How to Debate Finance Without Being a Jerk
A few rules can help prevent financial discussions from becoming as overheated and useless as our political exchanges.
What are you trying to say?
Photographer: Philip Pacheco/Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesThe arrest of a partisan extremist who mailed explosive devices to political and media critics of President Donald Trump was a reminder of what happens when rhetoric turns nasty. As political debates become emotionally charged, people tend to make irrational decisions.
It isn’t much better when it comes to discussing investing, minus the mail bombs. With real capital on the line, the internet affords all of us an opportunity to engage in financial discussions that can easily run amok. Just a decade ago it was almost impossible to imagine that anyone could have a debate about markets and economic issues with the likes of Cliff Asness and Ray Dalio and Richard Thaler and Nassim Taleb (okay, maybe not Taleb), but that is the state of FinTwit today, as financial social media is called.