The author, Christopher Hitchins, once said, “Everyone has a good book inside them … but in most cases that’s where it should stay.” We have all heard that quote, well the first half anyway. Why? Because it resonates. Because we do all have our own stories to tell. Stories that are partly shaped from nature. Our genes, our temperaments. Partly from nurture. The families we grew up in, the schools we went to. Together, these things write our internal book. The ‘book’ that determines how we see the world. Our values. Our hopes. Our fears. That’s our story.

Countries have stories, too. Part nature, geography, weather, natural resources. Part nurture, centuries of war, trade, empire, migration. Stories passed down in classrooms, films and flags. Britain’s colonial history. China’s “century of humiliation.” Japan’s tsunamis. These stories don’t just sit in history books; they shape a nation’s identity. Israel’s story is one born from trauma. The Holocaust. A horror so deep that its retelling has framed identity for over 80 years. And with trauma comes traits. Hyper-vigilance, a sense of threat, fight-or-flight. But Hamas has a story too. One of dispossession, displacement, and decades of anger. Both stories are real. Both painful. But the problem is, no one seems to listen to anyone else’s story.

This is because listening to someone else’s story means stepping outside your own. And that is hard. Psychologists call it ‘cognitive reframing’. The ability to see things from another angle. Most people: you, or I, or even presidents, aren’t good at it. Especially if we don’t understand that we are seeing things through a particular lens in the first place.

Financial markets have their own story too. It’s a story of crisis. Think of the stock market and what comes to mind? The Wall Street crash of 1929. Black Monday in 1987. The 2008 Financial Crisis. Everyone’s heard of those. Even the South Sea Bubble from 300 years ago still echoes. But have you heard about 1989? Or 2003? Or 2009, 2016, or 2021? Years when the UK’s FTSE 100 rose over 15%? Most people are unaware. So, we are shaped by the bad money stories. We even name them. It gives them more weight!

As money affects everyone, so this fear story affects us all. Investors, regulators, even governments. It’s why UK pension funds have moved from investing 50% of their money in UK equities in 2000, to just 4% today. Still viewing things through the goggles of crisis, we’ve failed to reframe the story. The cost of this to the UK alone has been untold amounts of wealth. But one corner of the world is different. Financial advice of course. Look at almost any financial planner’s website and you will find the phrase “First we listen to you”. It’s prominent and everywhere. But isn’t that strange? In a world where countries won’t listen to each other, and investors are paralysed by past trauma, somehow Financial Advisers are doing the one thing the world struggles with, listening.

So, yes, MVAM Financial Advice breaks the mould — we obviously listen so much better than everyone else! But truthfully, we are probably no better than anyone else.  Hitchens was probably right: maybe most stories should stay inside us. But perhaps the best thing any of us can do, before we make financial decisions, or indeed any decisions, is to take the time to understand the story we are already carrying.

By Craig Harper, Managing Director