In this monologue, Mark Moss argues that most investors perform poorly because human emotions—pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain—drive systematic biases such as recency bias, normalcy bias, and the tendency to buy high and sell low. He contrasts traditional value investing, epitomized by Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham’s "Intelligent Investor," with a rising wave of ideological investing where investors make decisions based on political, cultural, or celebrity influences (e.g., Sydney Sweeney’s endorsement of American Eagle Jeans, Budweiser’s partnership with Dylan Mulvaney). Moss urges listeners to set personal feelings aside and invest based on the world as it actually is, not as they wish it to be. He then shifts to macro‑economic policy, describing the U.S. government’s massive $8 trillion re‑industrialization push and a $300 billion commitment to domestic critical‑minerals mining, refining, and related infrastructure. He frames tariffs as both harmful to import‑dependent businesses and beneficial for fostering a wartime‑style, self‑sufficient economy. The overall message is to recognize emotional and ideological distortions, understand the policy landscape, and seek opportunities—especially in critical‑minerals sectors—while maintaining an objective, reality‑based investment approach.
Chapters
I've often said that humans are just terrible investors because we're humans and we're emotional. And so humans, from like, if you understand like marketing or psychology, really humans are motivated by two things. That's it. Two things. And those two things are wanting to get more pleasure and wanting to get away from pain. The carrot or the stick. Right. The carrot or the stick. Um, and so we want more carrot and we want less stick. Um, and the problem with that when it comes to investing is that one, uh, we want pleasure. So when we see assets making new all-time highs and new all-time highs and new all-time highs, we want to buy it. Everyone, everyone's getting rich but me. It's going to keep going. And also we suffer from a lot of biases. It's super important to understand that we all have biases. And so we just have to understand that we have those. And so one of the ones that we suffer from as humans is recency bias or normalcy bias. So whatever has been recently happening will continue. Well, Bitcoin's been crashing. It's going to just keep crashing. Just because that's what's been happening recently doesn't mean that will be continuing to happen. Or we have normalcy bias. Hey, this is the way it always works. This is what's normal. Well, that's a bias. So, so number one, uh, when asset prices are going up, we want it. Um, and then so we buy the top. And then because we want to get away from pain, as soon as the price starts going down, we want out. Oh my gosh, it's too painful. I'm watching my portfolio drop. I'm out. But then that forces us to buy high and sell low, which is of course how we're not supposed to work. We're supposed to buy low and sell high. Um, so, so that, that's a problem. The other thing is that, um, especially today, probably, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I don't know the answer to this, but it seems like maybe more than ever, people are more ideologically driven. And, uh, one of my friends, Jeff Park, he wrote this article. I think it was last September. It was really good. And he said the, the, I think he called it the end or the death or the end of the value investor, or what did he say? The end of the, yeah, the, the end of the Intelligent Investor. So, so Warren Buffett is sort of like the value investor, meaning he buys deep value. He doesn't buy like venture capital stocks. He doesn't buy gold or Bitcoin. He buys, uh, value-based companies. So these are companies that have what he calls capital-efficient business models. Um, and so he's like a value investor and he learned that from Benjamin Graham. Benjamin Graham wrote a book called The Intelligent Investor. It's one of the most widely read sort of cited books. Um, I don't think it's super relevant today, but it's still good to understand that value-based lens. Uh, but he said, end of the intelligent investor, the rise of the ideological investor. So today people aren't buying things based off of value. They don't even know what value is. They're buying things ideologically. So they're buying, um, so for example, like Sydney Sweeney did the post about like good jeans or whatever, right? And American Eagle Jeans stock went through the roof. Why? Because Sydney Sweeney said good jeans. And then you have like Budweiser did a thing with Dylan Mulvaney and then like their stock went through the floor. But what changed in their business model? So you have people buying ideologically driven. And so it's just super important to just be aware of these things so that we can learn to navigate around these for ourselves. So like, anyway, back to what Brit and I were talking about. However you feel about Trump, however you feel about America, however you feel about tariffs, however you feel about any of those things, just, just put your feelings to the side for a minute and just try to think about this like logically. And so as investors, I do believe, I'm actually a firm believer in investing and into building the world that we want. But I'm also believing that I should invest in the world as it is and not as I wish it was. So I may hate Trump, or I may hate tariffs, or I may hate the US, or I might hate, um, gold, or I may hate Bitcoin, or I may hate AI because it's going to take everybody's job, or whatever. But like, we also have to understand the world as it is. Now, there's nuance to this. I remember, uh, I think it was around 2020, 2021, as I was writing my financial newsletter, I made like a public statement like, we're not going to invest into China anymore. Like, China had been a really good market. A lot of times you want to invest into, like, emerging markets, but I'm like, we're just not going to invest in China anymore. Like, there's, there's a, there's 10 million places for me to put my money. Why would I put it there? So, you know, there's nuance to this. But anyway, what a time to be alive. We have, uh, whatever you think about them, the tariffs in many ways are, um, they're, well, they're good and bad at the same time. Things can be good and bad at the same time. I have many friends that run businesses that rely on imports, and their business are getting crushed. It's been tough for them, um, so it's bad for them. It's good for other reasons, but what it is doing specifically is it's creating a shift in the way that the money is being spent, the industries that are being built up. And specifically, back to this, because of the shift to, uh, bring tariffs, reindustrialize the U.S. base, there is $8 trillion that's been committed to re-industrializing the U.S. The U.S. government has made it a national security imperative to rebuild a lot of our manufacturing base, specifically around what they've deemed now a whole list of critical minerals— silver, gold, nickel, lithium, etc. And not just the minerals themselves, but mining them in the U.S., but also refining them in the U.S., for example. And what they're doing is just like they did in, um, You know, after World War II, you create this wartime economy, and just no different than every other country does. A lot of people think like, I don't like tariffs, well, they'll never work. Well, they have for all of humanity. Every nation has tariffs, but also what other nations do, and the reason why tariffs are good and bad, but one reason why they're good is because every nation— not every nation, a lot of, uh, dominant nations in the world, um, invest into their own economies. So China specifically weaponizes their economy, they subsidize like cheap manufacturing, um, and so the US is, is doing that, right? So, but this wartime economy, so they've set aside hundreds of billions of dollars, the US government, to their— they're— because the US is still somewhat quasi-capitalistic, not quite totally socialistic, but, um, They're not just going to, uh, invest into the companies. They're not going to own the companies. They're going to give them as loans, but they have like hundreds of billions of dollars of money that's going to go to like loans for these like companies that are going to create these, these critical minerals, energy infrastructure, military infrastructure. And so you have like this very small little sector that's not even really around in the US right now, getting hundreds of billions of dollars shoved into it. And like, what do you think happens? Probably going to grow pretty fast. Um, so anyway, this little rant that I have, this, as I'm thinking though, we have to just be aware of these things and forget what we think as good and bad. Things are good and bad at the same time. Sure, don't invest against your morals, but don't only invest on your morals. Um, and learn to think, learn to think through things more, um, objectively, where something like, man, I'm not really a big fan of tariffs or Trump or MAGA or whatever, but like, I do recognize the US government's going to spend $300 billion to build up the refining industry. So, you know, maybe I should think about some of these critical minerals, things like that. All right, that's my little rant. Um,
