Company Interview / Wealthy & Wise | The stories that move markets

This week on Wealthy & Wise, we ask why investors get so caught up in a good story.

From bubbles to crashes, the market has a way of convincing us that this time really is different. But why are stories so powerful, how do they distort our judgment, and what can a value investor do about it?

It comes down to how we're wired. Humans are built to believe shared stories, and when we're uncertain we look to what everyone else is doing. That instinct built civilisations, but it also sweeps us up in fear and greed. The real danger is rarely the outright fraud where the emperor has no clothes. It's the story with a genuine kernel of truth, where sentiment simply runs away from the fundamentals. The value investor's defence is simple: look at what you're actually paying against what the business has earned over the past decade, because a dollar of earnings is worth the same no matter what the story says about where it came from.

Teaminvest's Andrew Coleman explains why we're so easily seduced by a narrative, then puts the theory to the test against some of the market's biggest stories: the 2001 tech crash, the green transition, and the AI boom playing out right now. Plus a viewer question on a company that just keeps delivering.

The stories and stocks in the frame: the 2001 tech crash (Cisco, Microsoft, Amazon and Nvidia), the green transition through Whitehaven Coal (ASX:WHC), the AI boom, and Data#3 (ASX:DTL).