It seems to be a natural law that negative things happen quickly, while positive things happen slowly and steadily. Nobody becomes rich overnight, but many people become poor overnight. Think of it this way. Can there be an event that causes the world's economic output to fall catastrophically in just one year, say by 10 percent? Yes, absolutely. The corona pandemic could have been such an event.

However, can the opposite also happen? Can something happen that would lead to a similar increase in a year? No, definitely not. The probability of such a miracle is close to zero.

Can an individual become fabulously rich very quickly? Yes, it happens to some people around the world every day. Can the same thing happen to a small business? To a large business? To an entire sector? To a country? To the entire world? As you go up the scale, the ability for such changes diminishes.

However, the size and speed of the potential negative shock is always much greater. At every scale, apart from small examples like winning the lottery, negative surprises can be much more powerful and sudden than positive surprises. The equity market is a great example of this phenomenon. Equity market crashes (big crashes) dominate the mind, while profits, no matter how big, are realized over months or years. As a result, growth is ultimately taken for granted while crashes dominate the mind.

Equity investment disasters like 2008-09 attract far more attention than long periods of profitability. 15-16 years ago, at its pre-crisis peak, the BSE Sensex was just under 21,000. By March 2009, it had hit a low of 8,325. This was a major investment disaster that any equity investor will remember.

The BSE Sensex is now (as I write) at over 76,000 points (nearly nine times that peak) and investors have been making money steadily for the past several years with some interruptions. That is, the profits have been continuous, with some interruptions. Because they are continuous, they do not leave any mark on the mind as an event.