Weekly #36: Push vs. Pull: The Mindset Shift That Can Save Your Portfolio (and Sanity)
This week’s portfolio surged past the S&P 500 again (MTD: +8.4% vs +4.4%), but the real win came from avoiding distraction and staying focused on the long game.
Hello fellow Sharks,
This week, we continued the great performance. With one day left, June’s performance of +8.4% is almost double that of the S&P 500’s. (If you want to skip ahead to the Portfolio Update, click here.)
In this Weekly, I want to tackle the difference between pull and push investing and why the latter is the way to go.
Enjoy the read!
~ George
Table of Contents:
In Case You Missed It
Argan: Why I’m Still Bullish After an 87% Run
I revisited my top 2025 stock pick, Argan (AGX), after the stock surged +87% since entering the portfolio. Despite the rally, AGX still looks compelling thanks to a $1.9B backlog, strong tailwinds from the “electrification of everything,” and a fortress balance sheet. I walk through updated earnings, rising margins, insider selling, and why I trimmed—but didn’t sell out. Read the 13,000-word deep dive →
Why I Rotated Out of IAMGOLD Into a Leaner Gold Miner
With gold trending up, I took gains on IAG (+32%) and moved the capital into a more nimble, lower-cost operator. In this Trade Alert, I break down the six reasons for the switch, including a stronger free cash flow profile, lower AISC, 100% mine ownership, and higher upside potential. Read the trade alert →
Thought of the Week: Push vs. Pull — Why Reacting to Market News Is a Losing Game
When Reacting Means Giving Up Power (Henry VIII’s Lesson)
Have you ever read The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene?
When I first read the book, I understood what I was doing wrong in life. This book is a must read for everyone, I am not going to summarize the book here, I will just address Law 36: “Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them is the Best Revenge.”
The big lesson is that if you let someone else set the terms of engagement, you’re giving away your power. An example is King Henry VIII’s clash with the Pope. In the 1520s, Henry wanted a divorce, but Pope Clement VII forbade it and even threatened to excommunicate him. Henry realized that as long as he kept reacting to the Pope’s dictates (begging for approval, arguing on the Pope’s terms), he was effectively under the Pope’s control. So Henry flipped the script: he ignored the Pope’s threats and created the Church of England to do things on his own terms. By not responding the way the Pope wanted, Henry took back the power.
The takeaway? Responding gives others power over you. Reacting gives external events and other people power over you, and it lets them set the agenda”. When you’re the one reacting, you’re no longer in control; you’re dancing to their tune. Henry VIII learned that the hard way, and his solution was to adopt a push mindset rather than stay in pull mode, reacting to someone else’s moves.
Now, what does this have to do with investing?
Everything!
In markets, if you let every headline and market swing dictate your actions, you’re giving the market power over you. You’ve basically handed over the steering wheel to the day’s news cycle. It’s the investing equivalent of Henry VIII waiting on the Pope’s permission. To succeed (and keep your sanity), you want to be more like Henry in this story: set your own course and make the market react to you. That’s the essence of push vs. pull in investing.
Push vs. Pull Investing: Who’s Setting the Agenda?
Let’s define terms. Pull-mode investing is when you’re constantly pulled by the market’s news and price movements. Every day, there’s a new headline or hot take, and you respond. Inflation scare? You sell growth stocks. Oil spike? You rush to buy energy ETFs. Fed announces something? You reshuffle your whole portfolio… again. In pull mode, your decisions are dictated by external events. Essentially, the market’s daily noise is setting your agenda.
By contrast, push-mode investing means you’re the one with the plan, and you stick to it regardless of short-term chatter. You have a thesis/strategy driven by fundamental research and a long-term outlook. You adjust positions on your own terms (typically due to valuation changes, thesis verification or invalidation, etc.), not because CNBC or FinTwit is freaking out about the latest crisis.
Push investors aren’t deaf to new information, but they filter it against a sturdy framework. They act proactively, not impulsively. While pull-mode people react to the market’s push, push-mode people let the market eventually adjust to their thesis (or they calmly admit if a thesis is wrong, but they don’t flail at every little twist).
Another way to look at it: in pull mode, you’re always chasing; in push mode, you’re leading. Pull is reactive investing, proactive investing. Pull is letting headlines yank your portfolio around. Push is saying, “I’ve done my research, I know why I own this, and unless something truly fundamental changes, I’m sticking with it.”
It’s obvious which mode sounds more empowering. Yet, many fall into pull-mode because it’s tempting. The market throws so much information at us, it feels like we should be doing something about it. But as I’ll discuss, that feeling is usually a trap.
Which mode are you in most of the time? Are you the type to hit “buy” or “sell” every time breaking news hits your phone, or are you following a longer-term plan and mostly tuning out the noise?
Be honest with yourself, take a moment, where do you see yourself?
Case Study: The Strait of Hormuz News Cycle
To see push vs. pull in action, let’s look at a real example. Recently, news broke that the Iranian parliament had approved the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints, responsible for roughly 30% of global oil supply.
In other words, a big headline for oil and markets. The immediate reaction from many investors?
Panic and frenetic repositioning. Discussions sprang up everywhere, the crowd moved into pull mode: news hits, and everyone suddenly wants to trade on it.
I saw this post, and in the comments, people were giving their 2 cents on the best strategy moving forward.
He ends by saying, “Important questions to reflect on right now…”, but is it really an important question?
A major headline dropped, and the knee-jerk instinct was action. People were ready to reshuffle portfolios overnight… overweight oil, underweight everything else, all because of a single piece of geopolitical news.
This is classic pull behaviour: the market throws a punch, and most investors instantly bob and weave in response. It feels safe to do something when news hits, as if reacting quickly will protect you or make you a quick buck.
In reality, though, these short-term moves rarely matter for long-term outcomes. By the time “everyone” has heard the news and is reacting, any immediate price impact is often already baked in. And if you’re a long-term investor, the odds are that a temporary supply shock or conflict won’t materially change the 5- or 10-year trajectory of your investments.
I decided to respond to the frenzy with a different perspective, a push-mode perspective. Instead of joining the chorus of “trade, trade, trade!”, I said:
That encapsulates the push mentality: stick to your thesis (unless the thesis truly changes), and don’t grant every flashy headline the power to control you. In this case, my long-term view on whatever I’m invested in didn’t suddenly change because of a tussle in the Strait of Hormuz.
Could oil prices spike for a bit? Sure.
Might that cause some short-term volatility in various stocks? Probably.
But will it alter the 10-year earnings power of, say, TSMC or my thesis on a renewable energy company I hold? Almost certainly not.
So why deviate from the course? Reacting to that news would just be giving the market control over my decisions, handing over my power, for something likely lasting for a very short time.
And indeed, a few days later, the hype had died down and markets had moved on. This pattern repeats constantly: today’s breaking news is tomorrow’s forgotten story. The investors who did nothing, who stayed in push mode, usually find their portfolios none the worse. Meanwhile, those who scrambled into pull mode often just churned themselves into stress (and transaction costs).
While some spent hours analyzing and trading around this story, most likely losing money after fees and slippage, I spent about 15 minutes reviewing the initial news and then moved on. I didn’t make a single trade. Instead of burning cycles on noise, I finished my post on rotating out of IAMGOLD, finished reading a 10-K for a company I believe has 5x potential, and used the extra time to hang out with my wife and daughter listening to live music at the park. (You’ve got to take advantage of the few sunny days we get in Toronto.)
Why We’re Tempted to React (The Psychology of Noise)
If reacting to every headline is usually a losing game, why do so many of us do it?
The answer lies in human psychology. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman describes our thinking in terms of System 1 (fast, intuitive, emotional) and System 2 (slow, logical, deliberative). He elaborated on that in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. When a jarring piece of news hits, like “Iran is closing the Strait of Hormuz!”, our System 1 kicks in with a surge of adrenaline.
Do something! it screams.
It’s the same fight-or-flight impulse that kept our ancestors alive. In investing, though, that impulse often does more harm than good.
System 1-driven reactions to market news are quick and automatic: fear, greed, panic, euphoria. They’re not carefully thought out; they’re reflexes. Avoiding knee-jerk trades requires engaging System 2, the slower, analytical part of the brain. But here’s the rub: System 2 thinking takes effort and attention, and our attention is a finite resource. If you’re constantly glued to the news ticker, reacting to every blip, you’re flooding your brain with stimuli and stress. You leave no room for the calm, high-quality thinking that long-term investing requires.
Having said that, there are moments when it does make sense to act quickly, like when a high-quality stock you’ve been tracking for months finally drops to your entry price. That’s not a reaction to random noise; it’s a prepared response based on prior research. It’s System 1 being used intentionally rather than impulsively. I wrote more about how to balance fast and slow thinking in investing back in Weekly #16, if you want to dive deeper into that.
Push and pull isn’t just an investing concept; it’s everywhere in life. Commercials, social media ads, algorithm-driven content feeds… they’re all pulling your attention toward what someone else wants you to do. A push approach is the opposite: you decide what you want or need, then go after it.
For example, a pull move is seeing a fast food ad and suddenly craving fries. A push move is realizing you’re low on protein and intentionally planning a healthy meal. Same with shopping: pull is buying a shirt because it popped up in a sponsored post. Push is researching winter gear because you’re planning a ski trip.
Think of attention like a budget. You only have so much to spend in a day. Every hour you spend doom-scrolling finance Twitter or obsessively checking stock quotes is an hour you can’t spend reading an annual report or thinking deeply about an investment thesis.
Kahneman’s research showed that the more cognitive effort (attention) you spend on one task, the less you have for others. So if you’re burning all your mental energy reacting to short-term market noise, you literally haven’t got the bandwidth to do the slow, thorough analysis that pays off in the long run.
Another psychological factor is overconfidence and the illusion of control. The 24/7 financial news cycle makes us feel as if only we can stay on top of every development, we can gain an edge. It’s as if being constantly reactive will somehow put us ahead of the game.
The truth is usually the opposite.
More information does not equal better decisions if most of that info is just noise. Consuming too much noise can make your understanding worse. Nassim Taleb articulates this well with what he calls the “noise bottleneck.” He argues that as you consume more real-time data, the noise-to-signal ratio skyrockets. You feel like you’re learning more, but you’re mostly just clouding your mind with random, jittery fluctuations.
Taleb gave a striking statistic: if you check your portfolio annually, maybe half the changes are meaningful signals and half are noise. Check it daily, and you’re down to ~5% signal, 95% noise. Check hourly, and it’s 0.5% signal, 99.5% noise!
In his words, watching every tick and news blurb puts you “one step below sucker.”
Ouch.
What he means is that the more you zoom in on the day-to-day, the more you’re just seeing randomness, and the more likely you are to mistake that noise for something actionable. It’s like staring at static on a TV and convincing yourself you see a pattern.
There’s also the emotional toll. Being in permanent reaction mode is exhausting. It turns investing into a source of anxiety. One day you’re euphoric because the Fed signalled a pause; the next day you’re depressed because some jobs report spooked the market.
You end up riding an emotional roller coaster that ultimately hurts your decision-making. We’re not built to be 100% on-high-alert, 100% of the time. As Taleb pointed out with his “neurotic vs. imperturbable” comparison, the people who stay calm and filter out noise tend to fare better (and live happier lives) than those who react to every molehill as if it’s a mountain.
Lastly, consider the data on performance. Plenty of studies have shown that frequent trading is correlated with worse returns. One famous analysis1 of brokerage accounts found that the most active traders underperformed the market by a significant margin (6.5% per year on average).
Why?
Because jumping in and out in reaction to news (often at exactly the wrong times) racks up costs and usually means selling low and buying high. Meanwhile, the patient investors who made fewer moves tended to come out ahead. In Buffett’s witty phrasing,
… calling someone who trades actively in the market an investor is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a romantic.
It might feel exciting in the moment, but it’s not a recipe for lasting success.
He also famously said,
The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.
In other words, the more you churn and react, the more you’re likely handing profits over to those who sit tight.
Stop Letting the Market Hijack Your Brain
So, how can we avoid being seduced by pull-mode and noise?
One approach is to be intentional about filtering your information diet. Treat your attention as sacred. That might mean limiting how often you check your portfolio, maybe once a month, or even just once a year if you’re truly long-term focused.
Personally, I check mine when I’m adding or closing a position, and again on Sunday mornings before sending out the Weeklies, just so I can include performance updates. That’s it. No daily dopamine hits. No checking for the sake of checking.
It could also mean turning off breaking news alerts that aren’t truly “portfolio-altering.” Remember, if something genuinely huge happens (like a 9/11 event or a 2008-scale financial crisis), you’ll hear about it anyway. You don’t need to monitor every minor headline. By stepping back, you’ll distinguish the signal from the background noise far better.
Short-Term Glory vs. Long-Term Greatness
It’s worth acknowledging that some investors do succeed with a hyper-reactive, short-term strategy. There are legendary traders who made fortunes by effectively living in pull mode (at least during their prime years). Think of guys like Richard Dennis or Michael Marcus.
Richard Dennis, for example, was a trend-following commodities trader who reportedly turned a loan of just $1,600 into around $200 million in about a decade. Michael Marcus is said to have turned $30,000 into $80 million over roughly 20 years. Those are insane returns.
How did they do it?
By being extremely attuned to short-term market moves, jumping on trends early, and yes, reacting quickly to price action (which often was driven by news or events). They were essentially full-time, high-octane pull-mode operators, surfing wave after wave of short-term opportunity.
But here’s the thing: that kind of short-term glory comes at a price. It requires an intense, all-consuming focus on the market. Traders like Dennis or Marcus were glued to the screens and ticker tape. It’s stressful and unsustainable for most people over the long haul. Even some of these legends eventually hit a wall. Richard Dennis, for instance, had explosive success for years, but later suffered huge losses during the 1987 market crash (tens of millions lost) and ended up retiring from trading for a while.
The market can be brutal to those who play the short-term game; one or two mistakes can wipe out years of gains if you’re not careful. Short-term traders also often employ leverage, which adds risk. It’s a bit like being a race car driver, you might win some championships, but one wrong turn at 200 mph and it’s game over.
Contrast that with someone like Warren Buffett. Buffett’s track record is legendary in its own right: ~23% average annual returns over five decades. That’s a lower percentage than the triple-digit yearly gains of a hotshot trader, but here’s the magic of it: Buffett has done it for 54+ years.
The compounding is mind-boggling. (At 23% a year, money doubles roughly every 3.1 years. Over decades, that turned his modest starting capital into tens of billions.) Buffett achieved long-term greatness by ignoring most short-term noise and focusing on a few simple fundamentals: buying great businesses, often when others are fearful, and then holding them for years or decades. He famously said that his favourite holding period is “forever”, and that he buys under the assumption that the stock market could close for 5 or 10 years and he wouldn’t care.
In practice, he literally didn’t react to many huge news events. During the 2008-09 financial crisis, for example, Buffett wasn’t frantically day-trading bank stocks; he was calmly analyzing which businesses he could invest in for the eventual recovery (he struck a big deal with Goldman Sachs at the peak of panic, but he wasn’t trading in and out, he made a long-term investment on favorable terms).
Buffett’s style is the epitome of push-mode investing. He sets the agenda based on his assessment of value. He’s not immune to news (he’ll read about macro events, and he’s aware of what’s happening), but he doesn’t let the news dictate his strategy. He often uses the craziness of others (pull-mode traders) to his advantage. When everyone else is overreacting, he does nothing or quietly buys. It’s no coincidence that he’s still going strong in his 90s (he just announced that he is retiring at the end of the year), while many frenetic traders burn out or fade away. His approach is sustainable mentally and financially. He spends a lot of his day reading, not exactly the lifestyle of a stressed-out news-chasing trader.
There’s also a lifestyle consideration here. Investing is not just about maximizing returns; it’s also about how you attain those returns. The trend-chasers like Dennis/Marcus might notch incredible returns for a few years, but at what cost?
If you have to be on high alert 12 hours a day, if you can’t take a vacation without fear of missing something, if your mind is always racing about the next trade, is that truly freedom? Some people love the thrill (and more power to them), but for many, it’s a stressful existence.
Buffett’s way, on the other hand, often looks boring from the outside. But “boring” can be beautiful when it comes to making money reliably. His wealth accumulated in a way that still allowed him to sleep well at night and enjoy life.
It comes down to a personal choice: Do you want intense bursts of performance with a risk of flame-out (and a need to constantly react, react, react)? Or do you want a calmer path of steady growth that lets you play the game for the next 50 years?
For most of us non-supercomputers, the latter is the saner bet. You don’t want to be the best investor in the world for three years and then be done. You want to be a very good investor for 50+ years. That’s how you really compound wealth (and enjoy your life while doing it).
Take Back Your Investing Headspace
The next time you feel that itch to respond to a breaking news alert or a sudden market swing, pause and remember King Henry VIII and the Pope. Ask yourself: Am I about to do this because I want to, or because the market’s news flow is yanking my chain? Who’s in charge here? If you’re in pull mode, reacting emotionally to every push from the market, then in a very real sense, you’ve given your power away. The market (or the media, or social media chatter) is controlling your headspace. And as we’ve discussed, that’s usually a losing game, both financially and mentally.
The good news is, you can take that power back. Start by auditing where your attention goes during the week. How much time do you spend checking stock prices, reading superficial news, or worrying about headlines, versus doing deep, independent research or just thinking in a quiet, focused way?
If your ratio is skewed toward the former, consider making a change. Maybe set a rule: no checking markets more than once a day, or no financial news after dinner. Use that freed-up time to read company reports, books on investing, or anything that builds your conviction and knowledge, such as the best investing newsletter out there 😉. Those are push-mode activities, you deciding what to learn and focus on, rather than letting the news cycle dictate it.
Also, cultivate the habit of deliberate non-reaction. This is like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. In the beginning, it’s hard. You see a stock down 10% on some rumour, and every fibre of your being wants to do something. But if the long-term thesis is intact, challenge yourself to do nothing.
Often, you’ll find the stock bounces back once the rumour passes, and you’ve saved yourself the regret of a rash decision. Other times, if the stock keeps dropping but the fundamentals do remain intact, that’s an opportunity to buy more rather than a panic sell. By not reacting blindly, you put yourself in a position to make a more rational move later.
To be clear, push-mode investing doesn’t mean never selling or never adjusting your portfolio. It just means those decisions are made on your terms and timeline, guided by your analysis, not as a knee-jerk reply to someone else’s narrative. You’ll still respond to genuine changes: maybe a company’s earnings deteriorate and it breaks your thesis, that’s a valid reason to change course (that’s responding, not knee-jerk reacting). The key is that you decide what matters and when, rather than being a slave to every market wiggle.
In the end, headspace is the most valuable real estate in investing (and life). Guard it fiercely. Don’t let every media pundit and Twitter expert squat in your mind rent-free, constantly pulling you this way and that. When you operate in push mode, you’ll find you have more clarity, more calm, and more conviction. Paradoxically, by doing less reacting, you’ll likely end up doing better.
Remember that Henry VIII didn’t win by reacting to the Pope; he won by charting his own course. You won’t “win” at investing by reacting to Mr. Market’s every mood swing; you’ll win by sticking to your own well-laid plans and letting the storm of noise swirl around you while you remain anchored.
So next time a wild headline or market panic hits, take a deep breath. Remember who’s king (or queen) of your financial domain. Don’t hand that crown to the latest clickbait news. Stay in control, stay focused on the long game, and let the rest just blow over. In the long run, push beats pull, and your portfolio (and sanity) will thank you for it.
What’s one strategy you use to stay focused on your long-term plan when the news cycle gets loud? I’d love to hear in the comments.
Portfolio Update
Markets are dancing again and we’re still leading the rhythm. Another strong week for the sharks.
Month-to-date: We climbed to +8.4%, doubling from last week’s +4.2%. The S&P 500 rose, too, but more modestly, leaving us ahead by 399 bps.
Quarter-to-date: With just one business day left in Q2, the portfolio is now up +20.4%, more than double the S&P’s +10.00%. The gap widened sharply in June thanks to big gains from a few core names.
Year-to-date: We’re sitting at +10.2%, while the S&P is at +5.0%. That’s over 500 bps of outperformance so far this year.
Since inception: We’re now up +18.6% versus the S&P 500’s +7.3%. That’s 2.5 times the market in under nine months.
Contribution by Sector
Tech remains the dominant growth engine. This week, renewed enthusiasm around AI, driven by fresh optimism on chip exports to China and easing trade tensions which helped lift major tech names. Nvidia (NVDA 0.00%↑), Microsoft (MSFT 0.00%↑), and AI-related software stocks surged, pushing the Nasdaq and S&P 500 to new highs. Our exposure to names such as CLS and TSM rode that wave.
Industrials followed closely behind, thanks to strong performance from execution-driven names like AGX, DXPE, and POWL. The sector also got a boost from Boeing (BA 0.00%↑), which was upgraded to “buy”, a catalyst that lifted sentiment across industrials. Layered in continued strength in U.S. manufacturing data, and the backdrop this week was firmly in our favour.
Banks and financials were buoyed by a mix of dovish Fed signals, building expectations for potential rate cuts, and record highs in major financial firms (e.g., JPMorgan (JPM 0.00%↑) passing the $800B market cap milestone). That optimism gave our financial holdings a nice lift.
Discretionary names saw modest gains, supported by strong consumer confidence and earnings from staples like Nike (NKE 0.00%↑). Nike led the S&P rally with a 15% pop on better-than-expected results. That momentum filtered through to our broader consumer cyclical exposure.
Contribution by Position
(For the full breakdown, see Weekly Stock Performance Tracker)
+92 bps CLS 2.35%↑ (TSX: CLS)
+46 bps TSM 0.00%↑
+45 bps POWL 0.00%↑
+27 bps AGX 0.00%↑
+23 bps DXPE 0.00%↑
+16 bps MFC 0.00%↑ (TSX: MFC)
+7 bps IAG 0.00%↑ (TSX: IMG)
+3 bps KINS 0.00%↑
-1 bps LRN 0.00%↑
That’s it for this week.
Stay calm. Stay focused. And remember to stay sharp, fellow Sharks!
Further Sunday reading to help your investment process:
How I earn $3,000-$7,000 a Month While Waiting to Buy Great Stocks Cheaper
The Art of Knowing When to Sell a Stock (And When to Sit Tight)
The 100-Year Fund: How to Build Generational Wealth and Secure Your Legacy
How My BS Detector Made Me a Better Investor — and Less Fun at Parties
Barber, B. M., & Odean, T. (2000). Trading is hazardous to your wealth: The common stock investment performance of individual investors. Journal of Finance, 55, 773–806.