Not Exactly What I Had Planned

December 19, 2025

"By the age of 40," author Elizabeth Gilbert once wrote, "everyone could write a memoir titled 'Not Exactly What I Had Planned.'" That pretty much sums up 2025 as an investment year. Almost from the start, the year turned into a black hole for adjectives. It twisted and turned, riding the back of a wild policy year, and with twelve days to go... generally has turned in a strong performance.

In a way, the endless information that spills forth from our screens is making investment decision-making more difficult. For example, you can say "Here is a thing I believe." You can then find something that matches that belief. The problem with the Internet is that the frictional barrier to finding "information" that backs up the belief is low. But the root problem, and this affects investors, scientists, and really all of us, is that you ask the question already edging toward the result that you want. To avoid falling prey to behavioral errors in investing, it is best to steer away from this natural tendency.

This can be difficult to do, though. For example, this year many people have thought "Wow, the world seems like it is at peak chaos." And I agree! I mean I don't think many people look back on 2025, kick their heels up with a bottle of port that they didn't quite finish off from the 2024 holidays, and think "Well, that went as planned." But who knows, really. Maybe we just see a lot more turbulence in the information age. Maybe when a saber-tooth tiger was hunting you on Christmas Eve 10,000 BC the part of the cave behind the fire pit seemed chaotic too.

One thing I do know is that you can't map what you want, at least in investing, onto a chaotic system. Markets, businesses, human behavior... it's all pretty volatile. It makes life frustrating and fun at the same time. But it won't fit a specific plan. That's just something you accept as an investor as you build tools and a strategy on top of that reality.

By being part of One Day In July, you trust all of us here with an important part of your life. We recognize that. We find that challenging and invigorating. That trust is an intangible that no contract can define, and no spreadsheet can quantify. All of us here thank you for it.

A good friend of mine who thinks he is in finance but actually is a philosopher recently told me, "There are always problems. The fun thing about the future is the problems to solve are new."

Onward to 2026.

~Dan Cunningham