The Dark Horse (Lesson from the Stock Market)

Lesson from the Stock market


It is easy to look at situations in retrospect, and it usually lures us into thinking that the pieces were meant to come together like a puzzle, but it is the exact opposite. Like Steve Jobs said, "Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."


The dark horses are similar to under-valued stocks. Let's look at Capitec (JSE: CPI in 2000 compared to 2021) or Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN in 1997 compared to 2021); many stocks fit this comparison. One lesson I got from their exponential rise is that the majority and its analysts are always wrong. Paul Rulkens said in his Ted Talk something like "to be a high performer and achieve extraordinary results, you have to think outside the box/boundaries, defy the best practices and norms", that is, do daring things and keep at it.


The stock price (if I may say your wage/salary) is often a wrong indicator of  actual intrinsic value. I learnt that big companies have big secrets, e.g. Google and their Pagerank algorithm. Success is mostly certain if you know your worth and have a clear understanding of your market/customer, like the aforementioned companies.


Remember! Once you reach the stars, only reward those who stuck with you through your volatile highs and lows as a penny stock; in this case, a cog in a big company wheel. Reward those who understood your intrinsic value when others chased blue chips and abo too-big-to-fail. Don't be swayed or discouraged by not being part of the big boys club like the JSE Top 40; sometimes, you are just better than that, and you may end up going straight to the NYSE.


Trust that your dots will, in the future connect. So forget about mimesis and the wisdom of crowds.

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