The last couple of weeks have felt rough because we’ve had two things happening at once: a liquidity shock and an uncertainty shock. When those overlap, prices move faster than our brains can process, and it always feels worse than it is.

One thing that helps me is separating the noise from the structure. Liquidity shocks make everything look broken, even when the underlying businesses haven’t changed. Uncertainty shocks make every red day feel like the start of something bigger. Put the two together and it’s easy to start questioning your process.

In moments like this, I go back to first principles:

– What was the original thesis?

– Has anything material changed?

– Is the price move driven by fundamentals or by forced flows?

– Would I buy this business today if I didn’t already own it?

That usually tells me whether I’m reacting to the market or responding to the business. The answers aren’t always comfortable, but they’re clear — and clarity is what’s missing when volatility spikes.

@Lisa_Llama along those lines. This is my favorite video to watch when things get frothy and I'm trying to figure out which way is up. It's Peter Lynch on the ten most dangerous things people say about stocks.

He manages to unpack all of the cognitive biases associated with buying and holding stocks in a very clever, pragmatic and articulate 17 minutes. Filmed in 1997 but the wisdom is evergreen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMmocnLnVgQ

@Lewis I loved that clip!

Thank you for sharing - loved the presenter's dry but witty style, full of a lifetime of experience and wisdom, an peppered with lots of interesting little examples and anecdotes of US companies from times gone by. Amazing how much clearer some can look by zooming further out like this on bygone eras - before the rise of ETFs, BOTs & high speed algorithmic trading of current markets - but the little timeless gems of wisdom ring true regardless.

As a deep value-hunter that's been burned a number of times, I recognised a couple of those follies as my own...!

Ah but to not be human! :-)

Its one of the very first investing videos I came across when I was starting out. Then my brain went on to immediatley try to make each of the mistakes even though I was aware of the pitfalls. We're just not wired for this, at least not to start off with. So much is written about understanding and quantifying buisness and financials, I've had to spend at least as much time learning about what drives my decision making, what is strategy and what is just mental arse-covering. Lynch is clever in the video in that he quantifies the mental models and makes them much easier to grasp.

I topped up on ARB and XRF through the week (both have fallen further since predictably).

For now, for me It feels worse than it is though? Or it's not evenly distributed at the very least. I feel like I've been smacked around as well but the ASX300, S&P500 and the NASDAQ are all pretty close to record highs, and still having a decent +ve return over the last 12 months. The news is depressing and the volatile end of town is being volatile, outside of that prices have held up surprisingly well so far (who knows what next week brings).