To be good long term investor, you need courage and you need brains.  However, you need them in different quantities at different times.  In the depths of a bear market, you mostly need courage since it’s almost a “no-brainer” that the economy will recover and will lift financial assets with it.  In a bull market, its mostly about brains since, while people are less haunted by economic fears, valuations are higher, increasing the need to be more discriminating in both asset allocation and security selection.