The truth of long term investing 长期投资 & the "mean reversion"

I believe most of us have heard about this: 

"To succeed in share investment, one MUST practice long-term investing, or 长期投资".

Sometimes, I wonder why those experienced investors always say the above. It seems to me that they like long-term investing SO..........MUCH. 

But, is it really the case?

I have a personal experience. I bought the shares of CCK in late 2023 at around RM 0.8x, the price shoots up to RM 1.4++ around mid of 2024, a hefty 80% gain in just a few months. I sell all my CCK shares as it is trading beyond the intrinsic value.

The above is one of my success stories, achieving 80% realized profit within 6 months.

However......

There are many instances in my investment journey whereby the bought companies have not reached their intrinsic values within the anticipated period of time. This is due to many factors: 

(a) Money does not flow into the sector of the bought company. For example, most monies flow into AI-related sectors in 2025, making those companies in other sectors under-performing although they are growing and financially sound.

(b) Near-term headwind on the industry. For example, export-based companies experience unrealized forex loss due to USD weakening against MYR, or facing business disruption in the Middle East during the Iran-Israel war in 2026, etc.

All these factors could be unprecedented, and out of our control in most cases. As investors, we have no choice but live with all these uncertainties.

In many cases, I bought the shares of those under-valued, fundamentally strong and growing companies at the time when their share price is up-trending (with the help of technical analysis), hoping their share price would revert to their mean (i.e. the so-called mean reversion process, which the legendary investor Ben Graham said that it would just happen magically). During this process, some headwinds would just appear and drag the entire mean reversion process. What would be a value investor do in this scenario? Well, if the headwind is not long-term, I believe most investors would choose to hold. There you go.... they have no choice but to go for long-term investment in this company.

For me, the strategy of  LONG-TERM investing is developed from the fact that in short-term, an under-valued, good company is very likely to face headwinds from time to time. If you are lucky (like my investment journey in CCK above), then you could make handsome profit in just a few months. But, in a real investment journey, sadly to say, we could not replicate this "luck" for every company that we bought. 

This is my message: We DO NOT like long-term investing. 

In fact, we are "forced" to do LONG-TERM investing to accommodate all the uncertainties during the mean reversion process, which could take years. After all, who do not wish their companies to get to their intrinsic values within a short period of time?