Decision Notes · No. 012
You can be right about the market and still make the wrong decision.
An investor can correctly predict that prices will rise. That rents will increase. That a neighbourhood will develop. That interest rates will fall. And still end up with a poor outcome — because being right about the market is only one part of the decision.
I worked with an investor once who was right, years ahead of the broader market, about a specific area’s growth. He saw it before almost anyone else did. But he chose to put his entire portfolio into a single project in that area, with significant leverage, right before a temporary oversupply hit that exact segment. He wasn’t wrong about the location. He was wrong about concentration, timing, and how much exposure was too much.
That’s the part forecasting alone doesn’t cover. Structure, timing, leverage, exit — these are decisions layered on top of a market view, and getting the market view right doesn’t make any of them for you.
This is why I’ve stopped thinking of expertise as simply knowing where the market is going. Plenty of people know that, or believe they do. The harder skill — the one that actually protects capital — is the judgment applied to the specific decision once you think you know.
Have you ever gotten the market right and the decision wrong?
I’ve seen it happen.
