Britt Frank, a licensed psychotherapist and trauma expert, has dedicated her career to helping people get unstuck and is the author of “The Science of Stuck.” I recently talked with her on my podcast, Financial Therapy – It’s Not Just About The Money.

Britt describes two types of being stuck. The first is when we really don’t like any of the possible choices. Then the work isn’t about finding a way out; it’s about figuring out which of the unpleasant choices is the least bad and moving forward.

The second is when your nervous system is locked in a state of self-protection. This is about fear and the body’s natural instinct to avoid perceived danger, even if that danger is change itself and the actual change may be positive.

Her tool for moving from stuck to unstuck is what Britt calls the “micro yes.” A micro yes is an action so small, so seemingly insignificant, that it’s easier to do it than to not do it. The goal isn’t to make a big dramatic change but to gently coax the brain into a state where change feels safe.

For example, if you haven’t been able to start saving, begin with one penny. “Take a penny, put it in a box. When you have ten pennies, put them in the bank,” Britt advises. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s the point. The action is so small that it bypasses the brain’s defenses and doesn’t trigger fear or resistance. Over time, these micro steps compound and slowly build momentum.

For making a will, a micro yes might be as simple as opening Google and typing “attorneys near me” without even hitting search. The next day, you hit search. The day after that, you click on a name. Each task is a tiny bit of progress that breaks the cycle of inaction.

The idea that it’s possible to move from feeling stuck to achieving a goal overnight is a myth that helps keep us stuck. If you’ve ever had your vehicle stuck in mud or snow, you know it won’t go from zero to 60 mph in five seconds. The goal is to go from stuck to motion.

Once you start moving, even in the wrong direction, you’re no longer stuck. From there, you can correct your course and get back on track. Britt points out that the key is, “The second you say yes to anything, even the wrong thing, you are no longer stuck.”

Jerry Neumann decided to stop playing this venture capital game and he wrote this resignation letter to explain why. I paid attention to his mental model about investing and risk. I also paid into attention the initial struggle days when we are unsuccessful, the things people don't see.

As a person on the F.I. path, I paid attention to why he quit.

https://investmentmoats.com/money/enlightening-thoughts-venture-capitalists-resignation-letter/

The US is experiencing a historic boom in small-business formation, one that Vice President Kamala Harris seeks to continue with her small-business plan, which includes a $50,000 tax break. A recent Small Business Administration report found that three of the best years for small-business formation in American history have happened under the Biden administration, with a fourth likely to follow.

Roughly 17 million total small businesses have been founded during the current administration, more than half the total. 
It’s more impressive considering the number of small businesses being formed had been relatively flat for decades, even dropping after the Great Recession and taking a decade to recover. But four months into the pandemic, the rate of new small businesses spiked and hasn’t let up, said Tom Sullivan, the US Chamber of Commerce’s VP of small-business policy.

https://sherwood.news/business/small-businesses-booming-historic-growth/

There are always returns to make somewhere

Eagle Point's piece "Digging into Coal" and their note on $NRP.

🫣 Success is not Enough: Capitalism is Brutal 😫
You have a breakthrough product that the whole world suddenly needs. Your revenue grows by hundreds of percent and your free cash flow explodes to the moon…
…and yet, a few years later your stock might be flat or barely higher (see above for Moderna, Zoom, and Pfizer, but there are countless others).
Pfizer’s 10 and 20-year stock CAGR is around 4%, and it has been underperforming the S&P500 over decades. This company is known for Xanax, Zoloft, Lipitor, Viagra, Advil, and COVID19 mRNA vaccines — many blockbusters and household names generating billions! Yet they couldn’t outperform…
Long-term success in the stock market is *hard*.
In competitive sectors of the economy (which isn’t all of them, to be clear!), most of the value created *isn’t* captured and society as a whole benefits from large positive externalities. In other words, if you live in a market economy, there are millions of people working very hard mostly for your benefit.
The very large and very profitable companies at the top of the power law are extremely visible, but there are millions of companies just in the US, and for most of them, it’s a knife fight just to stay in the game and make a bit of profit… Even just among very large publicly traded companies, a small group provides most of the return of the S&P500 over time and most of the rest underperform

The Federal Reserve just cut 50 bps.

How important is this? It depends on your time frame. But I think investors may have overrated the effect of the data point too much. The general idea is you will tend to see either positive or negative results in the short run. If your time horizon is long enough, these rate cuts matter less. Even if they matter, there is also not much you can positively get out of it by timing your decision.

https://investmentmoats.com/money/long-term-investors-overrated-fed-rate-cuts-recessions/

While we do expect the yield to fall, this might still be a good place to park some money.

https://investmentmoats.com/saving-and-investing-my-money/new-6-month-singapore-t-bill-yield-end-september-2024-singaporean-savers/

US housing prices seldom is down. the housing crisis in the 2000 was unique

I bought a little of a short-duration high yield UCITS ETF to see how the performance like about 1.8 years ago.

I am reporting the performance back. This is an accumulating fund which means that it does not pay out a dividend.

The current yield to maturity is about 6.3% but unfortunately I cannot remember the yield to maturity when I bought it. I don't think it is any higher but I could be wrong!

Since it is denominated in USD and USD has weaken, the performance is cut from 14.2% to about 9.5%.

A short duration fund is less sensitive when interest rate rise. A high yield bond is already less sensitive to interest rate. So this explains the better performance.

https://investmentmoats.com/money-management/etf/experience-investing-ishares-short-duration-high-yield-corp-bond-ucits-etf/

Property prices over time. Whether it goes up is a matter of timeframe.

A good summary of what James Shannon of Indus Capital sees in Japan, Korea, India and Vietnam

https://offpisteinvesting.com/jim-shannon-riskreversal-media/

The average investors gamble, are overconfident and anti-skill.

1. On average lose money (they have anti-skill)
2. Trade stocks because gambling is fun.
3. are overconfident about their ability to pick stocks.

What they do?

1. Buy lottery-like stocks: select individual stocks that have above-average risk.
2. Buy similar stocks: select stocks that are correlated with each other.
3. Concentrate: put more weight into a small number of names

Who under diversifies the most?

1. Poorer and less educated investors.
2. Overconfident investors.
3. Investors with stock picking anti-skill.
4. Investors with low math ability.
5. Low IQ investors.

https://www.acadian-asset.com/investment-insights/owenomics/invest-like-the-worst

Quite a well researched video by Kel Vin.

He covers a few areas that novice investors may not realize about a dividend stock. I think people overrate the stability of stocks that distributes dividend too much. They are stable... until their earnings or business take a hit and the market re-rates the companies massively. This means that sometimes you experience the phenomenon of getting 5%, 5%, 5%, 5% and then giving all back by -20%.

Kind of like a covered call or a cash secured put strategy but slower.

There are exceptions though. There are quality companies that maintain their competitive edge or even grow stronger. They have higher return on invested capital which means they are less capital hungry and so they can afford to pay out the dividends and still remain rather strong.

But we should take note that even them will be susceptible to the mature death I mentioned before. Just slower.

Overall, if you hold a portfolio of dividend stocks, the aggregate income is going to be volatile, and if you are planning for income from this portfolio, you will need to understand the nature of this income and have an "income wrapper" around the portfolio to make the income work for you (match your long term spending needs, ensure that the income doesn't exhaust.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHA9Jshm3uM&

Some like to wait for the 50% drawdown. You just wait.

Many believe in cash, don't believe in fixed income. That is ok. Continue not to believe them.