QOTD: There is no Why

Some of the most brilliant people I’ve met are terrible investors because they’re constantly seeking out ways to explain why things happen the way they do in the markets. Even when you’re right about the way something transpires in the macro picture, you may come to the wrong conclusion about how the markets will react to that event.

When you’re constantly looking for a catalyst to explain every single move in the markets you start to see signals and correlations that just don’t exist. Most of the time we won’t know exactly why the markets moved a certain way until much later. Sometimes even with the benefit of perfect hindsight, investors still can’t agree on the specifics of the cause and effect. But to some the ‘why’ in the markets will always seem easy after the fact, so they keep searching for the answers.