The same flaw bankrupted Dutch merchants in 1637, Jesse Livermore in 1940, and Nobel Prize winners in 1998. It's not ignorance. It's not bad luck. It's you.
Charlie – I have little discipline, so I can’t resist giving my 2 cents – Canadian 2 cents!
This is a great follow-up on your previous advice on investing intelligently.
After having read this piece, is that even possible, w/o the mental discipline of a Zen monk? And if you ever achieved that state of mind, would you have any interest in investing?
I wonder if even investing in high-quality dividend stocks lets you sleep during a crash. Any one of them could have their businesses ruined by an economic collapse. Banks certainly. Utilities might be the best. But everything goes down [ The highly leveraged – who got that way because success taught them they were geniuses – have to sell everything, even their hedges.]
Is the only answer a Pelosi fund?
Or: “The best investment process is one that removes emotion from decision-making as completely as possible.” So use AI machines to execute the program? [ So the problem then is not what is the best stock but the best AI program. And when everyone eventually comes to the same program…? ]
Tentative Rules:
Buy only what you clearly understand
“Speed kills.” And so does Greed – take a decent profit
A thing only has value if others want it. [ This applies to everything – even tulips, gold and bitcoin.]
Charlie, it’s Feb 1st. Just saw silver drop to $72. In this volatility we might see an $80-$60 range on Monday.
I did buy 4 stacks at $79.56+ $2… I am ok . My average is now near $45. I hadn’t bought since last September. This was a great article. I read the Lowenstein book. I will now buy the first two you cited. I really enjoy reading you. Thank you and the best of good fortunes to you.
A fellow 3:30am degenerate. Where else would we be? Sleeping like normal people? That's for those who don't know what they own or why. We know. That's why we can't sleep.
$45 average on silver with dry powder to add at $79? You're playing chess while most people are playing slot machines. The volatility shakes out the tourists. Let it.
Lowenstein's LTCM book is the Bible. The other two will make you angrier and smarter in equal measure. That's the point.
Glad you're here. The 3am crew is the only crew that matters.
Another unbelievably great column Mr Garcia! The observation of the psychology of individual traders is among the most interesting there is. I find far too many traders who delusionally believe their stock market success is attributable to their ‘special intelligence’ rather than the pure good fortune of investing during a bull market. The longer the bull market, the more ‘expert’ investors there are…Lolol
Pete, Morgan Housel is the real deal. The Psychology of Money should be required reading before anyone opens a brokerage account. Would save a lot of people a lot of tuition paid to the market.
His insight that wealth is what you don't see is the whole game in one sentence.
What a history lesson! Insightful, a rather devastating reality check and challenging every individual’s emotional state of mind. Unbelievable “ ignorance “ by some very educated individuals. Being able to overcome emotions, a challenge we all face and will face until the end I suppose. Having just enough instead of greed could be the formula we all need. Looking forward to the next trio of books and your next summary. Thx for sharing history and your insights with us all.
Appreciate you, my friend. The greed vs. enough equation is the whole ballgame, isn't it? History keeps teaching the same lesson and we keep finding new ways to ignore it. More coming soon.
Your dad knew what most of us have to relearn every generation. The windows don't open anymore in tall buildings. Not because we got wiser. Because we got liability lawyers. The impulse is still there. So is the "just a little more." Always will be. Kipling knew it was a big if. That's why he wrote it as a poem and not a policy memo. Cheers to your father's stories. They're worth more than most MBAs.
Black Squirrel, I didn't name you that for nothing. You know what squirrels do? They stack. They don't check the acorn market every fifteen minutes. They don't panic when a hawk flies over. They don't sell their stash because some analyst on CNBC made a concerned face. They just keep burying nuts.
$115+115+115 became $85+85+85. You know what didn't change? The number of ounces. The weight. The metal. The thesis.
You watched a 31% crash and your response was "still stackin'." That's not investing. That's religion. And I mean that as a compliment.
Although I'm starting to think we need to upgrade you.
Black Squirrel was perfect when you were quietly accumulating in the shadows. But now? You're sitting on a chest of silver like some kind of woodland pirate.
Maybe you're Silver Squirrel now. Or Blackbeard's smaller, furrier cousin who buries doubloons instead of spending them on wenches and rum.
Actually, forget it. Stay Black Squirrel. Because here's the thing about squirrels: they remember where they buried everything. And when winter comes, they're the ones eating while everyone else is wondering where the food went.
Winter's coming for a lot of people who sold last Friday. You'll be fine.
The history of Edwin Lefevre is depressing. Just goes to show that money can't buy happiness. I gather that part of your mission with R360 is to steer your wealthy clients away from these types of tragedies and towards thriving family relationships. A commendable mission.
You cite cryptos as an example of bubbles, but I know you are a Bitcoin enthusiast. Can you please elaborate?
John, you're right about Livermore. The man wrote the bible on not destroying yourself, then destroyed himself anyway. That's not irony. That's tragedy dressed up in a three-piece suit.
And yes, part of what we do at R360 is help families avoid becoming cautionary tales. Money is a amplifier. It makes good situations better and bad situations catastrophic.
Most wealth advisors focus on the money. We focus on the family. Because I've seen what happens when you get the first part right and the second part wrong. The zeroes in the account don't mean a damn thing if your kids hate each other and your spouse is planning an exit.
Now, to your real question. You caught what looks like a contradiction: I cite crypto as a bubble example, but I'm a Bitcoin enthusiast. Here's the thing. Bitcoin isn't crypto. That's like saying a thoroughbred is a donkey because they both have four legs.
Crypto is 15,000 shitcoins invented by guys in hoodies who watched The Social Network too many times and thought, "I should create a token." Most of them are pump-and-dump schemes with whitepapers. They're the digital equivalent of those stuffed animals people thought would fund their retirement in 1998.
Beanie Babies with blockchains.
Bitcoin is different. It's the only one that's truly decentralized. No CEO. No marketing department. No venture capitalists waiting to dump on retail. It's been declared dead 400 times and it's still here. I run my own node. I've owned it since most people thought it was drug money for nerds.
Bitcoin is hard money. The rest is hard selling.
Does Bitcoin have volatility? Absolutely. Friday it probably scared the hell out of somebody. But volatility isn't the same as a bubble.
A bubble is when the underlying asset is worthless and people pretend it isn't. Bitcoin is when the underlying asset is revolutionary and people haven't figured it out yet.
Thanks for reading and asking the hard question. That's what this place is for.
Based on my own experience, if any asset class exceeds 10% of your total investment portfolio, you’re taking risk that can lead to high anxiety and bad decisions. (Many would say 5%).
Conventional wisdom says any asset >10% portfolio creates high anxiety/bad decisions. That's what gets you conventional returns.
Bitcoin 17% my portfolio, started 1%. Let it ride. CNQ over 10%. Silver/gold including miners began 5x lower than current prices. If followed "trim to 10%" rule, would've sold winners to buy more of what wasn't working. Not risk management - success punishment.
What causes high anxiety/bad decisions? Not knowing what you own or why. If 15% position keeps you up at night, problem isn't position size - it's conviction or lack of homework.
I call diversification "deworsification." Got it from Byron Wien, who was still publishing his 10 best ideas every year at Blackstone until he died at 90. Guy made more money than most teaching portfolio theory in business schools.
Caveat: Ran hedge funds, sold $15B firm to UBS, been inside sausage factory. Not recommending someone who just opened first Schwab account put 20% in one position. Different game, different rules.
But 5-10% rule isn't science - it's sedative. Keeps clients calm, advisors employed. Designed for people who don't want to do work.
Concentration builds wealth. Diversification preserves it. Most people playing defense before scored anything worth defending.
Some of us stay concentrated and build wealth forever. My CNQ position also over 10% and it's a cash cow. Should be illegal. Only thing producing more cash are drug dealers.
Cristina, you've done something most investors never manage: you bought, you held, and you watched your position more than double. That's the hard part. Most people talk about buying low. Almost nobody actually does it.
Should you have sold at $120? Only if you needed the money or your thesis changed. Has the thesis changed?
Fifth consecutive year of structural deficit. Demand outpacing mine supply by 160-200 million ounces annually. Solar, EVs, and AI eating silver like it's going out of style.
China's export restrictions just kicked in January 1st. The fundamentals haven't changed.
They've intensified.
I believe silver hits $150-$200 within the next 12 months. I'm not selling. If I didn't already have enough silver and gold coins to make my wife think I'm the pirate Blackbeard with a chest full of silver 100 oz bars and doubloons, I'd be backing up the truck at $78. She's convinced I'm one purchase away from needing professional intervention.
As for buying more now, I can't tell you what to do with your money. I'm not your financial advisor or your shrink for that matter. But I can tell you what Friday's crash did: it shook out the overleveraged, the impatient, and the panicked.
The physical metal didn't change. The thesis didn't change. The supply deficit didn't change.
What changed was the price tag on the same ounces.
SILJ is a solid vehicle for the miners. Just remember: miners are a leveraged bet on the metal. Higher highs, lower lows. Size accordingly.
You're doing fine. The hard part is staying in the boat when the waves get violent. Friday was violent. You're still here asking questions instead of panic-selling.
Silver is fascinating. A few things to bear in mind. Unrealized gains are fun to watch, but they’re not real until realized or hedged. It felt great to watch silver go from $29 to $120. But it was never real: it was a number. Realizing a gain means what? Selling into USD here means volunteering for an asset that’s being quietly clipped at around 8% a year, then hoping you can somehow reinvest your way back to even.
What really amuses me about days like Friday is the straight‑line extrapolation. One violent session, and suddenly there are full-blown “new era” narratives flying in every direction you’d like. The commentators swing into action, podcasts light up, and we pretend the entire macro regime turned on a headline.
Is this all about Kevin Warsh? Did one Fed nomination redraw the map for precious metals and the so‑called debasement trade? No. Could JPMorgan—yes, the same shop that wrote a $920 million check for years of spoofing the metals market—have been running a monster short they finally blew out around 78? Maybe. If they did, the positioning data will surface eventually, regulators will clip them again, and the market will keep walking forward.
The underlying case for silver did not change in a single trading day. Leverage blow‑ups and chase‑the‑rally FOMO are exactly what they’ve always been. The mirror image is traders sprinting around like headless chickens, screaming that the sky is falling and that one candle has invalidated an entire thesis.
Markets do not owe us the courtesy of tracing our chart patterns. They’re not circuits constrained by something tidy like Ohm’s law; they are crowds of humans making decisions under stress, liquidity constraints, and narrative whiplash. The tape is just the information feed that comes out the other side.
We all swear we’re long‑term investors, right up until the first sharp drawdown, and then our time horizon collapses to the last tick. The work now is learning not to let a single day’s chaos bully us out of a multi‑year view.
Our refusal to be responsible for our own decisions is what keeps us seeking others for guidance. You already know the answer to that question.
The fear of taking responsibility for our own actions keeps us from trusting ourselves. It feels far more comfortable to take someone else’s advice, because that gives us someone to blame if it doesn’t work out.
And when it does work out, it puts us in dangerous “ guru worshiping “ position. One where we can no longer make, or act on our own decisions.
You already know the answer, it’s the trust part that is scary.
Lorraine, there's wisdom in what you're saying. Personal responsibility is the whole ballgame. Nobody should outsource their financial decisions to anyone, including me.
But I'd push back gently on one thing: there's a difference between seeking a guru to follow blindly and seeking information to sharpen your own thinking.
Cristina didn't ask me to make her decision. She asked for perspective.
That's what communities do. We share data, challenge assumptions, stress-test our convictions against people who see things differently. The final decision is always hers. The responsibility is always hers. But the conversation? That belongs to all of us.
I spent decades in rooms like the White House Situation Room, where the smartest people I knew shared what they saw, argued about what it meant, and then the President made his call.
The danger you're describing is real. Guru worship destroys investors. But so does isolation. The trick is knowing the difference between gathering intelligence and surrendering judgment.
Cristina's still holding. She's asking questions. That tells me her judgment is working just fine.
Nixon pressured Arthur Burns to juice the economy before 1972. Burns complied. Nixon won 49 states. Inflation exploded afterward and we got a decade of stagflation.
Warsh is Burns with a Stanford pedigree and better talking points. Same playbook. Same sugar. But in this environment I'd called it cocaine. Bigger hangover.
You're right about Sun Tzu. Trump read the book. Democrats are still arguing about the font.
"Knowledge isn't armor, it's just a better quality of mistake you get to make."
Your trading mentor should have written a book. That's the whole human condition in one sentence.
Mackay wrote the bible on crowd madness, then bought railway stocks at the top. Newton invented calculus, then lost a fortune in the South Sea Bubble and said, "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of men."
Knowing better and doing better are two different sports. One is reading. The other is bleeding.
Charlie – I have little discipline, so I can’t resist giving my 2 cents – Canadian 2 cents!
This is a great follow-up on your previous advice on investing intelligently.
After having read this piece, is that even possible, w/o the mental discipline of a Zen monk? And if you ever achieved that state of mind, would you have any interest in investing?
I wonder if even investing in high-quality dividend stocks lets you sleep during a crash. Any one of them could have their businesses ruined by an economic collapse. Banks certainly. Utilities might be the best. But everything goes down [ The highly leveraged – who got that way because success taught them they were geniuses – have to sell everything, even their hedges.]
Is the only answer a Pelosi fund?
Or: “The best investment process is one that removes emotion from decision-making as completely as possible.” So use AI machines to execute the program? [ So the problem then is not what is the best stock but the best AI program. And when everyone eventually comes to the same program…? ]
Tentative Rules:
Buy only what you clearly understand
“Speed kills.” And so does Greed – take a decent profit
A thing only has value if others want it. [ This applies to everything – even tulips, gold and bitcoin.]
Charlie, it’s Feb 1st. Just saw silver drop to $72. In this volatility we might see an $80-$60 range on Monday.
I did buy 4 stacks at $79.56+ $2… I am ok . My average is now near $45. I hadn’t bought since last September. This was a great article. I read the Lowenstein book. I will now buy the first two you cited. I really enjoy reading you. Thank you and the best of good fortunes to you.
A fellow 3:30am degenerate. Where else would we be? Sleeping like normal people? That's for those who don't know what they own or why. We know. That's why we can't sleep.
$45 average on silver with dry powder to add at $79? You're playing chess while most people are playing slot machines. The volatility shakes out the tourists. Let it.
Lowenstein's LTCM book is the Bible. The other two will make you angrier and smarter in equal measure. That's the point.
Glad you're here. The 3am crew is the only crew that matters.
Hubris is really a heady and dangerous thing. Self awareness is the only antidote.
Amen to that.
Another unbelievably great column Mr Garcia! The observation of the psychology of individual traders is among the most interesting there is. I find far too many traders who delusionally believe their stock market success is attributable to their ‘special intelligence’ rather than the pure good fortune of investing during a bull market. The longer the bull market, the more ‘expert’ investors there are…Lolol
Pete,
The longer the bull market, the more geniuses show up at cocktail parties. Then the market turns and they go quiet. Every cycle.
The real test isn't whether you made money when everything went up. It's whether you kept it when it didn't.
Charlie
I won’t bother you further but I’m curious if you have read anything by Morgan Housel? Like you, I love his insights…
Pete, Morgan Housel is the real deal. The Psychology of Money should be required reading before anyone opens a brokerage account. Would save a lot of people a lot of tuition paid to the market.
His insight that wealth is what you don't see is the whole game in one sentence.
We conflate luck with skill.
What a history lesson! Insightful, a rather devastating reality check and challenging every individual’s emotional state of mind. Unbelievable “ ignorance “ by some very educated individuals. Being able to overcome emotions, a challenge we all face and will face until the end I suppose. Having just enough instead of greed could be the formula we all need. Looking forward to the next trio of books and your next summary. Thx for sharing history and your insights with us all.
Appreciate you, my friend. The greed vs. enough equation is the whole ballgame, isn't it? History keeps teaching the same lesson and we keep finding new ways to ignore it. More coming soon.
Kipling's If is a very big if. Those who can keep their head when all around are losing theirs are rare indeed.
My dad was born in '16. I grew up on stories of bankers and moguls jumping out of windows.
"Just a little more."
Your dad knew what most of us have to relearn every generation. The windows don't open anymore in tall buildings. Not because we got wiser. Because we got liability lawyers. The impulse is still there. So is the "just a little more." Always will be. Kipling knew it was a big if. That's why he wrote it as a poem and not a policy memo. Cheers to your father's stories. They're worth more than most MBAs.
Thanks, again, Charlie.
I've been stacking silver coins for years. Last week it was; $115+115+115...now it's $85+85+85. I haven't sold an ounce. Just stacking.
Black Squirrel, still stackin'
Black Squirrel, I didn't name you that for nothing. You know what squirrels do? They stack. They don't check the acorn market every fifteen minutes. They don't panic when a hawk flies over. They don't sell their stash because some analyst on CNBC made a concerned face. They just keep burying nuts.
$115+115+115 became $85+85+85. You know what didn't change? The number of ounces. The weight. The metal. The thesis.
You watched a 31% crash and your response was "still stackin'." That's not investing. That's religion. And I mean that as a compliment.
Although I'm starting to think we need to upgrade you.
Black Squirrel was perfect when you were quietly accumulating in the shadows. But now? You're sitting on a chest of silver like some kind of woodland pirate.
Maybe you're Silver Squirrel now. Or Blackbeard's smaller, furrier cousin who buries doubloons instead of spending them on wenches and rum.
Actually, forget it. Stay Black Squirrel. Because here's the thing about squirrels: they remember where they buried everything. And when winter comes, they're the ones eating while everyone else is wondering where the food went.
Winter's coming for a lot of people who sold last Friday. You'll be fine.
Keep stackin'.
Hi Charlie - Fascinating & very well written article. Thanks for writing & posting it.
The history of Edwin Lefevre is depressing. Just goes to show that money can't buy happiness. I gather that part of your mission with R360 is to steer your wealthy clients away from these types of tragedies and towards thriving family relationships. A commendable mission.
You cite cryptos as an example of bubbles, but I know you are a Bitcoin enthusiast. Can you please elaborate?
John, you're right about Livermore. The man wrote the bible on not destroying yourself, then destroyed himself anyway. That's not irony. That's tragedy dressed up in a three-piece suit.
And yes, part of what we do at R360 is help families avoid becoming cautionary tales. Money is a amplifier. It makes good situations better and bad situations catastrophic.
Most wealth advisors focus on the money. We focus on the family. Because I've seen what happens when you get the first part right and the second part wrong. The zeroes in the account don't mean a damn thing if your kids hate each other and your spouse is planning an exit.
Now, to your real question. You caught what looks like a contradiction: I cite crypto as a bubble example, but I'm a Bitcoin enthusiast. Here's the thing. Bitcoin isn't crypto. That's like saying a thoroughbred is a donkey because they both have four legs.
Crypto is 15,000 shitcoins invented by guys in hoodies who watched The Social Network too many times and thought, "I should create a token." Most of them are pump-and-dump schemes with whitepapers. They're the digital equivalent of those stuffed animals people thought would fund their retirement in 1998.
Beanie Babies with blockchains.
Bitcoin is different. It's the only one that's truly decentralized. No CEO. No marketing department. No venture capitalists waiting to dump on retail. It's been declared dead 400 times and it's still here. I run my own node. I've owned it since most people thought it was drug money for nerds.
Bitcoin is hard money. The rest is hard selling.
Does Bitcoin have volatility? Absolutely. Friday it probably scared the hell out of somebody. But volatility isn't the same as a bubble.
A bubble is when the underlying asset is worthless and people pretend it isn't. Bitcoin is when the underlying asset is revolutionary and people haven't figured it out yet.
Thanks for reading and asking the hard question. That's what this place is for.
Based on my own experience, if any asset class exceeds 10% of your total investment portfolio, you’re taking risk that can lead to high anxiety and bad decisions. (Many would say 5%).
Conventional wisdom says any asset >10% portfolio creates high anxiety/bad decisions. That's what gets you conventional returns.
Bitcoin 17% my portfolio, started 1%. Let it ride. CNQ over 10%. Silver/gold including miners began 5x lower than current prices. If followed "trim to 10%" rule, would've sold winners to buy more of what wasn't working. Not risk management - success punishment.
What causes high anxiety/bad decisions? Not knowing what you own or why. If 15% position keeps you up at night, problem isn't position size - it's conviction or lack of homework.
I call diversification "deworsification." Got it from Byron Wien, who was still publishing his 10 best ideas every year at Blackstone until he died at 90. Guy made more money than most teaching portfolio theory in business schools.
Caveat: Ran hedge funds, sold $15B firm to UBS, been inside sausage factory. Not recommending someone who just opened first Schwab account put 20% in one position. Different game, different rules.
But 5-10% rule isn't science - it's sedative. Keeps clients calm, advisors employed. Designed for people who don't want to do work.
Concentration builds wealth. Diversification preserves it. Most people playing defense before scored anything worth defending.
Some of us stay concentrated and build wealth forever. My CNQ position also over 10% and it's a cash cow. Should be illegal. Only thing producing more cash are drug dealers.
I bought silver at $49 the first time you mentioned it. Should I have sold at $120? Should I buy more now? I bought physical and SILJ. 🙏
Cristina, you've done something most investors never manage: you bought, you held, and you watched your position more than double. That's the hard part. Most people talk about buying low. Almost nobody actually does it.
Should you have sold at $120? Only if you needed the money or your thesis changed. Has the thesis changed?
Fifth consecutive year of structural deficit. Demand outpacing mine supply by 160-200 million ounces annually. Solar, EVs, and AI eating silver like it's going out of style.
China's export restrictions just kicked in January 1st. The fundamentals haven't changed.
They've intensified.
I believe silver hits $150-$200 within the next 12 months. I'm not selling. If I didn't already have enough silver and gold coins to make my wife think I'm the pirate Blackbeard with a chest full of silver 100 oz bars and doubloons, I'd be backing up the truck at $78. She's convinced I'm one purchase away from needing professional intervention.
As for buying more now, I can't tell you what to do with your money. I'm not your financial advisor or your shrink for that matter. But I can tell you what Friday's crash did: it shook out the overleveraged, the impatient, and the panicked.
The physical metal didn't change. The thesis didn't change. The supply deficit didn't change.
What changed was the price tag on the same ounces.
SILJ is a solid vehicle for the miners. Just remember: miners are a leveraged bet on the metal. Higher highs, lower lows. Size accordingly.
You're doing fine. The hard part is staying in the boat when the waves get violent. Friday was violent. You're still here asking questions instead of panic-selling.
That tells me everything I need to know.
Silver is fascinating. A few things to bear in mind. Unrealized gains are fun to watch, but they’re not real until realized or hedged. It felt great to watch silver go from $29 to $120. But it was never real: it was a number. Realizing a gain means what? Selling into USD here means volunteering for an asset that’s being quietly clipped at around 8% a year, then hoping you can somehow reinvest your way back to even.
What really amuses me about days like Friday is the straight‑line extrapolation. One violent session, and suddenly there are full-blown “new era” narratives flying in every direction you’d like. The commentators swing into action, podcasts light up, and we pretend the entire macro regime turned on a headline.
Is this all about Kevin Warsh? Did one Fed nomination redraw the map for precious metals and the so‑called debasement trade? No. Could JPMorgan—yes, the same shop that wrote a $920 million check for years of spoofing the metals market—have been running a monster short they finally blew out around 78? Maybe. If they did, the positioning data will surface eventually, regulators will clip them again, and the market will keep walking forward.
The underlying case for silver did not change in a single trading day. Leverage blow‑ups and chase‑the‑rally FOMO are exactly what they’ve always been. The mirror image is traders sprinting around like headless chickens, screaming that the sky is falling and that one candle has invalidated an entire thesis.
Markets do not owe us the courtesy of tracing our chart patterns. They’re not circuits constrained by something tidy like Ohm’s law; they are crowds of humans making decisions under stress, liquidity constraints, and narrative whiplash. The tape is just the information feed that comes out the other side.
We all swear we’re long‑term investors, right up until the first sharp drawdown, and then our time horizon collapses to the last tick. The work now is learning not to let a single day’s chaos bully us out of a multi‑year view.
Agree. You rarely get a sale price like Friday. Look forward to the next leg up.
Our refusal to be responsible for our own decisions is what keeps us seeking others for guidance. You already know the answer to that question.
The fear of taking responsibility for our own actions keeps us from trusting ourselves. It feels far more comfortable to take someone else’s advice, because that gives us someone to blame if it doesn’t work out.
And when it does work out, it puts us in dangerous “ guru worshiping “ position. One where we can no longer make, or act on our own decisions.
You already know the answer, it’s the trust part that is scary.
Lorraine, there's wisdom in what you're saying. Personal responsibility is the whole ballgame. Nobody should outsource their financial decisions to anyone, including me.
But I'd push back gently on one thing: there's a difference between seeking a guru to follow blindly and seeking information to sharpen your own thinking.
Cristina didn't ask me to make her decision. She asked for perspective.
That's what communities do. We share data, challenge assumptions, stress-test our convictions against people who see things differently. The final decision is always hers. The responsibility is always hers. But the conversation? That belongs to all of us.
I spent decades in rooms like the White House Situation Room, where the smartest people I knew shared what they saw, argued about what it meant, and then the President made his call.
The danger you're describing is real. Guru worship destroys investors. But so does isolation. The trick is knowing the difference between gathering intelligence and surrendering judgment.
Cristina's still holding. She's asking questions. That tells me her judgment is working just fine.
Rico,
Nixon pressured Arthur Burns to juice the economy before 1972. Burns complied. Nixon won 49 states. Inflation exploded afterward and we got a decade of stagflation.
Warsh is Burns with a Stanford pedigree and better talking points. Same playbook. Same sugar. But in this environment I'd called it cocaine. Bigger hangover.
You're right about Sun Tzu. Trump read the book. Democrats are still arguing about the font.
May the mischief be with you,
Charlie
Neural Foundry,
"Knowledge isn't armor, it's just a better quality of mistake you get to make."
Your trading mentor should have written a book. That's the whole human condition in one sentence.
Mackay wrote the bible on crowd madness, then bought railway stocks at the top. Newton invented calculus, then lost a fortune in the South Sea Bubble and said, "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of men."
Knowing better and doing better are two different sports. One is reading. The other is bleeding.
May the mischief be with you,
Charlie