Intelsense Insights - Weekend Reading

 

Intelsense Insights

I shared some thoughts on ET NOW this week on sectors which look interesting and on the overall market & economy. You can watch it on YouTube or if you prefer reading, below is the link to the transcript.

Interesting sectors to invest in

abhishek basumallick: Can't rule out 5-8-10% corrections over next couple of months; market to be stronger by Diwali: Abhishek Basumallick - The Economic Times “ We cannot rule out some 5-8-10% corrections over the next couple of months but somewhere, close to the end of September-October, we should see better inflation numbers coming in primarily because of base effect. The narrative also will start changing. We are more likely to see a much stronger market by Diwali time.” economictimes.indiatimes.com

Thinking clearly and independently

By definition, we’re blind to what we can’t see. When looking for answers, we’re like the proverbial drunk who only looks for their keys in places where the light is shining. This Spotlight Effect distorts our thinking and limits the ideas we can discover.   Jumping to conclusions limits your ability to discover the truth, because you can’t jump to conclusions outside the spotlight. By law, you can say just about anything. But that’s not the case in practice. There’s a frame around the range of acceptable opinions, which allows for lively debate only within that range. That’s how thought control happens. The assumptions of a culture determine the aperture of mainstream thinking. Knowing that axioms will mold the ultimate shape of an idea, good philosophers tend to critique the premise of an idea—the frame—instead of the conclusion.   F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote The Great Gatsby once said: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” https://perell.com/essay/how-philosophers-think/

Use inversion for better outcomes in life

The Stoics believed that by imagining the worst case scenario ahead of time, they could overcome their fears of negative experiences and make better plans to prevent them. While most people were focused on how they could achieve success, the Stoics also considered how they would manage failure. What would things look like if everything went wrong tomorrow? And what does this tell us about how we should prepare today?   This way of thinking, in which you consider the opposite of what you want, is known as inversion.    Inversion is a powerful thinking tool because it puts a spotlight on errors and roadblocks that are not obvious at first glance. What if the opposite was true? What if I focused on a different side of this situation? Instead of asking how to do something, ask how to not do it. https://jamesclear.com/inversion

How to be happy?

Happiness is your responsibility, not Mother Nature’s. That means you need to curtail your worldly appetites, and instead pursue what truly brings enduring happiness: a faith or life philosophy, family relationships, real friendship, and meaningful work.   You can’t choose how much love you will get, but happiness depends more on how much you give. And what you give your love to matters just as much. To be happy, a person “neither loves what he ought not love, nor fails to love what he ought to love.” Here’s a handy formula to go by: Happy people love people and use things; unhappy people use people and love things.   Happy feelings are evidence of happiness, which is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. Improvement in these areas requires commitment and effort, like anything else that is worthwhile. But if you do the work, you will most definitely see substantial results. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/07/pillars-of-happiness-from-100-lessons-on-how-to-be-happy/670586/

Observe the shift in industry dominance on football jerseys

Sponsoring a football club is about using the world’s most watched sport to promote your brand. Getting your company’s logo on the shirt of a team like Liverpool or Real Madrid means tying your brand to a global icon. And for decades, it’s been a route taken by emerging tech companies, flush with cash to burn and a name to earn.   But these sponsorships actually reveal something about the tech industry as a whole: when you trace the history of these commercial deals across the decades, patterns emerge. Entire sectors of the industry — from cars to consumer tech to gambling websites — seem to jump into the sport at once, signalling their rise to, or the desire to, dominate global markets where football is also part of everyday life.   Japanese consumer electronics brands were among the first tech companies to dive into shirt sponsorship. Their logos adorned the shirts of clubs from England to Italy across the ’80s and ’90s, mirroring the rise of those companies in the wider world.   Believe it or not, Samsung Mobile was a small player in the world of handsets when their deal began with Chelsea in 2005. By the time it ended in 2015, Samsung was the biggest smartphone maker in the world. https://restofworld.org/2022/football-shirt-tech-sponsorship/

Don't play the game of life

While relationships are complex, at their core all healthy fulfilling relationships require genuine mutual affection. Simply put, you should be rooting for the people in your life to succeed, happy if they get a promotion or their kid gets into Harvard. This is next to impossible if you view your life as a competition and the people in it as competitors.   When you view life as a game, you want others to fail — or at least to be slightly less successful than you are. Viewing life as a competition converts friends and family from people you care about to these uneasy, ambiguous relationships where you’re partially rooting for these people…but simultaneously also trying to beat them at the game of life.   You’re a unique individual, with your own strengths and weaknesses, your own goals and preferences. The good life is about trying to live according to your values and make the trade-offs that maximize your happiness. This simply isn’t possible when you abide by what the game values: money, consumption, academic prestige, youth athletic excellence. The moment you enter the game, you’ve surrendered your autonomy and are prioritizing what others deem important. You’re chasing life goals that you had no role in formulating but which now you’re pursuing for the sake of “winning.” https://www.getrichslowly.org/life-is-not-a-game/