An Unstoppable Conveyor Belt of In-The-Moment- Critical Concerns

Here at Thrive, one of our core investing tenets is “Ignore the media; they are in the business of scaring you!”

We recently came across a blog that expanded on this belief so well that we’re sharing it here today; at a time, we could all use the reminder.

^{Here is a brief excerpt followed by a link to the full blog post:}

There is, however, a genuine problem here for investors. Financial markets tend to be an unstoppable conveyor belt of in-the-moment critical concerns that we cannot help but engage with, almost always in ways that are to our detriment.
 
 It is human nature to be drawn towards things that are both salient and available. In financial markets, that means the more available (or prominent) an issue is, the more likely we are hugely overstate both its importance and the risk it presents.
 
 Our engagement with this phenomenon typically works something like this:

• Stage 1: A news story becomes the focus of investor / market attention.
• Stage 2: We greatly overweight its long-term importance.
• Stage 3: We develop ‘shallow expertise’ and a passable opinion on the subject.
• Stage 4: We calculate our ‘exposure’ to the issue.
• Stage 5: We inaccurately predict how financial markets will be impacted.
• Stage 6: We either make a poor decision or have to justify not making one.
• Stage 7: We move on to next in-the-spotlight news story.
• Stage 8: We entirely forget what we said in Stage 1-6 within a few months.

https://behaviouralinvestment.com/2025/01/28/right-here-right-now/

Enjoy!