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iβve spent most of my adult life trying to understand markets.
for years i convinced myself i was in the pattern recognition, prediction business. i thought success depended upon seeing tomorrow before everyone else did. if i could anticipate the future more accurately than the next investor, the rewards would naturally follow. looking back, i donβt think thatβs what markets were teaching me at all.
i think they were teaching me something far more useful. they were teaching me the difference between reality and the stories i invent about reality. the distinction sounds subtle. in practice, it changes everything. let me explain.
very early in my career i fell hopelessly in love with a stock called readerβs digest.
if youβre old enough to remember it, readerβs digest was the coca cola of magazines. it was a phenomenal global business that had remained private for almost a century before finally coming to the stock market. in my imagination it was flawless. i convinced myself warren buffett would surely buy it. i convinced myself everyone would eventually come to recognise my brilliance.
iβd already written the ending before the story had even begun.
there was just one problem. every single day the share price fell a little further. the market was quietly telling me that my beautiful story was wrong, but i wasnβt listening because i wasnβt looking at reality anymore. i was looking at the film playing inside my own head.
the uncomfortable truth is that iβve recently discovered i did exactly the same thing with someone i loved. i thought i was grieving the end of a relationship. i wasnβt. i was grieving the future iβd already awarded myself.
the breakfasts we would never share. time together brutally taken from me. the ordinary moments that existed only inside my imagination. i found myself replaying every conversation, every whatsapp message and every silence, convinced there must have been one sentence that would have changed the outcome. it felt like analysis. it wasnβt.
