2018 vs 2020: the same order — money, then faith — on different clocks

Comparison

What rhymes

The 2018 truckers' strike and COVID in 2020 are two shocks of different natures that left the same trail in the archive: capital came back before confidence. In both, domestic risk appetite hit the floor in the scare and then recomposed itself at once, while investor mood lagged behind, refusing to climb aboard. In 2018, the Perene Risk Index jumped from 14.6 to 93.6 in June with Ânima still pinned to the floor (11.2 to 13.2). In 2020, appetite retraced the path from 44.3 to 99.9 in June, and mood stayed depressed. The order was identical: money first, faith later.

What differs

The difference is in the clock. In 2018, sentiment caught up to flow by September — about three months — when Ânima crossed into positive territory. In 2020, faith took much longer: mood only joined appetite in November, about five months later, when Ânima made the largest advance in the series. Same sequence, different durations — the domestic shock of 2018 was digested faster than the global uncertainty of 2020.

What didn't happen

In neither case did confidence arrive alongside capital — and anyone who waited for it missed the re-entry. The intuitive reading — "sentiment confirms the turn before I believe in it" — fails in both episodes. In 2018, appetite spent months alone at the top while mood wavered; in 2020, even longer. And the lag has no fixed number: three months in one case, five in the other. Anyone treating the order as a calibrated clock would have been contradicted by the difference between the two.

Honest verdict

Both episodes confirm the regularity — money arrives before faith — and, at the same time, warn against using it as a stopwatch. The order repeats; the duration, almost never. Knowing that mood trails flow helps make sense of the present; knowing exactly when, the archive does not promise.

Continue the story: The 2018 truckers' strike · What happened after fear priced everything · What the Ânima Index is →

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Characters: Flow (risk appetite) · Mood