Link to Cole's article here: https://inscriptioncapital.com/insights/2021/9/22/why-investing-is-like-dietingIf you want to lose weight, it’s relatively simple: Burn more calories than you consume. All else equal, if you follow this formula, you’ll lose weight. Yet, as we all very well know, doing this day in and day out is anything but easy. Life, and more especially our behavior, gets in the way. This behavioral problem is of course well known and regularly exploited by the dieting industry, which is keen to provide all sorts of products and services promising an easy fix. So you get the endless fads. The gurus. The charlatans there to serve you up an easy way out. Do this craze diet. Take this pill. Buy my kale-watermelon-chia seed-detox-shake-system for only twenty-seven easy payments of $19.99! Who needs discipline when you can lose those pounds by that weekend pool party? All charge cards accepted.We’re our own worst enemy. We know what we should do, but we don’t do it. Consequently, there are a thousand different dieting books, trends, and gimmicks that we just can’t seem to get enough of. Maybe this new chia seed shake system will let me eat those cookies, keep all my horrible habits, and still fit into those jeans I’ve been avoiding. Take my money! Deep down though I think we all know if you burn more calories than you consume you’ll lose weight. The concept is easy. It’s the behavior that’s the problem. And boy do companies love to profit off our bad behavior. So it is with investing. We know, based on rigorous academic research what works over the long term. Yet, just like dieting, there are thousands of books, blogs, and “strategies” on investing—most of them offering a new get-rich-quick scheme. But oh would we be so lucky if it was just books being hawked! No, the more disturbing reality is that it’s an entire industry, set up like a sea monster with hundreds of ever-growing, uncontrollable tentacles designed to cash in on our innately poor behavior and biases at the expense of our financial well being. It’s asset managers creating whatever funds they think can be sold to meet a current fad; it’s cable news shows and magazines constantly bombarding viewers with tales of greed, followed by fear; it’s unscrupulous brokers and advisors earning commissions on products they sell you, no matter if they’re appropriate or not; and, yes, it’s all the “experts” making forecasts that never pan out (“My 2020 outlook obviously didn’t account for Covid.”). For the most part, the entire investment industry is designed to get you to do things (i.e., buy and sell), and to do them regularly. Because it’s not about earning you sufficient long-term returns, but rather raking in as much profit as possible.