Never praise a driver for a tailwind. The weather is measured separately, on purpose, because otherwise you make the oldest mistake in investing.
The weather is the season the road runs through: interest rates, jobs, prices, credit, fear. A company that grew twelve percent in a year when everything grew twelve percent has told you nothing about itself. The same twelve percent in a year when everything else fell has told you a great deal.
Size tells you whether it is your business
Weather comes in very different sizes — one bad quarter, a region’s drought, a national recession, a global shift. The size tells you how long it lasts, and that tells you whether it reaches you at all. A small gust blows out in days; to someone holding for years that is noise wearing the costume of news.
Most of what arrives daily as urgent is, for you, correctly ignored. Knowing which is which is a large part of what you are being handed.
The same storm reads opposite on different ground
An oil shock is a hurricane in Houston and sunshine for the airlines. Where companies crowd close together — tied by supply, ownership and credit — trouble spreads like fire through thick timber, and open ground is a firebreak. A single market-wide number averages all of that into something perfectly true that tells you nothing.