C.S. Lewis once wrote, “The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see.” As in morality, so too in investing. Morgan Housel’s new book, Same as Ever, promises “a guide to what never changes.” Drawing on material from his popular 2020 book, The Psychology of Money, as well as his blog, Housel seeks less to break new ground than to tell familiar lessons well. And Housel is a gifted storyteller.
In the chapter “Wild Minds,” for instance, he describes how after Eliud Kipchoge won the 2021 Olympic marathon, a logistical snafu left him and the other two medalists alone in a bare room for a few hours. The other two runners quickly pulled out their phones and began to scroll. Kipchoge just sat and stared at the wall for hours, silent and content. The bronze medalist later joked, “He is not human.”
Housel uses this story to illustrate how extraordinary successes — whether Kipchoge or Steve Jobs or Elon Musk — often have corresponding oddities or even liabilities that we tend to ignore and might not want for ourselves. The difference between you and an Olympic athlete is more than just your VO2 max, and the difference between you and Musk is more than your intelligence.
Kipchoge is also unnaturally serene, and Musk is addicted to risk. It’s a package deal. Housel often concludes a point like this
