Markets are uncertain. Fees, taxes, and portfolio drift are not. The discipline is to know what each cost is paying for, rather than to minimise every cost.

Over the decade to 31 December 2024, the average dollar invested in US mutual funds and exchange-traded funds earned 1.2 per cent per year less than the funds themselves returned. The investments performed; the investors, on average, did not. The gap is the returns that behaviour destroys.

Long-horizon wealth is built by owning productive assets. Equities are volatile, unpredictable, and at times uncomfortable to hold. They remain the only mechanism through which an investor participates directly in productive enterprise at scale.

The US-Iran ceasefire on 7 April sent equity markets sharply higher. Within days, the Strait of Hormuz closed again and those gains reversed. The pattern is instructive — and not for the first time.

Debt is neither inherently useful nor inherently destructive. Its effect on a financial position depends on what it is used for, at what cost, and whether the borrower has thought clearly about the conditions under which the strategy fails.