Page 71 - Morgan Housel - The Psychology of Money_ Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness-Harriman House Limited (2020)
P. 71
675,000 Americans died in a single year from a flu pandemic.
COBACOBA
30 separate natural disasters killed at least 400 Americans each.
33 recessions lasted a cumulative 48 years.
The number of forecasters who predicted any of those recessions rounds to
zero.
The stock market fell more than 10% from a recent high at least 102 times.
Stocks lost a third of their value at least 12 times.
Annual inflation exceeded 7% in 20 separate years.
The words “economic pessimism” appeared in newspapers at least 29,000
times, according to Google.
Our standard of living increased 20-fold in these 170 years, but barely a day
went by that lacked tangible reasons for pessimism.
A mindset that can be paranoid and optimistic at the same time is hard to
maintain, because seeing things as black or white takes less effort than
accepting nuance. But you need short-term paranoia to keep you alive long
enough to exploit long-term optimism.
