Too good to be true: The importance of listening to one’s wife

Every morning, alongside my coffee, I read a leading Nigerian newspaper. It is a habit I am proud of, the kind that signals, at least to oneself, that one is a serious, informed person. A man with his finger on the pulse. A man who knows things.

It was in this spirit of informed seriousness that I noticed, over the course of several weeks, something extraordinary happening in the Nigerian stock markets. Two companies, Unilever PLC and UACN Plc, appeared to be the undisputed champions of the Nigerian stock market, sitting atop the “top gainers” ticker day after day, each registering a 10% gain daily. These companies were not just doing well. They were, apparently, doing the absolute maximum amount of good that is legally permitted.

NGX Top Gainers — as seen by me, every single day

Unilever PLC +10.00%

UACN Plc +10.00%

I was, naturally, surprised that the financial press was not full of breathless coverage of this development. I was also, I confess, a little smug. I had spotted something everyone else had missed. This is a dangerous feeling. It is, in retrospect, almost always the first sign that something is about to go wrong.

I mentioned my discovery to my wife. I explained the situation with the quiet authority of a man who has been reading the financial pages. She looked at the data. She looked at me. She said that while the companies did seem to be performing reasonably, they did not appear to be doing quite as spectacularly as I was suggesting, and she recommended I tread carefully.

“They don’t seem to be doing as well as you think. Tread carefully.”

Reader, I did not tread carefully. I bought shares in both companies.

My principal anxiety at this point was the classic fear of the late investor: that I was buying at the very top of the market and that the moment my order was confirmed, the laws of gravity, so long suspended for Unilever and UACN, would reassert themselves with personal and targeted precision. It was therefore a source of great relief when, for several days after my purchase, both stocks continued to show 10% gains every day. I was not a fool. I was a visionary.

Then, after a few days of this gratifying confirmation, a small and inconvenient thought surfaced. I looked at the ticker more carefully. I looked at the list of top gainers. I looked at the list of top losers. I looked again.

They were identical. The same companies. The same percentages. Every single day. The ticker, I slowly understood, had not moved – the newspaper’s display was frozen – a digital fossil, perfectly preserved, showing the market as it had been rather than as it was. I had not spotted a trend. I had spotted a technical glitch and mistaken it for an investment gem.

Fortunately, this mistake did not result in a substantial loss – if anything, a slight gain. I am deeply grateful for this. I am also deeply grateful, in a slightly more complicated way, for my wife, who had looked at the same information and reached the correct conclusion without being able to fully articulate why, because sometimes good judgement does not announce itself with reasons. Sometimes it simply says, ‘Something here is not quite right.’

A few lessons:

1. Wishful thinking is a remarkably effective filter. It allows you to see only the information that confirms what you already want to believe and to experience this selective perception as insight.

2. Cross-check your data. One source, however reputable, however daily, is not enough. A second look at a second source costs nothing and occasionally saves everything.

3. To any husbands reading this who are currently sitting on what they believe to be a significant market insight that their wife seems oddly sceptical about: I see you. I have been you. I am writing to you from the other side. Listen to your wife. She, I hope, has your best interests at heart. And, on present evidence, a rather better grasp of market data than you do.

 

Tunde Adesokan is a (now wiser) husband.