Same as Ever

Same as Ever is a collection of 23 short stories highlighting timeless human flaws and patterns to help you make better financial and life decisions based on the things that never change instead of trying to predict the future.

Life hangs by a thread, and so does history. That’s Housel’s first assertion. He recounts how, as a teenager, by complete chance, he skipped skiing down a dangerous slope for the second time with two of his friends. They both died in an avalanche. Though hopefully not as drastic, we’ve all experienced moments like this. Split-second decisions shape our lives all the time.

Had the wind been in favor of the British fleet in 1776, George Washington might not have survived the Battle of Long Island. No Washington, no United States, Housel explains. In 1915, mathematician David Hilbert began working on Einstein’s unfinished theory of general relativity for fun. Afraid Hilbert would solve it first, Einstein buckled down and completed it. No competition, no general relativity.

The list of “butterfly effect moments,” tiny occurrences that end up shaping world history or our personal lives dramatically, is endless. Most recently, the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas war keep reminding us: Life is unpredictable, but human behavior isn’t.

No matter what the world will look like in 2050, “people will still respond to greed, fear, opportunity, exploitation, risk, uncertainty, tribal affiliations and social persuasion in the same way,” Housel bets.

That’s why Warren Buffett likes to invest in insurance companies, bubble gum makers, and Heinz Ketchup: People will always want to feel safe, chew gum, and put sauce on their burgers.

When you make decisions and predictions, financial or otherwise, consider human behavior, not specific events.

As an investor in crypto since 2017, I can’t tell you how many narratives I’ve seen take Twitter by storm. For a while it was Bitcoin’s acceptance as an official currency that would “send its price to the moon.” Then it was companies putting it on their balance sheet. Then it was the Lightning Network. Oh, and let’s not forget the mythical Bitcoin ETF. Of course, there were just as many “It’s over” stories. Nearly 500 “Bitcoin Obituaries” have claimed the orange coin is dead over the years. And while no story, good or bad, has yet managed to get Bitcoin to either infinity or zero, narratives like these break statistics all the time. Take investor PlanB‘s stock-to-flow model for predicting Bitcoin’s price. The coin has left the model’s range many times, and yet, investors hold on to it, and the creator keeps updating it. Why? It’s just too good of a narrative. The story is more compelling than the data. Housel points to…