No Pain, No Gain
The Winter Olympics are here. Though the official opening occurs on Friday night, it can’t come soon enough. After three days of bloodshed in the markets, it’s a welcome distraction from the teeth-chattering, bone-chilling, finger-biting week we’re in.
Part of the event’s appeal is, of course, that we get to watch it all from the warmth of our living rooms, smugly horizontal with our preferred beverage choice in hand. There’s also the sheer abundance of it all: the sports, the athletes, the deep personal national rivalries. From the slow-burn precision of curling (already underway) to the white-knuckled chaos of snowboarding’s mid-air contortions, there’s something for everyone. Alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross-country skiing, figure skating, freestyle, ice hockey, luge, skeleton, speed skating, and skimo (aka ski mountaineering), newly minted and already terrifying. No shortage of stars, and we don’t just mean BFF’s Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart.
Olympians, it bears repeating, are a rare breed. Most of us are not inclined to launch ourselves down frozen hills at highway speeds or fling our bodies off cliffs and through half-pipes, secretly shrieking while maintaining the illusion of serenity. That’s creativity under pressure, judged by the clock. For many of us, pressure looks more like a 9–5, the hum of a monitor, and the steady tap of a keyboard and we’re perfectly fine with that.
Which brings us back to markets. This week felt less like a marathon and more like skiing downhill in a blizzard blindfolded. Volatility arrived suddenly, gravity did the rest, and everyone was reminded yet again that control is often an illusion. Some investors skidded. A few likely wiped out. Others managed something bordering on elegance, dodging and weaving like they were chasing a slippery puck on freshly groomed ice. Timing mattered. So did discipline. Overcorrect, and you crash. Freeze, and you’re carried somewhere you didn’t intend to go.
The Winter Olympics are so comforting because they remind us that risk, when chosen deliberately, can be beautiful, at least in hindsight. Mastery isn’t about avoiding speed; it’s about knowing when to lean into it, and when to fall before you hurt yourself. Markets, like snow, don’t care how talented you are or confident you felt at the top of the hill. In fact, they don’t care about you at all. (Sorry.)
The trick, as ever, is staying upright long enough to enjoy the view on the way down.
