The myth of Hades and Persephone is associated with the coming of Spring and Winter: When Persephone comes to the Earth, it’s springtime. When she descends to Hades, it is winter.

Hades, God of Underworld kidnapped Persephone.

Persephone’s mother Demter, Goddess of Earth, negotiated her release on the condition that 6 months in a year Persephone will go and live with Hades.

So when Persephone goes to the underworld, as a result of Demeter’s sadness the earth experiences winter and when she comes out, we get spring.

As David Deutsche explains in his book “beginning of infinity”, if Greeks had known that the exact same time when they are experiencing winter, Australia is experiencing summers, they would have realized that there is something wrong with this myth.

The Quest for Explanation

As human beings we have a constant need for explanation.

Even if that means attributing the events to forces of nature or God.

There is a misconception that an explanation coming from an authority figure must be genuine.

However, most people out there have a pre-conceived notion and when that gets explained, it becomes their truth.

Recently a Wealth Advisor upon failure to explain the prevailing situation, made the following comment:

“If the Chairman of largest housing finance company is saying this, I would rather believe him”.

And I was supposed to be content with this explanation.

Just as in the case of Hades and Persphone, if the Greek had realized that earth is on the move and hence when one side is facing the sun, there is spring and when it moves to the other side, there is winter, similarly is daily life almost everything can be either tested for explanation of left to higher powers for explanation.

Testability

As David Deutsche explains, the reality is that there is no authoritative source of knowledge.

Even the best and most authoritative explanation leaves room for misconceptions and needs to be updated as new facts emerge.

History has lessons; however, the biggest lesson is that as things evolve, you might figure something that seemed obvious earlier as a mistaken understanding of what happens.

Testability is key to establish the truth.

However, testability is difficult in so many situation that are best understood in hindsight.

History is a compass not the destination

History teaches us important lessons.

However, each situation has its own unique uncertainties’ that you need to deal with.

And hence history is only directional and doesn’t really provide you the solution.

Think about Covid, the world just stopped.

Everyone who thought they had control, lost all of it.

As things settled and new narratives emerged, everyone jumped to the conclusion that 2020-30 will be the greatest decade ever as world gets into recovery mode.

And then came inflation, Central banks and the world that had got used to throwing money at every problem realized that this time they will have to take the money away.

Again, no one knows how to deal with this.

If past 15 years are a lesson, people have forgotten how to deal with a world with high inflation.

Only Doom and Gloom

Everyone is pessimistic.

The inflation, the war, the supply chain-each problem seems unsurmountable.

However, if there is one lesson that history teaches us and has been tested again and again, it is that human ingenuity and ability to find solution has no limit.

The other lesson that history teaches us is that the only solution to “high prices is higher prices”.

Demand destruction will happen overtime.

If demand is higher and supply is low, supplies adjust overtime.

As money supply reduces, Quantitative Easing becomes Quantitative tightening, some of factors driving inflation will start normalizing.

Whether recession will come or not, whether things will get worse before they become better are unknowns.

What we know is that the cycle always turns.

What to do?

If you are an investor, The idea is not to stop investing but to look for pockets that can sustain and survive this phase.

One thing that was not in your favor in the near past is now coming to your side and that is valuation.

It is difficult to be optimistic when everyone has turned pessimistic, however that is your only hope to turn back after this passes to assess whether you are sitting on ruins or you have created an architectural marvel.

Stay the Course

It is easier to predict how people will react to a positive event vs. a negative event.

If you find a friend who’s crying, s/he has more likely gone through a negative event than a positive one.

One would often observe complicated interpretations of how others are behaving and feeling based on our own past experiences under similar circumstances.

These are what you would call a lay theory.

There are all kinds of lay theories with respect to race, personality, mind etc.,

Successful people who communicate clearly are for example, often seen as paragon of wisdom.

Similarly social background, color etc., is used to attribute behavior.

These are short-cuts that we apply because they are easier to use and understand.

The beauty of a lay theory is that you can use it in multiple ways-both to ascertain cause from effect and all the way from effect to cause.

Why are we talking about it?

There are conflicting signals all around us.

You see a friend crying and can fairly assume that the friend had a negative event but for all you know it was a pleasant one that overwhelmed the friend into crying.

Using short-cuts can often even send you in the direction of wrong conclusions.

Think about some statistics below

Record Goods & Service Tax collections in India	Consumer Inflation at 7.79%
Record overall tax collections in FY-22-25% more than estimates by the Govt. of India	Wholesale inflation @ 15%-companies not being able to pass on cost to consumers
1st time in history India touched over 400 Bn USD in exports	Current Account deficit at multi-year high
Domestic air traffic up 59% YoY as fares rise 40%	India unemployment at 7.83%
Home sales up 35% in FY-22	Increasing interest rates might dampen home sales in FY-23

These are conflicting signals.

Are we doing better or are getting worse?

The Occam’s razor

The Occam’s razor also known as the law of economy tells one to go for the simpler explanation.

For example-Did I get a tire puncture because of a mail or did someone slash the tire.

The simpler and probably, the right explanation, majority of times is that a nail caused the puncture.

When you go with the slash explanation, you are making too many assumptions.

You can always investigate more, however the simpler explanation is more likely the correct one.

Now when you look at the above table, there is somethings that have happened in the near past and then there are others that will probably impact how things shape up in the upcoming future.

You are more likely leaning towards a tough time ahead if you consider the twin impact of, inflation that is high and as per the Reserve Bank of India will remain above their range for most of part of the financial year, along with the rise in interest rates that’s going to hit the crucial middle class consumption in a high unemployment environment.

That simply speaking is more likely scenario that the positive one.

How to Deal with it?

This is what Jeff Bezos said when Amazon stock price feel to $6 during the dotome bubble burst:

“I had all the internal metrics on how many customers we had and I could see,” he said at the forum. “People thought we were losing money…. I just knew it was a fixed cost business, and as soon as we reached a sufficient scale, we would have a very good business.”

Knowing this concept, according to Bezos, was what kept him calm during the ups and downs.

“That understanding of the fixed nature of our expenses, relative to physical retail, is what led us to have the ‘get big fast’ strategy. We knew that our economics would be improved if we had sufficient scale,” he said.

Whether a recession comes tomorrow or not, you would keep going to work, keep giving your best to what you do.

You would have your family around you.

Good businesses will continue to invest in their businesses and prepare for the future.

However, your patience will be tested, and you will at times need nerves of steel.

But remember when all of this has passed and things are again bright, you will feel good that you didn’t lose the way.

No amount of regret will help if you freeze right now, thinking about the current damage instead of focusing on how to create a better tomorrow.

So, Stay the Course-

When Jack Welch took over as CEO of GE in 1981, it was a large organization with almost monopolistic status in various businesses that it operated in.

The company had a soft culture that was dominated by a numbers approach.

Jack transformed the company with his 3-pronged approach:

• Be number 1 or 2 or exit
• Boundaryless behavior-make decision fast overcoming the bureaucracy
• Rank or Yank-eliminate 10% of the bottom performers every year

The focus was to squeeze out every bit of productivity from the available resources-people, plants etc., etc., to create a more profitable venture.

He laid off people, shut down businesses where he couldn’t be number 1 or 2 creating a large, highly successful organization in the bargain. GE’s market cap went from 12Bn USD to 410Bn USD during his tenure.

The downside was that he created a place where everyone was looking behind their back.

Fear of getting fired was high.

The workout consultants leading the boundary-less organization initiative became the secret police.

Manager of the Century

Dubbed the “manager of the Century”, he created a roster of Managers under him who went on the lead leading organisations like Home Depot and Boeing.

His proteges fanning across organisations tried to create the same culture to boost profits.

One prime example is what a series of Ex-GE executives did at Boeing.

While initially all the cost saving programs led to profitability going up from USD 23Bn to USD 54Bn within 7 years, eventually it unfolded.

When Airbus-320 was crushing Boeing 737, the ideal response was to create a competitive plane, another one of its “moonshots” that Boeing was known for, instead Jim McNerney went for re-imagining the 737 by creating 737 Max.

While it saved 17-18Bn USD in development cost, the resultant product was a disaster leading to series of crashes, loss of lives and eventual loss of reputation and money (150Bn USD).

Culture is a Vulture?

When outcome becomes the proof of success and failure in the short run, this is what happens.

You define objective, let’s say maximisation.

You can achieve this the hard way by creating products and services that people will buy, create a scale, and operate at it successfully.

Or you can focus on creating efficiencies by cutting down on people, processes, time and create a culture that hustles through everything.

The first way requires imagining moonshots, planning for it, creating, and executing it and having the patience to see it through.

2^nd one creates unintended consequences.

Look at all the Just in time processes.

They worked till they contributed to the supply chain crisis of the pandemic.

Everyone was working at the edge of their resources when suddenly it all became too thin and the entire chain dependent on these processes stalled.

Now, don’t get me wrong, even the 1^st way can fail, however at-least the attempt is more positive in nature. Its additive and not subtractive.

Patience, understanding, big picture

Whether it’s running a business, your own life or finances, the key is to have the right objectives and strategy that helps you achieve what you are gunning for.

Short-term success can make people believe that they are experts, and the delusion can las t so long that the impact of failure is larger than what anyone imagines or expects.

Watching paint dry is not for everyone, however, often, it’s the most important skill that might need to develop for your own good.

Thanks for reading

Charles Lindbergh, the first person in the world to fly non-stop from America to France, made an excellent and highly accurate assessment of German Airforce capabilities.

His forecast that Germans possess 2400 planes has since been validated by other historians.

US intelligence later estimated Germans to possess 6000 airplanes.

However, what they overlooked was how chronic fuel shortage and other resources rendered most of this fire-power useless.

However, this forecast was enough to convince American Ambassador to UK that British were in no position to face the Germans and would surely leave.

This started his isolationist stand and efforts that went against his own President’s efforts to keep America out of the war.

His career once destined towards the White House was cut-short due to this misstep on his part.

Sense-Making

Once people find a narrative/a situation/an outcome, that appeals to them, they often stop the process to dive deep and make enough sense of the situation to take the right course.

Take Covid-19 for example, when covid arrived, there was no playbook for investors.

Initially everyone panicked and markets sold-off big.

They Govt’s across came with stimulus.

Then everyone saw pattern of consumption which was different from normal.

WFH was new way of working.

Stay at home and organizing your life around it was different.

This created possibilities for new type of consumption patterns and providers.

Covid phase- 1, 2, 3 and for some 4 & 5 made people forget what the old normal was.

There was stimulus money and comfort of home that created new needs.

Demand started to flow.

As there was money homes and cars, when car supply fell short, used cars, everything started flying off the shelf.

People paid any price that was quoted.

This cause higher demand.

Supply started to fall short as key manufacturing centers were in grip of covid.

These manufacturing centers in Asia developed to address over decades to increase efficiency, lower costs.

With supply chain out of control, high demand, commodities went up.

Price pressures started to build.

Lots of people decided to just stop working leading to labor shortage that led to higher wages.

The 2^nd order effect of wage inflation caused an inflation spiral which initially got discounted.

This led to the inflation cancer growing in the body.

And then the war came.

20/20

Hindsight is perfect for all of us.

However how many of us understood the issues and tried to make sense.

Very few or maybe none.

Everyone thought covid has created another bull run that will last a decade.

Then the stocks crashed.

Everyone who started investing in the last 2 years and thought s/he were a genius was grappling for answers.

Now, you see how sense-making is difficult but necessary.

There are no perfect answers.

The above write-up is also hindsight.

However, if there is one answer from the whole experience, it is to stop, step back and instead of being swayed try to think rationally and in scenarios.

Whether covid-19 memories remain with you or not, the lessons are invaluable for life and I hope this one particular lesson you can carry with you for every future crisis.

Thanks for Reading

I know that just because an event has happened thrice in a row doesn’t mean it will not happen a 4^th time or that it is bound to happen for a 4^th time, but I still get seduced by the idea that there is a pattern here.

Just because roulette wheel has landed on red thrice in a row, there is no guarantee that it will happen again or that it has happened enough times and will not happen again.

The wheel has no memory.

I know that I am my own enemy.

I deserve what I get and get what I deserve.

Its, my efforts, behavior and results that matter.

However, I still let myself be stopped from achieving by acting to the contrary.

I know that pain and pleasure are transient and occur as my consciousness reacts to an external stimulus, however I often confuse this pain and pleasure to the quality of our life.

Markets go up (pleasure), markets go down (pain)-result stress.

A life well lived and balanced by the pain and pleasure is true happiness.

A grandfather talking to his young grandson tells the boy he has two wolves inside of him, struggling with each other.

The first is the wolf of peace, love, and kindness. The other is the wolf of fear, greed, and hatred.

“Which wolf will win, grandfather?” asks the young boy. “Whichever one you feed” is the reply.

I know that if my vehicle hits another, both get damaged. However, when ego dictates driving, I forget it.

Ego and emotions have no role in good decision making, however I let my fear, greed, anger, jealousy get an upper hand damaging my own interests.

I know that 90% of my success comes from the homework that I do as that’s what sets me up for success.

What I do in the field is just the outcome of all that homework.

I know that opportunities when seized have a multiplier effect, however I let them go waste because of my inability to adapt to the situation and seizing the momentum.

I know that you do not need unlimited resources to win, just as the 5 musical notes have helped create all the music we know, the resources we have can be mobilized effectively to win what we need to.

I know that suffering is an opportunity to build strength-what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger, however I still am not able to take the risk.

The fear of failure overpowers the competence and stops me from taking the step that can me stronger.

I know that hope is not a strategy unless it’s based on what’s possible and not merely on illusions or delusions.

Optimists solve problems that a pessimist can’t.

I know that excellence is not an accident.

Hard work, perseverance, patience, all lead to excellence and all of that is a choice and not a chance.

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle

• Sun Tzu

Not knowing is liability that can be overcome because ultimately you need to know before you take a decision to do anything.

Knowing that you don’t know is a good start

Happy Reading

Memories have a bad reputation for not being the best record-keeper of what happened.

As we experienced the worst of 2020 and 2021, we missed things that we otherwise didn’t even think much about or took for granted.

Whether it’s the office gossip, the daily commute, the hustle/bustle of normal regular working day compared to WFH.

What happened in the past gets scattered in our brain in bits and pieces that we remember.

It’s like a researcher getting a story write by joining the various parts or like bringing together pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Shades of Grey

Negative memories often fade away more quickly than the positive ones.

Or maybe it’s our coping mechanism to stay positive.

People in a driving accident fear driving for a while and get cautious, however within no time their confidence comes back, and they forget what caused the accident in the first place.

On the other hand, there is that chai/coffee shop from our college days that we reminisce about even after 20 years that evokes positive memories.

So, its but obvious that the chai/coffee shop/college canteens bring back positive memories that we want to remember and on the other hand an accident has painful memories that we wish to forget.

Short Memory

Our current lens acts as the filter to our world view.

If you are in the middle of a deadly pandemic, of-course you bring back positive nostalgia that helps you overcome some of the pain of the isolation.

The positive memories help us trade our pain for something that we feel good about or look forward to.

Manipulated Memories

The sequence of event the way they happened, and the way recall might have a link which might have manipulated the details that we don’t like.

This is most evident when people write autobiographies.

Some of the most famous and accomplished people in the world had complex lives (like most of us), however if you read their autobiographies, you will come inspired from their stories.

One is their writing skills and 2^nd is what they choose to tell you about themselves.

Trading

You know the truth about yourself and what’s your story is.

That’s an assumption we make about people when we are not convinced about what they tell us.

However, it is possible that their mental model has convinced them to believe in a particular narrative about themselves and that’s what they are convinced about now.

I know hordes of investors that read Benjamin Graham and warren Buffett during the pandemic and figured that they now understand how the markets work.

They picked up theories like “Fundamental analysis” and “Good business”.

Their balloon got busted by the recent downtrend in the markets with some of those smart stories turning sour

Now whether they want to waste this accident and revel in the great show that 2020 and 21 were or wish to learn something from this purely depends upon what they think stand for.

End of the day whatever you believe you are will be tested by the reality of the day and tough times will showcase the real man in the mirror.

Happy Reading

As per a report published by KPMG, India’s current wedding market is estimated at $50 billion, accompanied by a rapid annual growth rate. Thereby, making it one of the biggest contributors to the travel and hospitality industries. 

Since times immemorial, when a wedding was scheduled to take place, the entire village would come together, lend a helping hand and ensure all preparations were nothing short of perfect.

Today’s millennial couples take the onus of organising, planning and budgeting for their own wedding, as opposed to families being the key decision makers previously. 

At its core, the wedding industry is driven by cultures, traditions, and the union of 2 families.

From traditional weddings to destination and theme based wedding with the hoopla of social media, weddings in India have evolved over time.

From a simple wedding that might cost INR 10Lakh for a middle class Indian family to a destination wedding that might cost in crores, families and couples spend huge energy on getting the perfect wedding.

Panning starts the day wedding date is finalised and reaches a crescendo in terms of preparation and the stress involved as it gets closer to the D-day.

Getting the perfect dress to the perfect venue/destination, the perfect gifts and planning the itineraries for the guest keeping in mind the sensitivities of each relationship, families and couples stress themselves out over each details.

The big fat Indian wedding is a popular phenomenon around the world but the amount of effort that goes behind it is unimaginable.

What’s next?

Whether it’s a simple wedding or a complex big fat one, real life starts the day the wedding gets over.

Whichever way someone married, in a court or in a temple, at home or at a destination means nothing to what the life would be once they are married.

A marriage is at the end of the day a relationship and it requires all the hard work that a relationship requires to make it work.

Understanding each other, the families, the friends.

Understanding how each individual likes to live when the façade of the wedding planning is over and real life starts.

What are their preferences, what are your preferences?

Kind of things one wants to do, how will you react when the partner doesn’t want what you want.

Yes, that’s true lot of hard work.

It’s probably 100 of times more work than you put in planning the wedding.

The astonishing fact is that divorce rates have doubled in India over the last 2 decades.

Not a statistic that we can be proud of.

However, the millennial, YOLO generation doesn’t believe in living with pain.

They believe in surgery.

More time Planning the wedding than the marriage

Wedding is the event while marriage is life.

If people would spend as much time (as a proportion) as they spend in planning a wedding in planning the marriage, it would not perhaps end in unhappiness.

Life is not as simple as deleting an app or unsubscribing a streaming service.

It requires effort.

This is perhaps true for every aspect of life.

You can either sleep walk through life or make an effort to excel at it.

The difference between excellence and just being there is starkly visible to us all around.

When people question success and why so few people are successful, they think about luck, timing, privilege but forget about the hard work that goes into it.

This exactly is what you require in investing.

Got money, start investing.

Simple-not really.

Getting started needs understanding, your objectives, goals, risk, your reacting to risk and the exit plan.

What would keep you awake and how to reduce that stress.

What do you pay for and what do you do yourself?

These are questions that are about discovering yourself as much as understanding where and how you want to invest.

And just like a marriage can’t be successful without putting in the work, so can’t investing.

The bad news, everything is work.

Good news, its’ worth putting in the work or paying for it.

Happy Reading

Ever wondered why do highways use 1/4 mile increments when car odometers only supply tenths?

At 60 miles an hour, that is about a mile a minute.

At that speed, if a signs were posted at each tenth of a mile, you’d be seeing a sign once every six seconds. On the highway, such frequency and accuracy are unnecessary, in addition to serving no practical purpose. It’s like closely monitoring the second hand on your watch.

I think it’s a “rule of thumb” type thing. How many people compare their odometers to the road signs for precision.

“Alright. It says 3/10 of a mile … wait a tick! What’s that?

My odometer says 5/12 of a mile!!

The point of road signs is to basically say, “Hey, you there! There’s this thing ahead. Pay attention.” And, “Hey, I said this once, I’m saying it one last time, there’s this thing ahead. Pay attention!”

Also If you crash, they use those markers to know where you are on the interstate. You should be exact as you can when telling (the emergency line that you called) your location. They need to know where you are in order to send an emergency vehicle out to you.

Also, yeah. You can tell how close you are to the next exit.

They are not useless, they can be lifesaving.

Does everything need to be logical?

Maybe/maybe not, however it is useful to think logically about everything.

It’s like Plato thought, if it has happened, it must be real, while Aristotle wanted everything to be proven for him to believe it.

The key here is some people look for a logical explanation and evidence before making up their mind while for others it is just another happening that they don’t need to worry about.

Usually people have too many challenges then to think about-

Why sun rises in the east, why the sky is blue etc., etc.,.

While there are others who have devoted their lives to answering such questions.

How Does it Concern me?

Not everything concerns, excites you, draws or even deserves your attention.

However, if you are expected to or want to achieve/deliver/do something, not knowing the logic doesn’t help.

Ultimately, almost all of us can conjecture about reasons for something, however having evidence improves the outcome and our understanding of it.

For example in investing, you don’t have to check the markets (odometer), every 6 seconds, in-fact not checking the odometer at all for long intervals, might help you even more.

However, knowing:

• Where you are headed?
• The distance and the direction?
• The risk and the rewards?
• As also when to look at the odometer and defining a logic for the same can help successfully navigate the journey.

So while you might not have a need to understand the logic of everything that happens around you, thinking about almost everything you do around developing the competence to navigate the journey in a logical manner might help.

Thanks for Reading

Robin Sharma said “Success is never deserved, it’s always earned”

Webster’s dictionary has very straight forward definitions of the two terms that are clearly distinct and different in their own right:

Deserve is defined as “to be worthy of” or in other words, to be entitled to. 

Earn is defined as “to receive as return for effort and especially for work done or services rendered.”

To receive cause, you exist

I remember an incident, early in my career, when during an employee exit, employee demanded for certain things that according to him he deserved for his service and my Chief Executive responded-“you don’t deserve anything, you need to earn everything”

World over, there are 2 thoughts around dealing with the poor and the destitute.

One thought is to ensure that they get what every human must to leave in a humane manner.

While the other thought is to avoid handouts so people go out and work for what they need and the taxes from the Haves can be used in a more directed manner.

Those with the 2^nd thought process think of handouts creating lazy population without motivation to do anything because they know there is a backstop.

They feel you need to earn a living, there is no free lunch, you cant feel entitled to anything in life.

While those with the 1^st thought believe that not everyone has the same opportunity in life and hence the have-nots’ need to be supported.

Entitled

However, what about people who are not have-not’s but have a natural sense of entitlement due to their circumstances or their environment.

All of us have an inflated sense of what we bring to the table and hence the feeling of entitlement.

Stephen Covey in his book “7 habits of highly effective people” wrote about the passbook concept.

In a bank passbook the entry in the passbook matches the money deposited by us.

However, in the passbook of life, what you think you deposited might not have the same value to the recipient and that’s where the gap emerges in what we feel we deserve and what we get.

Work for it

Think about an actor or an athlete or a doctor who is the son of a successful actor, athlete or a doctor-they don’t deserve success because of what the parent has achieved.

It’s a fresh field and you will need to work hard.

You might have doors open for you-best of movie producers, coaches or hospital to work at, but that’s it, after that it’s what you and not where you come from that will determine your success.

No Entitlement in Markets

Same applies to the markets, there is no entitlement.

If you beat the market 1 year, well the market doesn’t care, you will need to keep working to ensure that you come out on top again.

Your past success has no meaning today, every day is a fresh day and fresh challenge.

All your past success does is to give you a template, you either keep working to solidify it or rest on the laurels.

However, as the best of them have realized, the moment you rest on the laurels, you lose the script.

End of the day, like the debate around have-not’s, all we deserve is a chance to compete, success is not a guarantee and will never be.

Happy Reading

Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 classic Rashomon was based on 2 stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.

The movie starts with 3 characters, a priest, a woodcutter and a commoner seeking shelter from a rainstorm.

As they wait the discuss a recent crime where the wife of a samurai was raped, husband killed by either suicide or murder and a thief arrested.

Kurosawa provides 4 different versions of the same event-from the perspective of the wife, thief, woodcutter and the spirit of the husband.

All 4 descriptions different from each other in terms of the detailing.

Rashomon Effect

The Rashomon Effect is a term used in psychology to describe the phenomenon of different people having different perceptions or memories of the same event.

There are different way to interpret it:

• One way to look at it is how there is no single truth to any event
• The other way to think about it is, how where we stand can affect our perception of a situation making it something different from what it is
• Another way to think about it is what can you rely own when truth has different versions

Mark Twain once said, and I quote

“Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, while truth isn’t”

The movie “12 angry men” depicts the story of a jury trial where one dissenting juror turns around the case.

But the interesting thing is the interpretation of the same facts by different jurors’ basis their personal life experiences and biases.

Personal Applications

There are often, multiple versions of a story that we like to tell.

One is for us, and the other is for the audiences and as the audience changes so does our facts.

Which version is the more relevant to us though?

For example, in investing, often the price action changes the way we relate to the market irrespective of the fundamentals.

2 days the market goes up and the only thing, the anchor can think of is “how a bull run is upon us” and in the opposite case, a recession is just around the corner.

How does something fits into our version of the reality, which is these days also called “post truth determines the version we want to believe in and work with.

One of the reasons so many investors get scarred by the markets is this “unrealistic”, emotional response to money than anything else.

When you let outcome define success, the reality is not based on facts but your personal fiction.

Trapped

If you, feel trapped, maybe it’s not the markets or advisors but it’s your own “fantasy world”, “post-truth” or “Rashomon effect” and has actually nothing to do with the reality.

Now the choice of getting out of the trap is with you, however, I can understand if you find it difficult to eject yourself out of it.

However next time this happens to you, instead of making yourself believe the post-truth, think about what happened and try to go with it for a change.

Maybe the actual reality compared to the alternate reality might help you survive the shock and move on

Thank you for Reading

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