Dull

Our brains aren't designed for building wealth. They do this instead:

Panic selling. Markets drop 10% and your brain screams to stop the bleeding. You sell. Then the market recovers and you've locked in losses instead of riding them out. In 2024, investors withdrew money during or just before the best-performing quarters, missing the rallies entirely. The average equity investor earned 16.5% while the S&P 500 returned 25%. That 8.5 percentage point gap wasn't bad luck — it was bad timing.

Trading too much. Every trade is a bet that you know something the market doesn't. You probably don't. Studies show the most active traders consistently underperform passive investors, and the problem is getting worse. Since 2020, poor market timing has cost investors roughly double what it did before, about 1% annually. That compounds. Over 20 years, a 1% annual drag turns $1 million into $345,000 less than if you'd done nothing.

Buying high. You hear about a stock after it's already up 40%. You buy. It corrects. You panic and sell at a loss. Research shows that only 5% of investors drive market momentum, the other 95% follow, usually too late. By the time something is obviously good, the opportunity is usually gone.

Sitting on cash. You're waiting for a dip, a correction, a better entry point. The market drifts up while your cash earns nothing. Time in the market beats timing the market, but that doesn't make it easier to press the button. Meanwhile, every month you wait is a month of compounding you don't get back.

One button. Enter an amount, hold the button, money goes into index funds. 50% VTI (US total market), 50% VXUS (international). No stock picker. No options. No crypto. No "trending" section. These features are missing on purpose.

Asymmetric friction. Buying is instant. Selling isn't possible. You'd have to log into Alpaca's website and do it there. Your panicked 2am self probably won't bother.

Hidden balance. Shows what you've invested, not what it's worth today. No red numbers. No green numbers. No reason to check obsessively. It doesn't matter what it's worth right now.

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