One of the attractions of investing on the stock market is that you don't need a business brain like Brian Joffe (Bidvest), the insights of a Riaan Stassen (Capitec Bank) or, for that matter, the talents of numerous other successful entrepreneurs and industrialists, in order to make money.

For a meagre R150 you can become a partner in Joffe's vibrant global distribution and trading company; for R190 a partner in Stassen's flourishing new bank.

While the two chief executives are sitting through tiresome board meetings reviewing the latest financial accounts or spending sleepless nights worrying about non-paying customers, you can relax, reassured that they are working diligently to take care of your investment.

A rand invested in Bidvest 20 years ago would be worth at least R25 today. And if you'd backed Stassen only a few years ago, you would have increased your wealth more than five times.

But, for illustration purposes, if you look at Bidvest's share price performance since it was listed in 1988, it hasn't been an entirely smooth ride, even though Joffe's management team has never failed to increase profits each year.

There have been times when the share price has moved almost perpendicularly on overly optimistic expectations just as there have been years, like the present, where the share price has drifted sideways on exceedingly downbeat sentiment about the immediate outlook.

Great investors like Warren Buffett suggest that you do not need a high IQ to select quality companies, with sound balance sheets, sustainable earnings and proven management - but you do require fortitude and patience to earn your rewards. As he humorously explains: "Some things in life take time. You cannot produce a baby in one month by making nine women pregnant."

Yet in my experience, while numerous investors profess committing their funds for the long haul, few have the courage or endurance to stay the course.

There are even more who bluntly refuse to climb aboard until they receive a clear sign from the heavens that the weather is all clear.

But, of course, among the rest are those imprudent adventurers who are prepared to risk their fortunes searching for hidden treasure in unchartered seas, the latest of which involved an upstream oil and gas company named SacOil. SacOil (South Africa Congo Oil Company) was formed in 2008 but later reversed its business into the JSE listed mining shell, Samroc.

The company is managed by the well-educated and charismatic Robin Vela, who believes that Africa will account for 20% of world oil and gas production by 2020. He aims to ensure that his company becomes a meaningful player in this development.

So far it has acquired prospecting rights on a small block on Lake Albert in the Democratic Republic of Congo and has entered into a joint venture with a Nigerian oil company.

Mineral exploration is a time-consuming business that soaks shiploads of cash before investors reap their hard-earned and, more often than not, hard-fought returns, and, in the long history of the JSE, few of these juniors have successfully survived the passage.

But, there is nothing that the stock market loves more than a good story, and for reasons that few can fathom, SacOil provided one.

Its gospel was spread by what Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point , terms mavens; trusted (or in this instance, dubious) gatherers of information who are generally believed to be the first to pick up on news and trends.

Through a wide network of connections that covered corporate boardrooms, the golf course, bar mitzvahs and fashionable restaurants, the word was passed on from one person to the next. Normally rational people, blinded by illusions of immediate wealth, piled into the share, driving the price up tenfold.

The rest of the saga is what stock exchange legends are made of; the hot air balloon heading skywards soon ran out of propane and came crashing down.

Poor Vela; his company's operations hardly generate enough cash to fund his aggressive acquisition-led strategy, and at the current low price additional capital raisings would dilute existing shareholders significantly.

The well-meaning Vela continues to produce a prodigious number of updates on his group's progress in an effort to restore its standing with battered investors, but wounds of this nature take a long time to heal.

While no one can contest the claims of the competent persons who value SacOil's shares well above the current trading price, I'm inclined to stick to a tried and tested formula of putting money into companies that are making satisfactory profits and paying handsome dividends by producing goods and services that everyone needs. It won't buy you a Ferrari tomorrow, but it will offer you some peace and comfort in your retirement years.