1/ What now? A Thread
So, we find ourselves in an awful situation, not of our making, but we must accept the hand that we've been dealt and play the cards as best we can. Assuming that everyone reading this has taken all of the recommended precautionary measures--aggressive
So, we find ourselves in an awful situation, not of our making, but we must accept the hand that we've been dealt and play the cards as best we can. Assuming that everyone reading this has taken all of the recommended precautionary measures--aggressive
2/ hand washing; self-quarantine; wearing gloves while handling packages, etc. we need to start focusing on trying to think of things that we can do to *help* each other and potentially--given what the #FinTwit membership looks like--other investors and the government solve
3/ this problem. One thing I think that could be potentially helpful to our #FinTwit community is to stop posting unsourced rumors, inflammatory or apocalyptic tweets or threads. I am NOT saying this isn't a very, very serious problem, it is. But I think we've reached a cascade
4/ of negative information that already is affecting overall confidence in not only markets but society in general. When those intensely negative takes start to cascade, they speed up the negative feedback loop and rather than add any new useful information, only serve as
5/ amplifiers which make people *more* anxious, more prone to panic and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As this happens, the feedback loops get shorter, more intense and more self-fulfilling. And then you soon see that negative compounding can be as or even more
6/ destructive than the positive compounding all of us on #FinTwit seek to achieve. And these things feed on our psyches and start an almost invisible thought process that is highly suboptimal but often difficult to detect in our own thinking. A gif makes the point:
7/ One useful trick is to evaluate *other people's tweets* that may seem provocatively negative or poorly sourced or just outright opinion asserted as fact. One of the strange ways our brains work is that the weakness of an argument that we ourselves make is difficult for us
8/ to see as we have often attached powerful emotions to it. But our brains work almost *perfectly* while accessing *other people's* arguments. This has been replicated in many studies that show we are hopelessly biased when trying to estimate our own chances of success or
9/ achievement in business or other pursuits, but we're actually pretty accurate when accessing other people's chances or opinions. So, when you see a particularly inflammatory tweet from someone else, ask: does this makes sense? Is it properly sourced? Does it offer any
10/ factual and easily verifiable evidence? Chances are, it will fail on some or all of these questions. If you do this enough, you'll get in the habit of checking your own thoughts and tweets along similar lines and maybe refrain from posting. I joke that I need these guys 👇🏻
11/ to stop me from posting things I might regret in the future. And that's during NORMAL times. These are NOT normal times, and some restraint might be good for everyone's collective nerves. It's also not terribly helpful to simply tweet:
12/ "DOW LOSES MORE POINTS THAN ANYTIME IN HISTORY" as we all have access to market quotes and my guess is we all know that tidbit. (Putting aside the additional crime of quoting the Dow instead of the broader market in %) or "I HEAR [FILL IN SOME OMINOUS SOUNDING RUMOR]"
13/ that is speculative at best, and usually wrong. I'm NOT saying that posting new information or insights or ideas is bad, it's not, it could be potentially helpful and is the best use of this incredible distributed intelligence platform. Just really think about it and read
14/ the whole thing before posting. Example: Several people here in Greenwich thought that 44 people were admitted to the Greenwich hospital with COVID. When you read the article, you see 44 people were *diagnosed* but only 3 were admitted to the hospital.
15/ Article: greenwichtime.com/news/coronavir… when we are highly focused on a potentially dangerous or perilous threat, we take mental shortcuts that are often misleading to both our brains and the brains of people seeing the information. These errors also negatively compound and can
16/ really screw up our mental models and influence our perceptions to the point were we have "perception filter blindness" to information that contradicts our working assumptions and beliefs. And it is hugely fatiguing on our brains and that also seriously degrades our
17/ decision-making. Finally, remember: America has faced MUCH worse in the past and come through stronger, better and more vibrant than before it faced the crisis. This time is no different. I will never short the American people or their amazing ability to innovate and create
18/ solutions to seemingly horrible problems. Take care of yourself, your family and your friends which in turn will help other's families and friends. Let's get our thinking focused on solving the problem together and this too will pass. Deep breaths led to calm thoughts and
19/ steady our hands and our minds, and that leads to better ideas which lead to better solutions, positive compounding and much better attitudes. Together, we can do it. The gang at @EpsilonTheory theory has said this can be our finest hour, let's make it so.
#StayFrosty
#StayFrosty
