you need short-term paranoia to keep you alive long enough to exploit long-term optimism. - Morgan Housel

The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving.

A plan is only useful if it can survive reality. And a future filled with unknowns is everyone’s reality.

Here’s the most important part of this story: The Russell 3000 has increased more than 73-fold since 1980. That is a spectacular return. That is success. Forty percent of the companies in the index were effectively failures. But the 7% of components that performed extremely well were more than enough to offset the duds.