When Open AI introduced Chapt GPT on November 22, they blew up the economy… In a good way. Nowadays, AI writing has become a norm.
I can’t believe it’s almost two years with AI now.
Back in Q4 of 2022, the world was in the grip of inflation. People warned of hyperinflation.
We were heading towards the Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic of 100 years ago.1Source: Wikipedia
Then… AI came to the rescue.
Welcome to Wise & Wealthy: A weekly newsletter full of proven ideas to become smarter and wealthier. I send this every Monday.
#142 – September 16, 2024
Was this shared with you? Sign up here.
I’ve published a lot of articles on Stoic investing over the past few years. I always focused on passive investing.
In my latest article, I share how you can use Stoicism to pick stocks. I share my two current biggest positions outside my passive strategy.
One of my picks is Tesla, which I bought in April of this year. In my view, the company was undervalued at that time. I saw an opportunity, and I started buying.
If you’re interested in picking stocks, read my latest article. I talk about my mental models for investing in individual stocks.
↳ Invest Like a Stoic: Focus on the Best and Ignore the Rest
I want to share a somewhat unusual quote with you today. This is from the fictional biography of Bret Easton Ellis, called Lunar Park:
“The newspapers kept stroking my fear. New surveys provided awful statistics on just about everything. Evidence suggested that we were not doing well. Researchers gloomily agreed… Anxiety was soaking up most people’s days. Everyone had become preoccupied with horror. Madness was fluttering everywhere.”
He was talking about the mindset of people in the 90s. When you read it, you think he’s talking about today. He also wrote:
“Cruelty was on the rise and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The populace was confounded, yet didn’t care.”
Isn’t that fascinating?
Madness is still fluttering everywhere. It makes you think. That’s probably our normal state of mind.
And if something is normal, it’s nothing we should worry about.
Keep going.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found this edition of Wise & Wealthy useful.
All the best,
Darius
I’ve created a one-week email course that you can do together with a group. It’s called Stay Centered, and it will help you to reclaim focus and live a meaningful life.
When you’re centered, nothing can hurt you. You will have inner peace no matter what happens.
You can join the challenge for free. Every day, you’ll receive a short email with a small challenge that inspires you to live better.
I highly recommend sharing it with your friends so you can go through the program together. I did it with my team, which was a lot of fun.
Join here: dariusforoux.com/stay-centered
The Ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism has been around for more than 2300 years but is now more relevant than ever for investors. Those who want to build wealth in the stock market do well when they invest like a Stoic.
The core idea of Stoicism is simple: Focus on what you control and ignore everything else. But as investors, we tend to focus on the latter, which harms our future returns.
If you always focus on the factors you don’t control, like the state of the economy, inflation, or what the Fed does next, you will lose money. No one can predict macro factors or what the stock market does in the short term.
As investors, we should focus on what we control, and that’s a very limited area. Essentially, we only control our own decisions about what to invest in.
So, what would a Stoic invest in? Quality. As Seneca, one of the most famous Stoic philosophers, once said:
People often think you always have to make a major change to have a better life. But that’s not true. Small actions create a bigger impact on our overall well-being and happiness.
Look, life is never easy. It’s so common to feel stuck and aimless, especially when things aren’t going your way, like having a bad day at work or simply feeling unmotivated.
But you can change that. Right now. Today.