In almost every profession, harder work yields better results. In investing, it often does the exact opposite.

Some thoughts 👇🏻

In almost every professional field, results are a direct function of effort (think of training for a marathon, climbing the corporate ladder, etc.).

In investing, that linear relationship breaks down, creating, in fact, a dangerous psychological trap.

Action bias in investing is the psychological urge to constantly buy, sell, or tweak your portfolio, especially during market volatility, simply to feel in control. To feel as if you are adding value.

It is incredibly addictive to stay chained to a corporate research treadmill because we naturally treat endless deep-dives as a proxy for "doing something," for accomplishment.

We convince ourselves that our technical proficiency and sheer work ethic should logically lead to some kind of investment edge.

But, more often than not, they don’t.

Outperformance is rarely about discovering and decoding a hyper-complex investing idea.

In fact, the absolute best investments are often the most obvious ones, comfortably passing a "90-second hypothesis" test (the format I chose for the introductory chapter of my deep dives).

Actual alpha lies in:

💰 thoughtful position sizing,

⏰ timing entry and exit points,

📈 knowing when to trim,

✅ when to add, and

💤 having the discipline to sit on your hands for a long period of time and DO NOTHING

Hence, outperformance is also an exercise in the accuracy-versus-effort tradeoff, driven by identifying a few vital insights (maybe just one!) that actually matter and yield a (correct) variant perception.

Yet, there is a distinct, critical exception to this 80/20 rule, and it has less to do with security selection and everything to do with investor psychology.

While an understanding of just a few key insights and variables might suffice to find long-term winning bets, this approach completely fails you during a crisis.

When an unexpected event breaks – a market, industry, or company-specific event occurs (such as the recent regulatory shockwaves in the offshore Asian brokerage space last week $TIGR $FUTU) – the immediate price action often triggers a primal human response: cut losses first, think later.

The price action becomes your source of information, which in these event-driven sell-offs may no longer have strong signalling value.

This is exactly where granular, exhausting research FINALLY pays its dividends. To survive a major market shock without getting scared out of a position, you need an intimate, first-hand ownership mindset and a granular understanding of the business model and its competitive landscape.

It is the difference between panicking over headlines and knowing, for instance, that a company like Tiger Brokers has already systematically insulated itself by reducing its mainland China exposure.

"Deep-dive research" may not be what uncovers the initial upside of an obvious investment, but it serves as your ultimate psychological anchor when the market panics.

It grants you the unique sobriety required to measure the exact magnitude and duration of a crisis, allowing you to calmly determine whether a problem is terminal or solvable (and over which times frames).