One of the most common questions I see beneath investment articles is surprisingly simple:
“What’s your price target?”
I understand the appeal. We all want to know where the stock might be six months or a year from now.
But somewhere along the way, I realized that I almost never care about the answer.
The price target is just an output. It’s the final number produced by a much larger process. By itself, it tells me almost nothing.
What I really want to understand is everything that came before it.
I want to understand the model.
What assumptions is this analyst making? Which variables do they believe matter most? What evidence carries the greatest weight in their thinking? Just as importantly, what assumptions would cause them to change their mind?
Those questions are infinitely more valuable than a single number.
Once I understand someone’s model, I don’t need their price target anymore. I can build, update, and run my own model. I can adjust the assumptions, incorporate new information, and arrive at my own conclusion. The destination becomes far less interesting than the map that got us there.
Over time, I’ve noticed that this way of thinking has quietly spread into the rest of my life.
When I encounter someone whose conclusions are dramatically different from mine, I rarely find myself wondering how they could possibly believe such a thing. Instead, I become curious about the model they’re using to interpret the world.
What experiences shaped it?
What information are they seeing that I haven’t?
What assumptions are they making that differ from my own?
Perhaps most importantly, where might my own model be incomplete?
That doesn’t mean every model is equally good. Some are built on stronger evidence than others. Some explain reality better than others.
But I’ve found that humility begins the moment I stop treating conclusions as the thing to debate and start treating them as clues.
A conclusion is evidence of an underlying way of thinking. If I can understand that way of thinking, I don’t just learn what someone believes.
I learn why.
That’s where growth happens.
