When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: The Power of Spotting Narrative Shifts

This is a post about reading and interpreting information. There’s a very personal, re: career, oriented through line. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have to use some political and market headlines to make my point but - this matters a lot to me. Take a read and let me know what you think.

Everybody knew Biden seemed too old. That's an apolitical statement, for the record. But - what can you do? What could you do?

When the debate happened (yes, THAT one), most of us let out a collective "ugh" in personal embarrassment for the guy, and then stuff surrounding his campaign started to change really fast.

Looking back on how we captured that moment and broke it all down on an old episode of Breaking News, where Ben Hunt explained to Jack Forehand and I “the Emperor's New Clothes moment” (and the game theory) behind what was playing out in real time, is a real moment of pride for me.

How before the debate everybody knew it, but nobody said it. After the debate, once people started saying it, everybody could admit to what they knew and - that was the end of Biden's bid.

That’s a powerful moment not just because we were part of calling out the shift, but because those moments happen across life. Headlines are useful teachers here. But the lessons run way deeper.

A few years before that, I was making a career move. I wrote about it. This quote still feels relevant too:

I had been living in the "Bring your whole self to work! Uh, except those parts. And those too, and yeah – maybe just this tiny piece of you works for us come to think of it, so file these TPS reports and see you Monday" world for too long.

This is what happened when I left my big (fancy!) financial firm job for a small, indie (hello employee owned) company in 2022. The corporate narratives I was hearing didn't match what I was seeing, and I wanted to be somewhere that embraced what made me different, not just a tiny, corporate approved “acceptable” piece of myself. I recognized the pattern easily enough, even if it took me a long time to accept it – when the stories institutions tell themselves no longer match reality, it's time to shift.

These narrative shifts don't happen every day, but they're recognizable when they do. In Ben Hunt's recent piece "It's the Smart Move," he’s doing the Biden common knowledge moment thing, again. he describes a version of this pattern perfectly through a Godfather reference:

"Now listen, whoever comes to you with this Barzini meeting, he's the traitor. Don't forget that."

What makes these moments so powerful is they reveal something that was hidden in plain sight all along. Sometimes they're smart, sometimes they're dumb. They're always rooted in human psychology. Trust shifts on how the things everybody talks about suddenly get spoken, written, and reported differently.

The one hack that's changed how I consume information, that keeps my attention from consuming me, is a phrase Ben taught me a long time ago: Always ask, "Why am I reading this now?"

About a week ago, there were two bankruptcies in the private credit world. If you're not in finance or business, these probably got lost in your stream of content consciousness. First Brands and Tricolor - $22 billion in bankruptcies that seemed to come out of nowhere, but as Ben detailed in our Excess Returns interview discussing his note, these aren't isolated incidents. They're symptoms of something bigger. How much bigger is TBD. Put that in your further thinking pile, or fill it out in your TPS report, whichever is most warranted.

We're trained to think this way in finance. To always try and look 2 or 3 moves forward. And we're also painfully familiar with modeling out scenarios to be conservative, without losing the idea that people of power and influence will swoop in to make their own play and - that's just the world we live in. Moral hazards abound in policy land. We've gotten used to bailouts, bail ins, and all sorts of interventions.

But this private credit situation (and AI, and housing, and some other areas right now too), they're examples of narratives where we're all whispering to each other already but nobody is saying anything out loud. I’ll be clear if not blunt here - the bankruptcies are somebody saying something out loud. They're very much in pattern with Biden flubbing the debate performance.

Whether you watch my most recent interview with Ben on Excess Returns and sign up at Perscient Pro or not is up to you, but - you want to build your "why am I reading this now" mental muscle. 

Non finance friends and readers I'm looking at you. I don't want you to see this and think you don't have much application for it. That's why I included my job story. This is important on a personal level to talk about.

Here are three specific techniques I've learned to develop that can be applied anywhere:

Notice repeated phrases across sources. When multiple media outlets, advisors, or friends suddenly use identical language to describe something, your Spidey sense should tingle. In the private credit world, listen for phrases like "manageable complications" and "contained issues" – the same language used before the 2008 crisis. At work it’s corporate slogans that don’t match actions

Track expert explanation shifts. The Apollo situation with First Brands is instructive here – they were invited to participate in a working capital group for First Brands in 2024, saw the books, and then took a short position against them. Actions speak louder than public statements. See that corporate slogans bit from above one more time.

Identify disconnects between insider actions and public messaging. When someone like Chuck Prince says "as long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance" while privately preparing for the music to stop, that's your signal. Watch what people do, not just what they say. My old employer’s catch phrase, how “The interests of our clients must come first,” will probably forever haunt me.

Being critical about the stories we let into our heads is being critical about the stories we tell ourselves. And the words we use. And how it shifts not just our actions, but our behaviors and feelings around the relationships that matter most in our lives.

You have to start with your personal filter. Conversations like this remind me how important it is. It's a big, scary, and noisy world out there - having the right critical thinking skills to take care of yourself and your people, always matters.

The most powerful insight I've gained from watching these narrative shifts: trust builds slowly, but it breaks quickly. When everyone suddenly knows what everyone already knew, the world can change overnight - in politics, in finance, and in your everyday life.

Just like it did when I chose to leave for a place where I could bring my whole self to work, not just file TPS reports on Monday. That action meant the world to me. Practicing asking “Why am I reading this now” just might do the same for you.