Why it pays to be illogical, sometimes

I first heard Rory Sutherland speak in an interview he did for the State of the Markets podcast. Unlike almost every other interviewee he stood out as being able to make completely nonsensical suggestions for my people behave the way they so, but in a way that actually kind of made sense.

So when his new book (Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense) came out I jumped at the chance to read it. While not obviously a book related to commodity markets, macroeconomics or investing more broadly the book has some interesting insights that I will certainly be taking on board.*

Be an alchemist

As some of you may know my background is economics, but as a number of my posts will attest I’m not wedded to the notion that economists have all the answers, nor that they are necessarily correct. Indeed, I’d rather be, and feel much more comfortable floating around the edge where at least I have a chance of being able to see other perspectives*:

“The alchemy of this book’s title is the science of knowing what economists are wrong about. The trick to being an alchemist lies not in understanding universal laws, but in spotting the many instances where those laws do not apply”

In the real world investors, business owners and others with skin in the game care shouldn’t care…