Why X is Worried About Y

Whenever I get lost in the YouTube algorithm (I know it’s a waste of time), I inevitably encounter a video about geopolitics, finance, economics, or culture titled, “Why ‘This Person’ is Worried About ‘This Thing’.”

“This Person” is always someone considered an authority in their field, and “This Thing” is always their field’s crisis du jour. Here’s how it works (these are all made up, by the way).

• Why Wayne Gretzky is Worried About the Low Scoring in the NHL.
• Why Warren Buffett is Worried About the U.S. Fiscal Situation.
• Why Peter Mansbridge is Worried About Canadian Politics.

Finance does it even better when they do this:

• Why the Analyst Who Predicted the Great Financial Crisis and Covid is Worried About Artificial Intelligence.

There are so many problems with these titles and the content they lead you to.

First, “all experts are experts in the way the world used to be.” That quote is courtesy of Paul Graham, a start-up investor, via Barry Ritholtz, one of today’s best finance writers. The rules, the axioms, or the tenets that we know in a particular field, through logic or, for the most part, history, remain the same, but the strategy and tactics vary widely as time goes on.

Let’s use Wayne Gretzky as an example here. He’s one of the greatest to have ever played hockey. But hockey, in its current form, is nothing like the game in his heyday (i.e., the use of data and analytics in decision-making).

Second, worrying is a colossal waste of time. For the millionth time here: no one knows what will happen tomorrow, next week, or next year. Worrying is thinking too much about tomorrow. And we all have enough to worry about. Why do we need to worry about other people’s worries? Stop ingesting this content. It’s bad for you on so many levels.

I know he recently retired, but do you think Warren Buffett cares about the U.S. fiscal situation? He buys companies. Not governments. In his entire investing career, he’s seen businesspeople and businesses outwit, outsmart, and outlast whoever is running things in Washington.

Third, so little of this “content” (quotation marks on purpose) will matter a day, a week, or a month from now. Are Peter Mansbridge’s views about whatever current soundbites are echoing through Canadian politics really that important? Of course they aren’t.

I have no issue with punditry about the past. I love hearing stories about how things panned out the way they did. The reason I love economic history (I still read too much of it) is because when analyzing any current event, there are too many moving parts to consider, and most of those moving parts won’t be known about for years, or even decades.

But punditry about the future is useless. I love Morgan Housel’s book Same as Ever because it encourages you to focus on the constants of human behaviour. The only thing we know about the future is that we humans will probably behave like we did in the past.

I keep thinking about this blog post back in April and that financial reporter who, talking about tariffs, said, “I believe, plausibly, that this is the biggest story of our lives.” I couldn’t help but look at the titles of his forty podcast episodes since then. Only one has a subject line about tariffs. You’d think the biggest story of our lives should warrant daily coverage. You know, kind of like the early days of the pandemic?

Finally, about the finance example above. That analyst predicted nothing. That analyst was lucky. And I’ve already commented about worrying. It’s useless.

I know this post is a bit sour, but these kinds of headlines irk me more than anything else because they prey on our emotions. The result? Fear that leads to bad investment decisions that can cost investors years of future retirement income.