Risk, Optimism and Guardrails
This post has several roots. Some of these have lingered in my thoughts for quite some time while others are quite recent. How do risk and optimism interact? The title of this blog; "Is it safe to go to Town" characterizes this very dichotomy. As a reminder this blog was started during the covid shutdown and its seeds are in the simple dilemma of the risk I would take in walking from our home to one of the shops in the downtown core of the town we live in. Optimistically I would walk to the town square and eat a meal and return home. The risk would be that I would be exposed to covid and become ill. Another kernel is our 401k. Certain stocks or indices increase in value for no other reason other than the markets optimism for a company's future. Recently I came across this podcast with Andrew Ross Sorkin. The video is focused on his latest book about the 1929 stock market crash. The title of the video is...