Optimists Win

School is about to begin, well sort of. For my kids, "school" means a tutoring pod (+ virtual class) from 8am-12pm, lunch, and some sort of afternoon activity either at home with a parent or at a sports camp. My wife and I will be juggling the drop offs and pickups, the soccer practice, the chaos, while cobbling together 25-40 hours of work per week.

It's a huge adjustment in a year of huge adjustments. 

Will this set the kids back? Short term or long term? Set them back from ... what? Something normal?

Will the Pandemic be like the Great Depression -- a generation-defining event that will always explain why people are the way they are? Will "they grew up in the Pandemic" mean something that everyone understands innately from now on? Will hygiene be the new frugality, the sanitized hand replacing the dust bowl? 

I've been thinking about school as an institution and how it's struggling to adjust, almost collapsing, being replaced by new experiments. In our area, private companies are stepping in to provide the service -- a combination of child care and education -- that public schools have opted out of. Companies and organizations and proactive people are innovating. 

The public schools, with the teachers and the tax money and the mandate, should be innovating too. Why aren't they? Institutional decay and bureaucracy are killers. Someday we might realize we don't want (or need) these old structures. Why pay for them when they won't open? I know there are reasons, but still. If a private organization can remodel space, establish guidelines, and provide the service ... well they have proved that it can be done. That's great. But by comparison, many public schools seem stuck, afraid, and lacking imagination and innovation.

New structures are fixing problems. Making new choices.

There's a personal lesson here too, as people deal with the pandemic with varying degrees of optimism. 

I am more and more convinced, as I near age 45, that optimists win. The dictionary says an optimist is a person who tends to be hopeful and confident about the future or the success of something. 

Eventually, even in a pandemic, there will be a future. Mostly created by optimists. 

Optimists make choices that they hope will lead to future success. I like to think we've done that in my family. We moved. It was a pain. We were hopeful. It worked. 

I know someone right now that seems stuck. Life dealt a difficult hand, at a bad time. It sucks. But I think it's time for this person to ask, what would an optimist do?

Here's where I jump to investing. It's easier to succeed at investing as an optimist. 

Here's a recent example. I recently bought BigCommerce (BIGC) the day of their IPO. BIGC got buzz because they enable businesses to launch and scale e-commerce channels. Shopify is a rival, and Shopify is doing great in this environment. So I thought -- shouldn't BIGC also do well in this environment, and could an early purchase of this stock be a long term winner?  

Yes, risks. Skepticism. When Google went public, financial TV openly questioned the price as a replay of the internet stock bubble. I didn't buy. Facebook was a huge IPO. Didn't buy. Of course, buying both on the day of the IPO and hanging on would've been a good move.

BIGC has risks, skeptics. One could say it's a terrible time to buy new positions, with the market up so strongly in the past few months. 

There are many reasons not to do something. 

Optimism is underrated. Maybe that's Buffett's real secret sauce. See an opportunity and be optimistic. Make a choice. If it doesn't work out, try again. Nothing ventured nothing gained. Etc.

What I'm Watching: Just finished Perry Mason. Moving on to Homeland.

What I'm Reading: Parenting Outside the Lines by Meghan Leahy.

Stoic / Mindful Thought: There is a space between thoughts / emotions and actions. Wise people spend a lot of time in that space.

Optimists leave that space more hopeful than when they entered.