What if you could have your own North Star to help guide you in your life with the decisions that you should make? What’s the catch right? It’ll take some effort on your part, but if you’re willing to put in the work to learn and implement, you might come away with your very own guiding light. Read, watch, or listen to this training and start to think about what your Macro Belief might be.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
What Is A Macro Belief
Belief that guides decisions, especially in moments of euphoria or fear.
One of the most important things you can do for yourself is figuring out what your own beliefs are. This training will mostly cover the financial realm, but note that your macro belief can be anything as long as you have your own reasoning, logic, and evidence.
Example:
Sally believes that 3 bedroom family homes in fast growing suburban areas will be worth 4-5x their current value in 10 years.
She has done all her due diligence and believes she’ll reach her Solvable Problem™ by 4-5x the current home values in a timeframe of 10 years. 3 bedroom family homes fitting her criteria would be her Macro Belief that she has come to based on her own logic, reasoning, and evidence.
Adopting someone else’s macro beliefs can be a dangerous game. If you did not come to the conclusion based on your own logic, reasoning, and evidence you will not be able to navigate the world at large and have difficulties knowing where to allocate your resources.
Your macro belief does not have to be related to financial either. If you have a macro belief in time, you’d want to figure out how to reallocate your resources to reclaim your time. This may mean sacrificing money in order to get what matters most to you in life, time.
Why People Fail
In TGA Core Concepts – Bumpers: The term Micro-strategies diametrically opposed to Macro Beliefs was introduced.
- Micro-strategies: short term decisions/actions.
- If they are diametrically opposed to your Macro Beliefs, then these decisions get you further from what you actually want.
- Macro Belief: The thing that you actually want.
- A broad stroke guide to make short term decisions- especially relative to other options and time preference.
Example:
You have a Macro Belief in BTC (you want more BTC). If you sell your BTC in the hopes of acquiring more you will be taking a micro-strategy diametrically opposed to your Macro Belief. The reasoning behind this is that most people lose in the market trying to time it. If you buy BTC, you want to be in a position where you don’t have to sell it (since your Macro Belief is in BTC).
Having a Macro Belief can help steel your emotions from phrases like: “Buy X coin it’s already 100x in the last week, it’s going to 100x in the next couple of days.”
If your Macro Belief is already going to solve your problems, you would want to allocate resources toward that.
Solvable Problem™
Your Macro Belief is ultimately helping you to accomplish your Solvable Problem™ which consists of:
- Dollar amount.
- Time preference.
- Preference based consideration.
As a refresher the dollar amount is the amount needed for you to be able to attain everything you want in life that would make you happy.
Time preference is huge. This is the time you have deemed appropriate (based on your own logic, reasoning, and evidence) to accomplish your Solvable Problem™. Hopefully by now you’ve seen a common theme of making time and randomness your enemy, it usually doesn’t end well. Investing on a short time frame is difficult (can be done but on your own discretion).
If your Solvable Problem™ doesn’t have you stare at a computer all day, it would stand to reason to choose a Macro Belief that doesn’t require you to have to stare at a computer screen all day. Not everyone will share this preference of course, which is why there is a preference based consideration part of the Solvable Problem™.
The Solvable Problem™ gives us focus, allows for lower frequency of exposure, and the ability to overcome outcome bias and adjust the logic, reasoning, and evidence.
Secondary Macro Belief
No one knows what the future will hold so we must look at the logic, reasoning, and evidence behind the decisions which was covered in TGA Core Concept training: Brain Sludge.
FOMO and outcome bias is not how you would want to make decisions.
The macro belief for most people is US Dollars as a majority of things can be funded with US Dollars. If this is the case, we want to adopt a secondary Macro Belief with the reasoning of utilizing it to try and increase the amount of US Dollars we have.
Example of a secondary Macro Belief on an appropriate time line:
You need $10,000,000 dollars in 15 years. You need an average of 17% a year over 15 years. You believe 3 bedrooms homes [that meet your specific criteria] will appreciate at 17% or more over 15 years. The secondary Macro Belief is 3 bedroom homes that meet your specific criteria.
This gives you a focus so that you don’t need to chase things around (although you can if you want). Just note, if you choose to chase things around then you forfeit the right to complain because it was your own choice.
Most people will need to rewire their brains to match their time preference and macro belief.
Financial Macro Beliefs
Here’s some to get you thinking about your own:
Value Investor
Will invest in assets that meet certain properties or criteria for 10+ years.
Venture Capitalist (VC)
Typically more risks than value investors, takes more bets, and looks for more asymmetry.
Real Estate
Invest in properties that meet certain criteria based on what they believe about the future.
$GUARD
TGA has a Macro Belief in $GUARD – BUSD and or $GUARD because we have examined the logic, reasoning, and evidence on it for the past year +. We do not recommend you blindly adopt any Macro Belief, but that you follow through what has been outlined in the training to come to your own conclusion.
Gut Check
You have a Macro Belief in X (let’s say BTC) and the price of BTC goes down, how does that make you feel? If it makes you feel bad, here’s the gut check. You do not have a macro belief in BTC at this time, it’s most likely in US Dollars (or whatever you are measuring BTC against). If you believe BTC will be $1,000,000 in 2030 and the price of BTC goes down today to $5,000 and you are worried, there is a disconnect with what you are saying and believing.
If your favorite brand goes on sale 50% you would be excited because you get to buy more of it at a discount. The same scenario can be applied to investing, if your asset goes down and you don’t feel good about it, it’s a sign that you don’t actually believe in what you are investing in.
What if something’s changed?
If you’ve reasoned through your Macro Belief and something changes you can re-reason through it compared to your previous logic, reasoning, and evidence. Your Macro Belief is in 3 bedroom houses that you are going to rent out to complete your Solvable Problem™. Tenant laws change, and now there is a cap in the price you can set your rent at. Because you came to your Macro Belief on your own terms you can re-reason through whether it makes sense to keep 3 bedroom houses as your Macro Belief based on the new data.
You can learn and adjust if you have a Macro Belief. If you don’t have one you’re just chasing people around.
Cycles/Rhythms
A consideration when thinking about your timeline is that there are natural cycles and rhythms for every industry. If you want to get into Real Estate but your Solvable Problem™ is 1 year out you’re playing with fire. You typically want 5+ years for real estate simply because you don’t have a crystal ball and you want to allow time and randomness to play out.
Steps To Take
- Expectation Management.
- Develop Macro Belief.
- Timeline and Return.
- Align Macro Belief with Solvable Problem™.
Beware: Frequency of Exposure and Outcome Bias.
Think about your macro belief: Journal, reflect, ask questions, do some homework, examine it, and try hard to not validate. Really check yourself…Do you just want this because others want it?
6WU: Wisdom Comes From Multiple Perspectives
Condense this training into your own thoughts in six words. Share them in the thread below and then read through what others have written so you can learn from their knowledge.
https://twitter.com/TheGuardianAcad/status/1618670229734711296?s=20&t=7L7cyGqes_WAeHirmoen_w