Same as Ever_ A Guide to What Never Changes

Morgan Housel

January 07, 2024

read newspapers and books every day. I cannot recall one damn thing I read in a newspaper from, say, 2011. But I can tell you in detail about a few great books I read in 2011 and how they changed the way I think. I’ll remember them forever. I’ll keep reading newspapers. But if I read more books I’d probably develop better filters and frameworks that would help me make better sense of the news.

January 07, 2024

Downturns don’t happen in isolation. The reason stocks might fall 30 percent is because big groups of people, companies, and politicians screwed something up, and their screwups might sap my confidence in our ability to recover. So my investment priorities might shift from growth to preservation. It’s difficult to contextualize this mental shift when the economy is booming. And even though Warren Buffett says to be greedy when others are fearful, far more people agree with that quote than actually act on it. The same idea

January 06, 2024

James Clear put it this way: “People follow incentives, not advice.”

January 06, 2024

When someone is viewed as more extraordinary than they are, you’re more likely to overvalue their opinion on things they have no special talent in. Like a successful hedge fund manager’s political views, or a politician’s investment advice. Only when you get to know someone well do you realize the best you can do in life is to become an expert at some things while remaining inept at others—and that’s if you’re good. There’s an important difference between someone whose specific talent should be celebrated versus someone whose ideas should never be questioned. Eat the orange, throw away the

January 06, 2024

Everything is sales also means that everyone is trying to craft an image of who they are. The image helps them sell themselves to others. Some are more aggressive than others, but everyone plays the image game, even if only subconsciously. Since they’re crafting the image, it’s not a complete view. There’s a filter. Skills are advertised, flaws are hidden.

January 05, 2024

There is a balance, he said, between needing unwavering faith that things will get better while accepting the reality of brutal facts, whatever they may be. Things will eventually get better. But we’re not going home by Christmas. That’s the balance—planning like a pessimist and dreaming like an optimist.

January 05, 2024

If I were to say, “What are the odds the average American will be twice as rich fifty years from now?” it sounds preposterous. The odds seem very low. Twice as rich as they are today? Doubling what we already have? It seems too ambitious. But then if I said, “What are the odds we can achieve 1.4 percent average annual growth for the next fifty years?” I almost sound like a pessimist. One percent? That’s it? But those numbers, of course, are the same. It’s always been like that, and always will be. —

January 03, 2024

Be careful what you wish for. A carefree and stress-free life sounds wonderful only until you recognize the motivation and progress it prevents. No one cheers for hardship—nor should they—but we should recognize that it’s the most potent fuel of problem-solving, serving as both the root of what we enjoy today and the seed of opportunity for what we’ll enjoy tomorrow.

January 03, 2024

Entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson echoed the same when he said, “Most successful people are just a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity.”

January 03, 2024

Vannevar Bush, who ran the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, controversially suggested the medical advances that came about from the war—most notably the production and use of antibiotics—may have saved more lives than were lost during the war.

January 02, 2024

A good summary of investing history is that stocks pay a fortune in the long run but seek punitive damages when you demand to be paid sooner.

December 31, 2023

keeps you on your toes.

December 27, 2023

What Sapiens does have is excellent writing. Beautiful writing. The stories are captivating, the flow is effortless. Harari took what was already known and wrote it better than anyone had done before. The result was fame greater than anyone before him could imagine. Best story wins.

December 27, 2023

people don’t remember books; they remember sentences.

December 27, 2023

people don’t remember books; they remember

December 27, 2023

The best story wins. Not the best idea, or the right idea, or the most rational idea. Just whoever tells a story that catches people’s attention and gets them to nod their heads is the one who tends to be rewarded.

December 27, 2023

Knowing the high odds of something happening loses its meaning when that thing happening hurts. Probability goes out the window.

December 27, 2023

“This is wrong, this feels broken, my advisor screwed up.” Knowing the high odds of something happening loses its meaning when that thing happening hurts. Probability goes out the window.

December 27, 2023

Knowing the high odds of something happening loses its meaning when that thing

December 27, 2023

“This is wrong, this feels broken, my advisor screwed up.” Knowing the high odds of something happening loses its meaning when that thing happening hurts. Probability goes out the window.

December 23, 2023

you look at the 1950s and ask, “What was different that made it feel so great?” this is at least part of your answer. The gap between you and most of the people around you wasn’t that large. It created an era when it was easy to keep your expectations in check because few people in your social circle lived dramatically better than you did.

December 23, 2023

Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough.

December 23, 2023

There is no such thing as objective wealth—everything is relative, and mostly relative to those around you. It’s the path of least resistance to determining what life owes you and what you should expect. Everyone does it. Subconsciously or not, everyone looks around and says, “What do other people like me have? What do they do? Because that’s what I should have and do as well.”

December 23, 2023

People gauge their well-being relative to those around them, and luxuries become necessities in a remarkably short period of time when the people around you become better off. Investor Charlie Munger once noted that the world isn’t driven by greed; it’s driven by envy.

December 23, 2023

“Invest in preparedness, not in prediction.”

December 23, 2023

History knows three things: 1) what’s been photographed, 2) what someone wrote down or recorded, and 3) the words spoken by people whom historians and journalists wanted to interview and who agreed to be interviewed. What percentage of everything important that’s ever happened falls into one of those three categories? No one knows. But it’s tiny. And all three suffer from misinterpretation, incompleteness, embellishment, lying, and selective memory.

December 23, 2023

“Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.”