance though you don't really want to die or get a critical illness just to make the most of it.
So how do I play my defensive game ? I protect myself the following ways.
1. I stick with what I know. It's easier to figure out that maybe the market has over-reacted when you are familiar with the industry. For example, I bought Merck when it was being sued for one of its drugs , Vioxx. The price crashed as people anticipated huge lawsuit payouts, which never happened.
2. I buy stocks when the price is low. It works either when the market is down, or if the individual stock has fallen out of favour. If you buy when the market is down, it can only turn up. Of course, the risk is that you never know when it is going to turn up and you may be stuck with a low price for a long time. It really isn't easy to time the market, but you can tell for example, if there has been an irrational selling off of stocks. That's a good time to buy. The stock market has gone on sale. Stock up !
3. I try to buy stocks that are near their underlying values. I'm not very good at analysing companies, but I figure if the company has $X in cash per share, or $Y in assets that can be sold off should the company fold, and the price is within that range, it should be reasonably safe.
4. I like stocks with good dividend yields. That way, even if the stock price falls, eventually, the dividend payout becomes so good, people will start buying it again, so helping to support the stock price. Plus I figure, if the company can afford to give out dividends regularly every year, it can't be doing too badly.
5. I have some of Warren Buffett's stock. It doesn't come cheap. But hey, if he can't get his investments right, who can ?
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