Farewell, 2025

Not counting what you’re reading right now, I wrote 53 posts in 2025. I plan to at least double that next year without flooding you with garbage. One of my colleagues called this thing my soapbox; so be it.

Most of what I’ve written this year has had to do with behaviour. Investors and investment advisors are most often their own worst enemies. I’ll repeat that message forever.

I want to share a few thoughts as we approach 2026. To start what will be my last post of the year, I’m using two epigraphs from Stephen King’s On Writing and one from the movie The Big Short. Here they are.

Honesty is the best policy.

Liars prosper.

Truth is like poetry. And most people…hate poetry.

I love all three quotes. The juxtaposition of the first two is humanity in a nutshell. The third one is the epitome of what makes advice-giving so tough. Especially when it’s advice given for a fee.

When I started writing this, I couldn’t help but think of a post I read long ago. Google helped me. It was this one. The important part of the post?

“Financial advice is the only business where you (the advisor) are better off giving customers what they need versus what they want.”

I know what investors want, but no one can provide it. There is no certainty. There are no accurate forecasts. There is no investment that goes up like the market but never goes down. Could I put together a perfect sales pitch? Maybe. I still hear firms talking about stocks that, to quote Leonardo DiCaprio playing Jordan Belfort, provide “HUGE upside potential with very little downside risk.”

It doesn’t work that way, but some firms and advisors still promote it. And some of them do outrageously well as a result. But only in the short term.

That short-term success is the problem. It reinforces the idea that certainty exists, that someone somewhere has it (or wants to sell it to you), and that if you’re not getting it, you’re missing out.

That belief fuels bad decisions, performance chasing, and disappointment.

I’ve met these investors before. They’ve gone through the ringer. They’ve had four advisors in ten years, each advisor promoted that their past performance would persist (sorry for the alliteration). And without exception the investor grossly underperformed.

It’s why honest advice is unsatisfying. Saying “I don’t know” and “don’t do anything” doesn’t sell in most professions. But that’s the job I’m in. I’m not here to provide you with a false sense of security. I’m here to strip away everything that isn’t important. And most things aren’t important (lookup Sturgeon’s Law, if you’d be so kind).

I plan to write more about current events next year, strictly to comment on how little they matter to good investors. Every year brings new villains, saviours, crises, and once-in-a-lifetime moments. And it always ends the same way.

Markets have enough commentators. Investors need better filters. If you’re looking for predictions, you know where to find them. If you’re looking for honesty, perspective, and fewer self-inflicted wounds, that’s what I’ll keep writing about. True is like poetry, but I promise I won’t get poetic.