A ski bum?s guide to the markets

EXCLUSIVE Hargreaves Lansdown?s research director Mark Dampier has 30 years? experience in the investment industry. Here we publish extracts from his first book.

I don’t invest in shares. I know nothing about them. Wrong!
The reason I know that anyone can become a successful investor without any prior knowledge is that I have travelled the full length of that road myself. The little I knew about investing on the day I started [in 1983] was hardly worth knowing.

I did have a degree, but it was in a subject ? law ? that I found stultifyingly dull. After going to law college, I soon decided that spending 40 years doing conveyancing work, which seems to be the fate awaiting most lawyers of my ability, had little appeal. I was on the lookout for something more interesting. Investment turned out to be the answer, and it is a career choice I have never regretted.