You know, there are very few “best investing book” lists that include Douglas Adams’ 1979 classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I can think of two primary reasons for this:
And it’s a crying shame because it turns out that, among other pieces of hidden investment wisdom (or at least things that I’m going to torture thoroughly enough that they sound like investment wisdom) is embedded a creature with what I believe is the perfect genetic make up to be a great investor.
For those of you who have read The Hitchhiker’s Guide, you’re certainly all wondering the exact same thing:
Surely you’re not talking about Ford Prefect.
No, absolutely not. Ford Prefect’s code of ethics more or less boiled down to "never buy your own drinks." Nor am I thinking of Arthur Dent, who nearly caused the annihilation of the human race because he so craved a cup of tea.
No, I’m talking about another character, referenced only briefly and even then somewhat insultingly.
I am, of course, referring to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. This beast assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you. "Daft as a brush, but very, very ravenous."
Oh sure, there are other great investing lessons in The Hitchhiker’s Guide, including the fact that Douglas Adams seems to have predicted the smartphone by more than 20 years (but more importantly that the cover of his version of this Smartphone—which prevented people from having to carry several inconveniently large buildings around with them—had the words "DON’T PANIC" emblazoned on them).
But the Bugblatter Beast of Traal—a creature that is genetically predisposed to ignore things it saw because those things couldn’t see it? I don’t think you could describe a better psychology for an investor.
That’s because historically people who traded the least generally perform best in investing, according to one six-year analysis.1 Being able to ignore the daily news and focus on the long-term can help investors act, instead of react.
As analysts and advisors, however, we can’t ignore all the news. Here are two current situations I think are worth paying attention to.
We’ve just passed the six month mark for 2025, so you’ve certainly seen the report cards and prognoses from financial participants from various stripes. Quite frankly, most commentary seems to be a reflection of the biases the commentators brought to the table from the beginning of the year.
This period started with great market optimism but has since suffered from a sharp drop in the U.S. dollar, increased rumblings abroad about replacing the dollar (or augmenting it) as the world’s reserve currency, a tariff regime that seems to change daily, supply chain woes, interest rate confusion, and various wars that were supposed to be over by now, but hey, let’s just throw the threat of a nuclear exchange onto the pile.
So it perhaps seems weird that the S&P 500 closed out June at all-time highs. Not only that, the VIX declined, suggesting that market sentiment remains strong.
Now, it is true that the U.S. stock market has trailed nearly all other markets in the world, with the MSCI World Index (up 8.8% in dollar terms) having trounced the S&P 500 (up 5.9%), which in turn beat the Russell 2000 (down 1.2%, one of the worst performing indexes in the world so far in 2025). Things are bad, but the market has held up fine. Things are good, but the US markets—especially small caps—have underperformed.
Then there’s this: For the first time in 40 years, the spread between the highest and lowest yielding of the five major U.S. asset classes is less than one percent.2
What does it all mean? It really seems as if the American financial system is more driven by political outcomes than it has been in decades. In the absence of real clarity on U.S. monetary and economic policy, correlations have simply converged. When tariffs are punitive one day and then non-existent the next, perhaps the sanest move for market participants is to congregate.
The other big known unknown for the markets is AI. We tend to think of it as either a threat to entry-level jobs or a way of rendering drawings of cats wearing goth makeup or whatever, but its impact is being felt right now by many companies whose businesses are dependent upon search engine optimization.
A little-remarked-on article in the Wall Street Journal painted a grim picture. Sites dependent upon organic search are experiencing a massive drop off from that channel as more and more users rely upon the click-free answers they receive from chatbots in search rather than clicking through to other sites.7
Note: Based on organic search totals for desktop and mobile web. *Data is aggregated for Business Insider. Source: Similarweb. Drew An-Pham/WSJ
Large publications have been under threat from emerging technologies since the early days of the internet hastened the destruction of classified advertising and increased both the need for speed of delivery and (perhaps malignly) a greater focus on article-level viewership—both of which have helped fuel a decline in public trust of news outlets.
With a decline of search engine effectiveness, we expect the ground to shift in this space once again. The Wall Street Journal article noted that one strategy adopted by publishers is to look for ways to deepen connection with readers and further emphasize audience engagement.
The implications here are profound, perhaps further shattering neutral newsgathering as publications pay even closer attention to ensuring they avoid viewpoints that alienate their audiences.
Also there’s this: Google’s core search business—its bread and butter—is under significant threat by generative AI. The very strategies Google (and its competitors) have done to make money (think sponsored links, poor quality clickbait and SEO-driven results) are exactly the same things that, at least for now, a ChatGPT response completely bypasses.
It’s too soon to call out winners and losers, but a huge theme for the remainder of 2025 may be how the incumbents in all forms of search engine-driven businesses react to the new reality that the funnels they’ve depended upon may be running dry.
Both the yield convergence and AI are things worth thinking through. But for now, I will end this note as I started, with a call to action from that seminal investment manual The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s in big letters, on the cover:
DON’T PANIC.