Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing.

Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching.

Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson work for Ritholz Wealth Management.

All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben or any podcast guests are solely their own opinions

and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholz wealth management.

This podcast is for informational purposes only. not be relied on and the

Pondecks of the I made a ton of money and so did you. So here is the lead. It's springtime in the year

2030. You're looking back at the crash of 2020, the devastation and dealt your portfolio and

how you behaved as an investor.

What will you say?

If human nature is any guide, and let's face it, it is, your accounts of what happened will

begin with such words and phrases as clearly, or it was obvious to me that or everybody knew that.

In the future your memory of the crash of 2020 won't be a recollection.

It will be a reconstruction built partly from what is happening now and largely from what you learn later about what hasn't happened yet.

I'm describing hindsight bias, the belief after something happens that we foresaw that it would

occur.

You wrote something about this too and crazy thing that it almost happens immediately too he's talking about in the future

but how many investors are there today that we're talking about how much money they've

had in stocks for the last seven years and now that we have a crash they're all saying well I actually sold in January.

Don't you think it's the case where... Hang on, hang on. You're saying that? I'm not saying that. Are you making that up?

Yeah. No, wait, no wait, hold on hold on you really seeing that? You're saying that people sold in January?

You don't think there's a lot of people bragging about how they sold and how they've been sitting in cash and now they're ready to go?

...