Red Line 43

Write your rules before you need them.

You have €10,000 in Europe’s biggest shares and all is calm. Pull the line down to where you would sell.

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Red Line 43 of 48 · Shelf 8 · Your plan

Red Line 43 of 48

Decide in a calm week what you will do in a panicked one.

The idea

In a fall, fear writes the plan. Rules written before, in a calm week, let your calmer self decide for your frightened one.

What a rule looks like

Short and concrete. For example: if prices fall 30%, I keep my monthly amount and change nothing; I look at the mix once a year, in January.

Try it

Write three rules: what you buy each month, when you look, and what a fall changes. Keep them where you will see them in a bad week.

Where it bends

Rewrite the rules when your life changes, not when the market does.

This game’s numbers

How strong the proof is

ThinMixedGoodStrong

CMixed proof

If-then plans made ahead clearly help people keep goals, and locked-in saving worked in a trial, but rules for market panics have not been tested.

Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-analysis of Effects and Processes Peter M. Gollwitzer & Paschal Sheeran, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38, 69-119, 2006
Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence From a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines Nava Ashraf, Dean Karlan & Wesley Yin, Quarterly Journal of Economics 121(2), 635-672, 2006

Checked 2 Nov 2026 · How we grade

A Strong proof: Many good studies or long official data, from different teams or countries, point the same way.
B Good proof, with limits: Solid studies agree on the direction, but the size varies, or the data covers few places or few kinds of people.
C Mixed proof: Some good studies for, some against, or the evidence covers only part of the line.
D Thin proof: Mostly one book’s argument, one survey or stories. It may be wise, but it has not been tested well.
= True by the sums: It follows from arithmetic, so no study can overturn it. We still show what real data says.

Where it comes from

Charles D. Ellis, Winning the Loser’s Game (1998). In our words, not quoted.

See it in numbers: Your plan · Order (From Zero)

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