“Everything is now connected to investing. It’s a weird time to be an investor. Isn’t that the best time when it’s weird? It’s the best time ever to be an investor. If you can be weird, it’s like New York in the Seventies. This is the time to strut your stuff.” – Howard Lindzon*
The quote above comes at the end of a conversation between Howard and Dan McMurtie (@supermagtu) of Tyro Partners. If you want to understand the markets today you should listen to the whole thing. It’s not an exaggeration to say that investing itself has been completely been upended over the past decade (or so).
When the GameStop, or memestock, phenomenon went wide earlier this year it was easy to argue that the whole thing was a mania that would blow over. But it hasn’t. These stocks have seen a rebound in price and interest. Every traditional finance text would argue that shouldn’t happen. (Leaving crypto out of this for now.)
Ben Carlson at A Wealth of Common Sense wrote about this topic yesterday. Ben argues that the Internet has broken our brains when it comes not to investing but other stuff as well. He writes:
The problem is our brains were not built for the Internet. We’re not hardwired to deal with the constant stream of thoughts, opinions, pictures and news stories. Weird things are going to happen because of it…You don’t have to like it and you don’t have to agree with it but the Internet has changed investing for good.
The markets can collectively humble us all, including the memestock and cryptocurrency crowd. You will likely even read stuff in the near future calling all of this a mass delusion. But something has changed in markets (and society). You can bemoan it, but you can’t ignore it.
*You can listen to the whole conversation here:
