What If It Doesn’t?
“Market’s up? Economy’s doing great! Get on board and enjoy the profits! Market’s down? Buy the dip! Market’s bound to go back up eventually!”
– the secret to perpetual growth
One of my favorite pieces of financial advice is, “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” (John Maynard Keynes) – I’ve never been much of a gambler with my investments and this quote has always kept me humble enough never to try.
And boy, is this one crazy market we’ve been in lately – housing shortages, on-and-off tariffs, TWO war-driven oil crises – and the economy’s never been better if stock prices are to be believed! And every now and then, the most powerful individual on the planet says some crazy shit and the markets reasonably reply, “Oh God, this is insane! No one’s steering the ship! The future isn’t guaranteed!” and the markets tank. But then, that same crazily powerful individual says, “Nah, calm down, I got this.” and the markets unreasonably reply, “Oh, thank God! For a second we thought you were gonna do something crazy!” and the markets rocket back up again. Completely ignoring that we’re already in the middle of that crazy shit he’s doing!
Or are we all in some overly-convoluted multi-layered reverse psychology market? Like, “we know shit’s crazy, but not everyone knows how crazy shit is. So the market’s gonna do fine until shit gets really crazy. But if we act like shit’s crazy, then everyone will act like shit’s crazy, which will make shit crazy! So as long as we never act like shit’s crazy, then the shit will remain perfectly sane!”
– James
