Do You Want to Be Right or Do You Want to Make Money?

The best stock pickers are not contrarian, neither high conviction—they are adaptable.

The reason I’m writing this article is because I wanted to be right more than I wanted to make money. At least that’s what caused my 2025 to suck. And frankly, I think I’m not the only one who subconsciously prioritizes being right over making money.

In fact, my current timeline offers a perfect case study. With the narrative that AI is disrupting software, investors who made a fortune in the sector over the last decade are now spending their days arguing why the market is wrong, insisting AI will actually be a tailwind.

They might be right. I’m not here to debate the future of software, but rather to highlight a behavioral trap: the thin line between being a contrarian and simply wanting your ego to be proven right. And from my personal experience, it’s a good heuristic to believe that in most cases, it comes from a place of wanting to be right.

The reason for that is: why do you choose this game in the first place? Why do you choose a theme where you have to do mental gymnastics and be the only one having a certain opinion, a contrarian opinion to all other people? Why don’t you just step over a one-foot-hurdle? A game where the competition is easier, the puzzle simpler, and you’re not the only one with the contrarian opinion?

Ultimately, the market doesn’t care about you.

It doesn’t even know you exist. The market is like the weather. Sometimes it rains, sometimes there’s thunder, sometimes the sun shines. All types of weather are needed and can be used to do different activities and serve different purposes.

However, you get into trouble if you insist that this Sunday it should be sunny. Sunday comes and it’s not sunny, your mood is ruined, and your Sunday as well. All the preparation for a sunny Sunday was wasted. Instead, on the other hand, approach Sunday with an open mind. If it rains, you stay inside and read your favorite book. If it’s sunny, you go hiking. If it’s cold, do a road trip. Commit to having a great Sunday, not to having a great Sunday in a certain way.

It sounds like a simple example, but how many people approach the market with rigid rules? “I only buy companies X.” Well, to me that’s like obsessing over a sunny Sunday. Sure, during summer, this works because most Sundays will be sunny, giving you the illusion that your approach is so good it will always work—until winter comes along.

The best stock pickers are not contrarian, neither high conviction—they are adaptable.

Too many times I had a clear set of stocks that I wanted to make money with. It had to be them. One bad quarter and you say, “Well, next quarter it will be better.” If you don’t average down, you have no conviction.

See, it’s not about the action itself. It’s more about why you’re doing it. Are you really averaging down from a place of rational behavior? Or are you averaging down because you want to make money with this stock because your ego is attached to it?

But that’s just my circle of competence.

Circle of competence is often just a polite way of saying: “I don’t want to learn this.”

“I underperformed because my style didn’t work,” or “My year was bad because I was concentrated in X.” Sure. But the style and the concentration were decisions. If you don’t revisit them, you’re not staying disciplined, you’re staying attached.

See, your circle of competence is not something you were born with. Neither is your strategy or approach something you were born with. At some point you learned about an industry, and at some point you learned about a certain investment style.

Then you likely made some money and stuck with it.

But guess what, you are actually capable of learning about new industries. It takes you probably a month or a quarter until you get a good overview. You won’t be the expert, but you’ll get the 20% that are most important.

It happened to me in 2025 as well. Mining stocks were a relatively obvious bet mid-2025. A friend of mine and tremendous investor pitched me a gold miner. I barely looked at it because “I don’t buy mining stocks” “I don’t know anything about miners.”

The stock is up 300% now. It would’ve cost me one month to learn the basics of the mining industry. If, after doing that work, I had decided not to invest in the sector, that’s fine. But not even looking at it in the first place can be ignorance.

Does this mean you should chase momentum and approach a different strategy every week? No, that’s the other side of the extreme.

But a lot of times, the ways to make money are not the trades where you are the contrarian betting against anyone. It can be. But from my experience, more often than not cases it’s not, instead, it’s the obvious trades you spotted early.

Ask yourself, if you’re really honest:

Do you want to be right, or do you want to make money?

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice, investment recommendations, or an endorsement of any specific strategy. The views expressed are my own. Please do your own research or consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.