Learn to blink slowly if the fear of good times creeps up

When markets and portfolios rise as relentlessly as they have lately, the first feeling is not gratitude. It is dread.

- NILESH JASANI

It is the curse of investors who have seen cycles before; you cannot enjoy the climb. Every new high looks like a future correction in disguise. Every rally whispers a reckoning to come. The mind wanders in that silence. You begin to question your own thesis—at times to justify new price levels, at others to support an urge to lock in gains. Long-term holds feel brittle; short-term trades seduce. You read Benjamin Graham on the vanishing margin of safety; then read George Soros on reflexivity. For every conviction you hold, you can find the ghost of a great thinker to support it. And another to take it apart.

As a young analyst, somewhat obsessed with the equational purity of abstraction, I was fascinated by the weak scaffolding under almost every concept in portfolio theory and valuation: Beta, PEG, WACC. Each hides hairline cracks in its own algebra. Most of these rest on a strange mix of untidy math and messy thumb rules. But their inventors were honest about shortcomings and conversations created space for doubt.

One great exception is the Sharpe ratio. This measure of portfolio efficiency—reward versus risk—is treated as gospel in many circles, but masks a subtle flaw. The more often you measure performance, the worse the Sharpe ratio tends to look. Daily ups and downs make things appear more volatile than they really are. And that's the point: volatility isn't just about the asset—it's about how often we choose to look.