In October 2017, Taiwan’s weighted index reached 10,700 points—a five-year high.

If you had been bearish on the market since the 2008 financial crisis—and trust me, many smart people were—by 2017, you had been slapped in the face by the market for nearly ten years. Every time you thought “this rally has peaked,” the market responded with another red candlestick telling you: your judgment doesn’t matter to it.

This wasn’t a phenomenon unique to Taiwan. Across the Pacific, the US Dow Jones broke through 23,000 points during the same period—a historic high. South Korea’s KOSPI was also hovering near multi-year highs. The global market narrative was synchronized: up.

Those who went short had long since been carried out, who knows how many times.

But what exactly was fueling this rally?

On the surface, it was the prospect of economic recovery. After 2008, governments rolled out unprecedented fiscal stimulus and monetary easing policies. Economic indicators improved year by year—employment rates recovered, corporate profits grew—every metric seemed to say “the worst is over.”

But if you peel back that surface layer, you see another story: central banks printing money frantically.

US quantitative easing (QE), the European Central Bank’s negative interest rate policies, the three arrows of Japan’s Abenomics—these policies created trillions in liquidity. Excess capital urgently needed harbors to dock. Stock markets, real estate, bonds, even cryptocurrencies—every asset class was pushed higher by surplus liquidity.

So the question becomes: were markets rising because the economy was genuinely improving, or because there was too much money?

Honestly, nobody knows. Or more precisely: everyone has an explanation, but nobody can prove theirs is correct.

This reminds me of a phenomenon I repeatedly observed as a strategy consultant.

Clients often asked us: “Will this market trend continue?” “Will our digital transformation investments pay off?” “Will our competitor’s strategy succeed?”

What these questions have in common is: they assume the future is predictable.

I’ve seen too many companies spend massive resources creating beautiful five-year plans, only to be slapped by reality in the first year. Not because the planning was poor—the analysis was solid, the logic clear, the data comprehensive—but because reality never cooperates with your Excel spreadsheet.

The mistakes companies make are structurally identical to those investors make: overconfidence in their own judgment and underestimating systemic complexity.

A financial analyst looks at a hundred indicators and thinks they understand the market. A corporate CEO reads five industry reports and thinks they understand trends. But markets and trends aren’t linear systems—they’re complex adaptive systems where variables interact with each other, feedback loops are nested layer upon layer, and a tiny perturbation can trigger chain reactions.

You can understand certain parts of the system, but you cannot predict the overall trajectory. This isn’t a problem of insufficient intelligence—it’s a characteristic of the system itself.

The 2008 financial crisis is the perfect example.

Before the crisis, Wall Street’s brightest minds—PhDs from top universities, students of Nobel Prize-winning economists—designed sophisticated financial models that told everyone risk had been dispersed, hedged, and controlled. Subprime mortgages were packaged into CDOs, CDOs were rated AAA, credit default swaps (CDS) were treated as insurance—everything was under the control of mathematical models.

Until it wasn’t.

The week Lehman Brothers collapsed, the global financial system nearly imploded within forty-eight hours. Those sophisticated models didn’t predict this scenario because the “normal market conditions” they assumed were themselves an illusion. Market behavior under extreme conditions is completely different from normal conditions—and extreme conditions are precisely when you need models to help most.

This isn’t mocking those financial engineers. They were indeed brilliant, and their models were indeed effective most of the time. But “effective most of the time” and “effective at critical moments” are two different things. And markets only determine life and death at critical moments.

Back to the 2017 market highs.

The two most mainstream narratives at the time were: optimists said “improving economic fundamentals provide real support for this rally”; pessimists said “it’s all a bubble propped up by money printing, bound to collapse sooner or later.”

Looking back (I’m writing this in 2026), both sides were partly right and partly wrong. Markets did crash in 2020 due to the pandemic—but not because bubbles burst, rather because of a black swan. Then after even larger-scale money printing by governments worldwide, markets soared to even higher levels.

If you made any judgment in 2017 based on “I know what the future holds”—whether bullish or bearish—you were probably wrong. Not wrong about direction, but about the path. Markets eventually went where you expected, but took a completely different route than you imagined.

This is why I increasingly distrust predictions and increasingly trust preparation.

I’m not saying “do nothing.” Inaction isn’t humility—it’s surrender.

What I mean is: true wisdom isn’t knowing the answers, but admitting you don’t know—then making the best preparations under the premise of not knowing.

For investors, this means diversified allocation, controlled exposure, not betting your life on any single judgment. These aren’t sophisticated strategies—they’re basic survival discipline.

For businesses, this means strategic planning must be flexible, organizational structures must be able to adjust quickly, not putting all resources into one “I think this will happen” scenario.

For individuals, this means—

Admitting you don’t know what will happen tomorrow. This isn’t weakness—it’s honesty. Then carrying this honesty forward, continuing to live earnestly, choose earnestly, and take responsibility earnestly.

Market rises and falls have nothing to do with which political party is in power, nothing to do with your political leanings, your beliefs, your educational background. It’s a torrent that transcends geography and politics. Facing an unfathomable future, facing the intricate complexities of global capital dynamics—

It’s hard not to be humble.

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