The year 2024 is when Morgan Housel released The Psychology of Money. I believe it should be included in the Mount Rushmore of investment books, particularly for those who say that both history and psychology are essential to invest.
The book Housel includes a chapter that describes the stock market as a game where multiple games that have no connection are played simultaneously. In the words of the book, “Few things matter more with money than understanding your time horizon and not being persuaded by the actions and behaviours of people playing different games than you are.” This simple principle will have a lasting impact on your finances and is why it’s the most critical investment advice I’ve ever received.
The price of a stock is a crucial factor to understand
The cost of a stock at any moment is simply an indication of the consensus value derived by both buyers and sellers. However, many of these participants’ motives and motives for purchasing or selling the stock differ from yours.
For instance, you can have institutional investors as well as retail investors. Students and retired people. Long-term investors who have multi-decade time horizons as well as day traders. People who are short-sellers or remain on the long side. Futures and options traders and people who buy shares of stocks. The list goes on. Housel argues that many of these games have to contradict influence on the price movement of a particular stock. This is why a specific stock price rarely matches its intrinsic value over the long term.
The battle between fear and greed
There are times when the value of a share could be driven by greed. At others, the price may be caused by fear. In the current bear market, that is brutal, which is why you’re seeing confident investors who can sell excellent growth stocks and shift to value because they fear the market and would prefer to have an established company that has a solid balance account and positive free cash flow rather than take the risk of an entity whose worth is based on what it might be worth in the future rather than what it’s worth at the moment. We are seeing new companies that have lots of potential being removed from the market in the short term because of panic.
On the other hand, many value stocks and the oil and gas sector were undervalued in the years between the years 2020 and 2024. Likewise, certain growth stocks were able to see their valuations increase over their actual value. In the years before that, we saw investors take on more risk and weed out companies with little growth. We observed a lack of concern for the geopolitical significance of the energy sector, utilities, and defence stocks, favouring placing bets on the next trend.
Examples from the real world
The idea is that you can achieve clarity by understanding that the majority of capital in the market is playing a different game from you. Once you’ve figured that out, it’s clear why a top company such as Amazon can plummet more than 30% within a few weeks with nothing more than a weak earnings report and the general market volatility.
Let’s go an additional step with an example of a company such as Shopify (NYSE SHOP). Shopify ended the calendar year at less than $400 per share. The company gained momentum throughout the epidemic when e-commerce expanded as the gig economy came into full force; it grew to a market value of $200 billion and a record-breaking value per share of $1,762.92 on the 19th of November 2024. It has since fallen to its current price at around $335 per share.
Shopify’s stock includes a variety of games playing simultaneously. On the one hand, some long-term investors are convinced of Shopify’s capability to grow and add new merchants or have current merchants move to higher-priced plans and then have these merchants earn more which is beneficial to Shopify. Several investors were purchasing Shopify for a short-term “pandemic play” and didn’t focus on the actual business, which is why Shopify shares jumped over the top at a rapid rate in 2024.
Today, another one of these games is being played in the game of getting bored by selling stocks in growth that yield very little or no profits and attempting to cover it with safer names. When an investor is aware of the conflicting strategies, then it becomes a clearer sense of how a company like Shopify can change from boom to collapse. This doesn’t mean that the price movement in either direction is the right one, but it does help understand why it happened in the first place.
Leçons from Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett is an excellent example of an investor who is aware of precisely the game he’s playing. Buffett has stated repeatedly the odds of outperforming the roaring bull market since Buffett does not invest in numerous high-growth stocks and prefers sticking to values. However, he believes he can surpass the performance of the S&P 500 in time, and this has proven to be the case for the last several years.
Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio might appear too conservative, as it includes many banks, insurance companies, oil and gas companies, and consumer staples companies. However, for Buffett, it’s the kind of business he would like to invest in. It’s his business, and he’s playing in the market under his own rules and tolerance for risk.
Investors do not influence the broader market. Therefore, taking control of our investment choices and preferences is the only way to be comfortable and gain direction even when the prices of stocks seem to fluctuate.
The silver liner
For investors who have a long-term view of stocks such as Shopify, the price swing of gains of 400% then 80percent losses over two years could be confusing and frustrating. It can be challenging to determine a fair value for a company when multiple motives are pulling at its stock price. But, there’s an upside.
In the long run, the fundamentals will always triumph. A glance at the share charts of companies that have been successful, such as Nike or Apple, and you’ll realize that selling offs are typical for an investment that is long-term and profitable. The benefit of investing in the long-term is that it’s an investment that has the odds favourable. The market is known to fall more quickly than it rises, but it does go up faster than it loses. The average annual compound growth percentage of S&P 500, which includes dividends that have been invested since 1965, has been about 10.5 per cent. That’s an enormous tailwind for long-term investors to gain by compounding interest.
By investing in businesses you are familiar with and allowing time to be an asset, An investor has more chance of ignoring the market’s noise and focusing on what is essentially the most.
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