Member-only story
The Illusion of Growth: What “Outperformance” Really Means
Why most investors misunderstand returns — and what changes when you zoom out
Market Unfiltered6 min read·Just now--
I used to look at stock charts the way most people do — linear, upward-sloping, reassuring. The Nasdaq 100 going from a few hundred points to tens of thousands feels like undeniable progress.
But that perspective started to crack when I shifted to logarithmic charts.
A log scale doesn’t care about absolute points. It cares about percentage change. And that small tweak completely reframes history.
Suddenly, the dot-com bubble and the 2008 financial crisis don’t look like isolated events — they become structural reminders that exponential growth slows over time.
Even assets like Bitcoin show this clearly. Early gains were explosive. Now, every doubling requires exponentially more capital.
That’s the first mental reset: growth isn’t linear, and it never was.
