Macro Minute: Week of March 31, 2025

Today’s post is a personal one that I hope adds some insight into several personality traits that I have learned to harness to help me be a more consistent and disciplined investor. To begin with I have come to recognize that I am dyslexic. As my youngest son was diagnosed with dyslexia, I realized that I have a lot of the same behaviors. I have taken numerous screeners, and each one has been scored as positive for dyslexia. I went through the school system during a time that these things were not caught as often, or if they were, it was not thought severe enough to garner intervention. 

My wife is an educator and has told me for a long time that she suspected I was dyslexic, but it wasn’t until my son got diagnosed that I started to make the connection for myself. You may think as I did that if you have dyslexia, you cannot read or write. I remember from my childhood that Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show was portrayed as having dyslexia, and that it was described as seeing words or letters backwards. What I have come to find out is that my brain interprets information differently. While I could read and write, I was not very fast, and it appeared more difficult for me than others. I still catch myself pausing if I must write a ‘b’ or ‘d’ in a word to make sure I use the correct one.  

As much as reading and writing was a struggle for me, math is where I excelled. Numbers always made sense. I was always on the school math team and I initially thought I may end up a mathematics major. After going through Calculus II in both high school and college, I started asking myself “what is the point of these higher end math classes”?  If I would have had different instructors that pointed out the end goal of mathematics, I possibly would have stuck with it. I remember at the time thinking that a math degree meant that I would need to teach, and that held no appeal to me. It all clicked when I began taking business courses. Economics made so much sense to me and blended math with real world application. 

Alongside my youngest son, I have learned that history is full of brilliant and successful people that have dyslexia. People like Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Keanu Reeves, and Agatha Christie. I named just a few different individuals here that span a range of disciplines to illustrate that it does not matter the field, it holds a successful dyslexic person. It was important for me to realize that it is not a reflection of intellect, but of processing. Growing up, I always knew that it appeared that I saw the world differently than other people, but I never made the connection as to why. 

Here is an example of how my brain works and how I have learned to use it to my advantage. While I struggle remembering people’s names, I can recall obscure details that I may have only heard once about a person’s life. For instance, if I have had a conversation with someone, I may not recall their name the next time I see them, but I can probably remember intricate details that they shared with me. I feel like this has allowed me to have deeper relationships with people. 

Another disadvantage that I turned into an advantage is note taking. In college, I took a handful of classes with my now wife. She always made A’s on every course she took and was the best student I have ever seen. She would take notes and study them vigorously. Because I am dyslexic, note taking does not really work for me, but I am a great audible learner. I would simply have to attend the class and listen to the lecture to make a good grade in the course. It frustrated my wife to no end. She always made the better grades, but I tended to retain more of the knowledge. To people observing, it would appear I was not trying, but it was the way my brain worked. Also, my handwriting was/is so bad, it is not clear that if I had taken notes it would have been any benefit to me. 

I never read a book for pleasure until my junior or senior year of college. Once I started reading though, it has been something that I do continually. I rarely read a physical book now that we have audible books. My audible library has over 800 titles, and I have one going almost every day. I laugh to myself that as a dyslexic I ended up with a minor in English. I also attribute my love of fiction to a young adult literature course I took in college.  

One other quirk is that my brain looks at the world as puzzle pieces fitting together to make a whole. This made my Economics courses much easier and dare I say “fun”. It is also how I look at the macro-economic environment to make investment decisions. Being able to understand how an economic data point could cause stocks to rise or fall or being able to judge what a central bank will do based on the macro-economic factors involved is incredibly useful.  

I processed data differently. Economics was and still is my favorite topic, and almost no one else in my courses enjoyed the subject. Studying how all the different parts of an economy work together, including how human interactions can dictate outcomes, has always fascinated me. 

In wrapping up this post, I want to say that we all have idiosyncrasies within ourselves. It is how we chose to embrace them and use them to our advantage that matter. I have been able to acknowledge what my strengths and weaknesses are and try to lean into my strengths over time. I am never going to be the fastest reader or writer, and standardized tests are not easy for me, but knowing and retaining knowledge does come easier. Fitting parts together to make a whole, looking at the big picture, and having deeper relationships have all helped me through the years. Thanks for letting me share a bit more personal reflection this week. I am sure we will be back to our regular macro and markets next week. 

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