Think Like a Matchmaker

The whole point of markets, whether private or public, is allocating money. The purpose is to fund businesses, governments, and other ventures that will be successful...their success is then the investors (or bondholders) success. Unfortunately, this point seems lost in the day to day horse-race style of reporting and game-showization of the entire process...I mean

Though technically, if you did buy the S+P 500 at this point you would have probably done allright...but here's the thing - you only do all-right if you don't panic, if you don't shuffle around your portfolio, if you stick with an allocation that makes sense. And how many chase the dopamine hit of chasing outrageous returns, or can't get over a sunk cost, or just generally overthink things...and end up screwing up.

Because, here's the thing, (and I'm not looking up when the gif is from): the S+P 500 hit 1200 in the late 90s...and it was there in the early 2010's...now it's above 4400 - over time the markets, because it's a reflection of economic growth, innovation, and confidence in a system should return enough to more than warrant our investments into it...but it takes time. So, how may people missed the best days of a year? And how does that effect returns?

So when we are assessing markets, we are looking at how others are making decisions on what to fund and what to skip over. And we are building a memory bank of experiences and thoughts and ideas on how we each make those decisions for ourselves. Do you have a process, ideas, questions? Someone to talk all this over with? I think these decisions impact your future almost as much your health.

But don't make decisions because (essentially) a game-show host...

We all want to be in on the next big thing but how many times - that's human nature we don't want to miss out. So we take risks we can't cover, sometimes with money we don't have. The worst call would be a margin call so rule #1, don't put yourself in that position.

But we gotta chase unicorns, if we didn't we wouldn't have put a man on the moon or had air conditioning, or sliced bread...we were created to dream and reach for the stars (or bread).

But every gold rush has its bumps...so has the rush to digital transformation.

So that's the push and pull, the rock and the hard place, the circle of life we find ourselves in. And there's no easy, cookie-cutter answer - what's right for A may be wrong for B...

And businesses need funding like a car needs fuel; ok, I guess not all cars...but even EVs need something. Keeping track of up and comers is key, that's why I love this new soon-icorn list from Crunchbase

And as these companies become unicorns, getting primped and ready to one day be public -

And in case you haven't noticed, there's been a significant slowdown, effecting all players in the chain, from seed to decacorn -

And, lastly for now, most of us were not born on third base thinking we hit a triple...seriously, "Accelerating transformation through connectivity"???:

So we have to think like a matchmaker between our funds, our assets, our money, our time...and the organizations we allocate it to...but playing with matches a girl can get burned...so don't get stuck for good.