Benjamin Graham, the renowned US finance professor and author who mentored Warren Buffett, had said the biggest mistake many investors made was to “pay too much attention to what the stock market is doing currently”. That is, they get thrown off course by day-to-day noise.

Graham, who died in 1976, also warned that obvious prospects for growth in a business did not always translate into profits for investors. To take a contemporary example, investors should not assume that soaring demand for batteries in electric vehicles means lithium miners are a good investment.