Seems like I am never going to get a midlife crisis
I always thought I would get the mother of all midlife crises. Ok, I don’t have the money to build penis-shaped rockets like Jeff Bezos, but I was always a well-behaved and conformist teenager. So I thought I would eventually act out and become a rebellious middle-aged man, get myself a red sports car and an 18-year-old girlfriend with the right ‘assets’ and ruin my life that way. Unfortunately, it seems I am simply not narcissistic enough for that either.
There has long been a theory that the only people who get a midlife crisis are narcissists. Alan Piper from Leeds University updated these results with the help of the Socioeconomic Panel survey of thousands of Germans (hence, this study is highly relevant to me).
He split narcissistic tendencies into two categories. The first is self-admiration (“I am a special person and this gives me strength”). I am definitely guilty of that because – well – I am special. The second is antagonistic rivalry (“Most people are basically losers”). I am not guilty of that because, in my view, only about 90% of people are losers. Just kidding….
The chart below shows four lines plotting self-reported life satisfaction against age. For both men and women, the results are split into people with above-average antagonistic rivalry and below-average rivalry. Only men with high antagonistic rivalry scores see their life satisfaction drop well into old age. These are the grumpy old men that you meet online and in the White House these days, and they will never be happy in life. Plus, they are much more likely to suffer from a midlife crisis and cheat on their wives.
But more generally, while most people have a low in their life satisfaction around middle age, people who score high on self-admirational narcissism tend to have higher life satisfaction across gender and age and a much shallower or no midlife crisis. People who score high on antagonistic narcissism are not only less happy in life but also suffer deeper and longer midlife crises. Which goes to show once again that I am special because I am not in that risk category.
Life satisfaction and antagonistic narcissism
Source: Piper (2025)
The self-admiration versus antagonistic rivalry split maps almost perfectly onto investing styles. The self-admirational investor thinks "I have a unique edge" and recovers from losses because their confidence is internally sourced. The antagonistic investor thinks "the market is stupid and everyone else is wrong" which means every drawdown is an identity crisis because being right is the whole architecture of their self-worth.
honestly this explains about 80% of finance twitter. the permanently bearish macro accounts who've been calling the crash since 2012 are basically the high-antagonistic-rivalry men in that chart, grinding their life satisfaction down to zero while the index makes new highs without their permission. the self-admiration cohort just adjusts their positioning and moves on. probably also explains why the best traders I've come across tend to be quietly confident rather than loudly combative, their ego isnt attached to any single call being right.
comic gold!
This is very useful reminder not to become a frustrated old guy who thinks he's the smartest one in the room.
Somehow it brings to mind what The Mooch recently said about non-athletic men in their post-50s. He says they come in two groups. Firstly, those who didn't get laid in High School, but got over it. And then, there are those like Larry Summers, at whom the fact that he didn't get laid in High School was always gnawing.