“I’ll give you a hint. Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

There I sat, day after day, week after week, month after month. Eyes fixed to my trading screens, I waited for the investment markets to collapse. Nearly five years had passed into one of the largest monetary policy experiments in human history, and I was ready to capitalize on the impending doom. My personal investment portfolio was largely de-risked. I was positioned conservatively and liquid, immunized from the pending selloff that I and my trusty stable of pundits were expecting. “This was the year; we’re finally going to crash this year,” I thought once again.

Except investment markets didn’t crash. To my surprise, U.S. assets embarked on a massive bull run following the Great Financial Crisis and the unprecedented monetary interventions by the Federal Reserve. The U.S. dollar didn’t collapse; hyperinflation never materialized; the breadlines never formed. “What happened?” I wondered. How could I be so wrong? After all, my favorite experts expected the same.

Thankfully, I tired of waiting for a fate that would not come. I grew bored of the same experts predicting the same doom while underperforming in my investment portfolio. This wasn’t FOMO. Rather, I was finally able to take a step in my intellectual development. I was ready to accept that I could be wrong. I had to rethink my entire approach to investing. Nothing short would do.

Welcome to The Integrating Investor.