They just control what you hear. A good salesperson doesn't mislead you — they shape the conversation so the product fits your exact problems. They listen for what you care about, then talk directly to that. Everything else fades into the background. You walk away feeling like it was made for you. And the scariest part? You can't close your ears. You can close a tab. You can ignore an ad. But when someone is in front of you, speaking your language, addressing your pain points — your brain is already buying in before you've made a decision. That's not manipulation. That's just how sales works at its best. The real question is: are you aware of it when it's happening to you?

"Every time you buy, there's a guy on the other side laughing at you." One of my mentors told me this. When you buy a stock, someone sold it to you. When you buy a house, someone sold it to you. When you sign a lease, someone drafted those terms. Every transaction has two sides, and at least one person on the other side knows something you don't. That's not a reason to never buy anything. That's a reason to stop being the person who doesn't know. The uncomfortable reality is that most of us enter deals — investments, contracts, negotiations — with way less information than the other side. We don't know the asset's history. We don't know why they're selling. We don't know what the numbers actually mean. And we convince ourselves that's fine because the deal "feels right" or someone we trust said it was good. That's when the other guy is laughing. The shift happens when you start doing the work before the deal. Reading the actual documents. Asking uncomfortable questions. Understanding what you own and why. Not just trusting the pitch. There's a version of you that always ends up on the informed side of a transaction. That version doesn't get laughed at. Start becoming that person now.

Iran cut off its energy exports when the war started. Prices barely moved. Shelves are stocked. People aren't panicking. Here's the thing that keeps nagging at me though: oil tankers travel at 15 mph. The physical shortage hasn't even arrived yet. Those last pre-war shipments are still at sea. In the meantime, governments are quietly drawing down emergency stockpiles and managing speculator sentiment so markets don't freak out. Those are both one-time moves. When the reserves are gone and the final tankers dock, you're probably looking at demand destruction. Airlines cutting routes, farms pulling back, manufacturing slowing. Not temporarily. The energy infrastructure that got destroyed isn't coming back quickly. Max Fisher put out a breakdown on this worth watching. His take is that what we're seeing right now is a lag, not stability, and that heating shortages and inflation that sticks around for years is a realistic outcome.

A week ago, I was in New York and I met up with a friend from Wall Street. I asked him: "Is it better to be diversified, or to be focused on one investment?" This was his answer: He said, "In terms of the stock market, only indiots invest in etfs." ETFs are for people who don't have the time or the energy to care, unfortunately, that makes most investors idiots. The only investors who make money in the stock market are those who handpick their stocks. Sure, they might lose, but all it takes is one big win. However, if you zoom out a little bit. The clients with the highest networth have diversified types of investments. No one only invests in stocks. Most of pieces of bonds, real estate, private lending, and more. So diversification is important, but it depends on your scope.

Your world is too noisy. Showers that were supposed to be just the noise of the water now include waterproof speakers. Meals that were supposed to help you live in the moment now include Youtube videos. Even the moments before you fall asleep at night are now filled with doomscrolling on social media. You need to quiet your world down, because these moments are when you produce the greatest ideas you will ever have.