Dwight Eisenhower ate a hamburger for lunch on September 23, 1955. Later that evening he complained of chest pain and told his wife the onions gave him heartburn. Then he began to panic. The president was having a massive heart attack. It could easily have killed him. If it had, Eisenhower would have joined more than seven hundred thousand Americans who died of heart disease that year.

But since then with advancement of healthcare, the age-adjusted death rate per capita from heart disease has declined more than 70 percent since the 1950s, according to the National Institutes of Health. Had the rate not declined since 1950s, twenty-five million more Americans would have died from heart disease in last 70 years. So cutting the fatality rate by 70 percent led to a massive number of lives saved that is hard to comprehend – Twenty-five million Lives!

Why are we not shouting in the streets about how incredible this is and building statues for cardiologists? – Because the improvement happened too slowly for anyone to notice. The average annual decline in heart disease mortality between 1950 and 2014 was (just) 1.5 percent per year.

If the headlines read ‘Heart Disease rate decline 1.5% last year’, you would yawn and move on. But this tiny number saved Twenty-five million Lives. Compounding takes a while but cannot ignore it.

Healthcare has interesting compounding history. Historian David Wooton says it took 200 years for discovering to the medical acceptance that germs cause disease, another 30 years to discover antisepsis and another 60 years to research and put penicillin into the use.

Compounding has always been boring and long term process.

Remember the race of a hare and a tortoise, even in real life tortoise would win just because he is steady and advancing to the goal. While the hare runs but often gets distracted with surroundings and stops its journey.

Millions of examples have been given and thousands of time it has been experienced that Investors those who sail through volatile time in market, emerges as very successful investors. Purpose of an SIP is only to keep investment journey ongoing even in most negative market where it becomes easy and automatic to purchase units at lower cost. If investors breaks this continuity, the whole purpose of SIP gets defeated.

In mid-2010, California was hit with an epic drought. Drought remained for 6 years. Then 2017 came dropping a preposterous amount of moisture. Parts of Lake Tahoe received more than sixty-five feet of snow in a few months. The 6-year drought was declared over.

Local residents rejoiced. But it backfired in an unexpected way.

Record rain in 2017 led to record vegetation growth that summer. It was called a superbloom, and it caused even desert towns to be covered in green.

A dry 2018 meant all that vegetation dried and became dry brushwood. That led to some of the biggest wildfires California had ever seen. So record rain directly led to record fires.

What people cheered as drought over brought a scary wildfire.

The 50 years period prior to 1960 was a period of scientific optimism. The world has gone from horse and buggy to rockets, and from bloodletting to robotic surgeries to organ transplants.

This advancement caused a push among economists to try to eradicate the curse of recessions. If we could launch intercontinental ballistic missiles and walk on the moon, surely we could prevent two quarters of negative GDP growth.

However, this gives birth to Destabilization.

• When an economy is stable, people get optimistic.
• When people get optimistic, they go into debt.
• When they go into debt, the economy becomes unstable.

Investors often argue and postpone their investment citing unstable market. They often seek stability whether market is volatile or political disruptions happen. Assuming stability from equity market is like childish demand which is fundamentally not possible. In order to be correct in this judgement, investors often start predicting market and gets fooled by randomness.

Bring stability to market is not in anyone’s control. But managing Inherent behavior of market is only task to ride through this volatility.

In his 1946 story ‘On Exactitude in Science’, Jorge Luis Borges described an ancient empire obsessed with creating the perfect map. Their ambition led them to create a map so detailed it matched the empire on a one-to-one scale. Fields were covered with fields, cities with cities, until the entire landscape lay beneath a colossal map.

But this pursuit of precision came at a cost. Its citizens realized that such a map offered no insight. It merely duplicated reality what they already know. Resources were diverted from vital needs to maintain the map, infrastructure crumbled, and the empire eventually collapsed. Over time, the map itself began to disintegrate. The empire’s obsession with complete accuracy of the map — eventually vanished.

This story isn’t just a philosophical metaphor; it’s a cautionary tale. This is a subtle point that we often fall into the delusion that more information guarantees to better decisions

Many of us scroll endlessly through Maps, rotate streets, zoom into neighborhoods, and still feel unsure. We shortlist a hotel online instinctively like one option, yet spend hours reading reviews and watching videos, only to finally choose the same hotel we liked in the first place. The additional information rarely changes the decision, it only consumes time and confidence.

Daniel J. Boorstin, an American historian has put it right in his book perfectly, “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.”

If you want to punish your enemy, Give Him Information

In investing, gathering information, and considering it as research can be costly. Endless data, research reports, bombarding by news data, and market noise often distract more than they guide. Merely zooming in and out of past performance data is not research, it is an illusion of knowledge, which is worthless.

Advanced investing is not colorful graphs and charts but understanding advance concepts of behavioral investing.

Historian Will Durant once said, “Logic is an invention of man and may be ignored by the universe.” The world is driven by forces that cannot be measured.

Robert McNamara was hired by Henry Ford II to help turn Ford Motors around after World War II and needed someone to run business as an operations science, driven by the truth of statistics.

Later, McNamara took that skill to Washington when he became Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. He decided that everything be quantified, with daily, weekly; and monthly charts tracking the progress of every imaginable wartime statistic.

McNamara’s strategy of statistics worked at Ford had but had flaw when he applied the same at the Department of Defense. In a conversation, Edward Lansdale, head of special operations at the Pentagon, said “Something is missing.”

“What?” McNamara asked.

“The feelings of the Vietnamese people,” Lansdale replied.

That feeling couldn’t reduce that to a statistic or a chart. This was a central issue with managing the Vietnam War. The difference between battle statistics brought to Washington and the feelings among those involved were million miles apart.

Ho Chi Minh once put it more bluntly, allegedly stating: “You will kill ten of us, and we will kill one of you, but it is you who will tire first.”

Decisions aren’t made on a spreadsheet

Many time a lot of things don’t make any sense. The numbers don’t add up, the explanations are full of holes. And yet they keep happening. Because decisions aren’t made on a spreadsheet, where you just add up the numbers and a clear answer pops out. There’s a human element that’s hard to quantify and explain.

By now some must have taken the idea how does this story relate to investing. Brain initiates the idea of investment, churns all the numbers, takes loads of information, gets cozy with colorful charts but in the end, it sends it to heart to decide with emotions and sentiments. That is the reason for many investors for not having successful investment journey. Investment has always been a game for those who are fundamentally strong with their behavior.

Wise investor don’t get immersed in past data or colorful charts. Their belief system revolves around managing behavior and handholding through their investment journey.

In 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, Eluid Kipchoge, World’s best marathon runner won Gold medal in Marathon. After the run, he was in a staging room with two other runners – Bashir Abdi from Belgium and Abdi Nageeye of the Netherlands— all were waiting to receive their Olympic medals after the marathon race, which Kipchoge won for the second time.

Logistics of the awards ceremony meant the runners would have to wait for several hours in a cramped, dull room with nothing to do but sit. Abdi and Nageeye later explained that they did what anyone else would do they pulled out their cell phones, found a Wi-Fi network, and scrolled social media.

Kipchoge didn’t. He just sat there, staring at the wall, in perfect silence and contentment.

“He was not Human”, Abdi joked. Abdi meant how can a person stare at wall for hours?

Some successful people with unique minds are full package. They do their task so well that we admire them and we wouldn’t see ourselves thinking of it.

Elon Musk is that ‘Wild Mind’. What kind of person is he to take on with GM, Ford, NASA at the same time? An utter Maniac.

Steve Jobs was also that ‘Wild Mind’. He not only changed technology, he actually changed future of everything.

And many more such minds…

Our normal constraints don’t apply to these people. They are determined, optimistic don’t take “NO” for an answer, and relentlessly confident in their own abilities.

Some Investors are Wild Minds. They generate extraordinarily high investment returns, but majority investors hustle in uncertainty. Even a slightest mind-set change can help investors at large extent. ‘Wild Mind’ Investors are extremely clear goal based investors, not getting into trap of obligations, staying away from gossips, tips and noise..

Better to keep ourselves stay focused. Returns are not generated through transaction but through consistency in behavior.

Between 1900 to 1926, American escapologist, and stunt performer Harry Houdini was well known for his escape acts. He amplified his acts to include spectacular and dangerous escapes which involved freeing himself from ropes and chains, escaping from straitjackets or submerged underwater.

Harry Houdini was an amateur boxer and told crowds he could withstand any man’s punch with barely a flinch. He used to invite the strongest man in the audience onstage and ask him to punch him in the stomach as hard as he could.

After a show in 1926 Houdini invited a group of students backstage to meet him. One guy named Gordon Whitehead, walked up and started punching Houdini in the stomach without warning.

Whitehead didn’t mean any harm. He thought he was just re-creating the same trick he had just seen Houdini perform.

But Houdini wasn’t prepared to be punched like he would be onstage. He wasn’t flexing his solar plexus, steadying his stance, and holding his breath like he normally would before the trick. Whitehead caught him off guard.

The next day Houdini woke up doubled over in pain. His appendix was ruptured, almost certainly from Whitehead’s punches… And then Harry Houdini died.

He was probably the most talented person in history at surviving big risks. Tie him up in chains and throw him into a river? No problem. Bury him alive in sand? No issue, he could escape in seconds— because he had a plan.

But a little jab from a student that he didn’t see coming and wasn’t prepared for? That was the biggest risk.

Investment is all about planning and keeping in check what kind of risk we are looking for. If we deviate at all from our path and market catches us off guard, our investment is the immediate sufferer.

Investment is all about plan, execute and review. We would rather earn less returns but not let entire portfolio suffer because of unnecessary adventures.

Back in 1915, Passenger Shipping companies were struggling to stay afloat, so every penny counted. During that time Captain William Turner was in charge of the massive steamship RMS Lusitania, which regularly sailed between New York and Liverpool, carrying passengers across the Atlantic. During one sail in May, Turner made a small but important decision: he shut down the ship’s fourth boiler room for this particular trip to save on fuel and cut costs.

At first glance, it seemed like a smart move. It saved fuel, helped the company’s bottom line, and only caused a one-day delay in arrival—a minor delay compared to the money saved. No one thought it would matter much. After all, a single day didn’t seem like a big deal for such a huge ship.

This small action triggered huge consequences. That one-day delay meant the Lusitania ended up sailing right into the path of a German submarine, U-20, in the Celtic Sea. On May 7, 1915, without warning, the submarine fired a torpedo that struck the Lusitania. The ship sank fast, taking nearly 1,200 innocent lives.

The tragedy shocked people around the world, especially in the United States. Until that point, the U.S. had tried to stay neutral in World War I, but the attack on a civilian passenger ship stirred strong public outrage. The sinking of the Lusitania became one of the most powerful reasons the U.S. decided to join the war, forever changing global history.

Turning Off a boiler = One Day Delay = Coming right in way of a German Submarine

Small Actions = Big Impact

The above is a tragic example but point to ponder that all big impact event must occur with a small single decision that shape future. In case of investments, investors take many small decisions which leads to bigger financial impact. ‘Waiting for market to correct’, ‘Taking investment decisions from gossips’, ‘Investing under obligation’ etc. are small decisions but they amplify in future. It is long time gone when investors realize that they have taken wrong decisions and now nowhere to return.

Actually, no actions are perfect but one need to keep correcting the course in form of Portfolio reviews as time arise.