📖David Swensen

Market Cycles Awareness

🌿 Intermediate★★★★★

Understand where you are in the market cycle.

💬

Markets move in cycles driven by human emotion. Understanding where you are in the cycle helps you prepare for what comes next and position accordingly.

— Pioneering Portfolio Management,2000

🏠 Everyday Analogy

Emotions in markets are like steering on a wet road: the harder you jerk the wheel, the more likely you lose control. Rules keep decisions stable.

📖 Core Interpretation

David Swensen highlights that many investment mistakes are psychological, not analytical. Managing behavior under stress is as important as finding ideas.
💎 Key Insight:Cycle awareness improves investment timing.

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❓ Why It Matters

In volatile markets, fear and greed push investors to buy high and sell low. A behavioral framework reduces avoidable, self-inflicted errors.

🎯 How to Practice

Pre-write decision rules, slow down trades during stress, and separate market emotion from business facts before adjusting positions.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Following crowd emotion at extremes
Mistaking confidence for certainty
Forcing trades to quickly recover losses

📚 Case Studies

1
Staying the Course in the Global Financial Crisis (2008)
Equities, REITs, and commodities plunged over 40% while Treasuries and high‑quality bonds rallied, severely testing diversified portfolios.
✨ Outcome:Maintained target allocations and rebalanced into falling assets, leading to strong gains as markets recovered over the following years.
2
Dot‑Com Bust and Diversified Equity Exposure (2000)
Tech and growth stocks collapsed after the late‑1990s bubble, while broad value, international, and small‑cap exposures fared better.
✨ Outcome:Avoided concentrated tech bets, kept diversified long‑term allocations, and benefited as non‑bubble equities and later markets recovered.

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