From experience, we know that markets reward patience and that money works over time. However, equity markets constantly test an investor’s nerves. The biggest investment mistakes rarely stem from a lack of information, but from how investors react.
When financial media headlines are screaming and stock prices are volatile, doing nothing can feel like passivity, even though it is often the most active and profitable decision.
Let us examine this phenomenon through one of my favorite topics: the psychology of investing.
Markets Test the Investor – Not the Companies
Markets move faster than businesses. Share prices react immediately to macroeconomic headlines, political statements, and shifts in market sentiment. Companies and their business model, in contrast, change slowly.
Factories do not stop because of one bad trading day, and customers do not disappear overnight.
Pricing power, competitive advantages, and long-term demand do not vanish because of a temporary market movement. It is within this tension that the investor’s greatest challenge arises.
The Hardest Variable in Investing Is Your Own Behavior
Human behavior is one of the most underestimated risk factors in investing.
Sharp declines trigger a natural reaction: do something. Sell. Hedge. Switch. Yet history shows that long-term returns have more often been weakened by emotion-driven decisions than by weak companies.
Fear of losses, avoidance of regret, and the urge to act easily push investors to sell precisely when uncertainty is at its highest.
The most important thing is to understand what kind of business you own. The real mental challenge is to believe in the company and keep the shares even when it feels uncomfortable.
Research Confirms the Experience: Morningstar’s “Behavior Gap”
The impact of emotional decisions is not just anecdotal, it is measurable. Morningstar has for years studied the so-called behavior gap, the difference between the returns funds report and the returns investors actually receive. The research is known as “Mind the Gap”.
Morningstar’s conclusion is clear and consistent: investors underperform their funds by an average of 1.5 to 2 percentage points per year.
The difference does not arise because the investments are poor, but because investors make decisions at the wrong time.
The typical pattern is familiar:
- buying when the market has already risen and uncertainty feels low
- selling when volatility increases and discomfort is at its peak
According to Morningstar, this return gap widens especially when market volatility is high. In other words, precisely when discipline would matter most.
A two percentage point annual difference may not sound large, but over the long term it compounds significantly.
Quality Companies Keep Working Even on Quiet Days
While markets fluctuate, high-quality companies continue creating value in the background. They generate cash flow, invest profitably, and strengthen their competitive positions. These processes are not visible in daily price movements, yet they determine the owner’s returns over the long term.
Standing still does not mean indifference. It means understanding when your investment thesis remains intact and giving it time to unfold.
That requires separating volatility from business volatility, and ensuring the latter remains sound.
Ownership Before Timing
Sifter’s investment strategy is based on long-term ownership, not market timing. We do not build decisions on forecasts, headlines, or short-term signals. We focus on business fundamentals: demand, profitability, balance sheet strength, and the ability to compound capital over time.
When markets fluctuate, the key question is not “What should we sell?” It is whether something fundamental has changed in the businesses we own.
Will there be demand for the company’s products and services five years from now? Why can the company sustain high margins for years ahead?
If the answers to these questions remain unchanged, the rationale for ownership remains unchanged.
Patience Is an Active Decision
Standing still is not passive. It requires a clear process, discipline, and confidence in your thinking.
The best investment decisions often look boring in hindsight precisely because they were based on sticking to a plan, not reacting.
Time is the investor’s most powerful ally, but only for those who allow it to do its work.
The greatest risk is usually not the market, but how we respond to it. When you know what you own and why, volatility becomes background noise. When you do not, it becomes stress that encourages impulsive decisions.
Final Thoughts
This piece was written during the Q1/2026 earnings season, when equity markets are once again nervous. This time, concerns center around the scale of AI investments and, on the other hand, fears that artificial intelligence may disrupt many companies’ business models.
Although AI may be the most significant technological shift in decades, human behavior and corporate operations do not change at the same pace. Most likely, the market is once again overreacting, at least in the short term.
We continuously study how AI development affects our business performance, but we refrain from drawing overly quick conclusions.
It is important to note, however, that the growth of AI investments is already visible in parts of our portfolio. Several of our semiconductor companies manufacture the equipment and components required to build new chip fabrication plants and data centers. In other words, they benefit directly from the investment wave, without us needing to predict which individual AI applications will ultimately win.
At the same time, we have deliberately avoided investing purely on AI-driven expectations. In contrast, the Sifter Fund’s most recent investments have been in industrial companies with no direct exposure to AI, reflecting our continued focus on fundamental business quality rather than thematic momentum.
Santeri Korpinen
CEO
