Seneca appears distinctly unimpressed by the latest market commentary. He may have a point.
“On Wall Street today lower interest rates sent the market up, inflationary fears sent it down, hopes of economic stimulus pushed it up again, before fears of an overheated economy ultimately sent it down.”
Last summer, I imagined Seneca conducting a portfolio review. A year later, I suspect he would ask less about performance and more about resilience.
The global economy has provided ample material for a Stoic. The IMF describes it as caught in the “crosscurrents of war and technology” while the BIS highlights renewed inflation, strained public finances, financial vulnerabilities and AI exuberance. Enough, perhaps, to make even Seneca silence his market alerts.
Fortunately, the holiday period allows a little reflective leisure (otium). I too have settled for a double espresso macchiato and a determined, if not entirely successful, refusal to inspect the markets every fifteen minutes.
Seneca’s first question would surely be: what depends upon us and what does not? Wars, energy prices, government borrowing and AI valuations do not. Portfolio construction, diversification, liquidity and our own behaviour certainly do. The Stoics championed reason (logos) meaning in this case responding with discipline rather than panic-selling or trend-chasing.
Negative visualisation (praemeditatio malorum) involves rehearsing disappointment before it arrives. Not predicting disaster but asking whether we and our portfolios could withstand it without a panicked change of course.
Then there is detachment from outcomes (apatheia). In a world of constant alerts, the investor’s problem is not too little information but too much. A bad quarter does not make us foolish and a good one does not make us wise.
Perhaps Seneca’s most valuable asset in 2026 would be equanimity (tranquillitas animi) which is the one investment no analyst can price and no correction can take away.
For the remaining weeks of the summer, I shall certainly try to increase my allocation to this valuable asset while resisting the temptation to check every fifteen minutes whether even equanimity itself has outperformed.
