There’s a quote most investors have heard at some point. Warren Buffett said it decades ago, and it still gets passed around: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
The first time I heard it, I thought I understood it. It made logical sense. Buy when prices are down. Move when others are panicking. Simple.
But understanding a principle in theory and actually applying it when the moment arrives are two completely different things. And the last few years in real estate taught me that distinction in a way I won’t forget.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Any investment involves risk, and you should consult your financial advisor, attorney, or CPA before making any investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author and associated entities disclaim any liability for loss incurred as a result of the use of this material or its content.
Why Physicians Are Particularly Vulnerable to This
Most physician investors I talk to are doing one of two things.
They’re either waiting for certainty that never comes, sitting on cash until the environment feels safer. Or they’re following macro predictions, listening to economists and media voices make contradictory calls, and trying to make sense of it all before they commit.
Neither of those is a strategy. But for physicians specifically, the waiting problem has a texture that’s worth naming.
We are trained to gather data before acting. In clinical medicine, that instinct saves lives. You don’t make a diagnosis on incomplete information if you can avoid it. You order the test. You wait for the result. You confirm before you move.
That same instinct, applied to investing, becomes a trap. Because in markets, there is no clean result to wait for. The data is always incomplete. The picture never gets fully clear. And waiting for certainty in an environment that doesn’t offer it isn’t caution. It’s just a more comfortable version of paralysis.
The real cost isn’t a missed investment. It’s years of compounding that never started. That’s the number most physicians don’t stop to calculate.
The Loneliness of Going Against the Crowd
There’s another layer to this that doesn’t get talked about enough.
Most physicians don’t have colleagues who are actively investing in alternatives. When you decide to move while others are sitting still, you’re not just going against media sentiment. You’re doing something that none of the people around you are doing, with no one in your immediate circle who can validate the decision.
That’s a lonelier version of the contrarian problem than Buffett was describing when he said it.
In the broader investing world, being contrarian means tuning out CNBC and going the other direction. For physicians, it often means being the only one in your practice group who’s even thinking about this. No peer confirmation. No one who’s been through it to call. Just you, the analysis, and a decision that feels uncomfortably solitary.
That social isolation is real, and it makes acting on a contrarian thesis significantly harder than the principle suggests.
What I Got Wrong
A few years ago, real estate felt expensive. Interest rates had been historically low for a long time, and the direction of travel seemed clear. Rates would eventually move. I had a thesis. I was in deals I believed were structured to handle a rate environment shift. We’d looked at historical patterns, talked to operators we trusted, and felt reasonably positioned.
What I didn’t model for was the velocity.
Here’s where medicine actually gives us a useful frame. In clinical practice, you learn early that direction matters, but rate of change matters just as much. A sodium that’s been slowly trending down over weeks is a different clinical picture than one that drops the same amount in 24 hours. The number might look similar on paper. The urgency is completely different.
Investing works the same way. I had a read on direction. What I hadn’t stress-tested was the speed of the scenario. Deals built to handle a gradual rate shift got caught in a fast one. Refinancing timelines compressed. Business plans that made sense in one environment stopped making sense in another.
The failure wasn’t the principle. It was that I asked “where is this going” without asking “how fast could it get there.” Those are two different questions, and both need answers before you enter a position.
The Difference Between Timing and Positioning
Here’s the distinction I’ve come to think matters most.
Timing means predicting peaks and troughs. You’re trying to call the bottom, buy in, ride the recovery. Almost nobody does this consistently. The data on market timing is not kind, and that holds even for professional fund managers with full research teams.
Positioning means something different. It means understanding where you are in the cycle with reasonable confidence, and adjusting your exposure, leverage, and liquidity accordingly. You’re not predicting what comes next. You’re reading where things are and making decisions that hold up across a range of scenarios, not just the one you’re hoping for.
There’s an investor named Howard Marks who runs Oaktree Capital. He tends to do his best work when markets are falling apart. What I’ve noticed studying him is that he’s not operating on better data than everyone else. What he has is a framework for reading where investor sentiment sits relative to underlying reality, and he builds his conviction and his liquidity before the pressure moment arrives.
So when the opportunity opens, he’s not making the call under duress. He’s executing a decision he already made in a calmer moment.
That’s the gap most physician investors have. We’re making the biggest decisions at exactly the wrong time, often in the small windows between patients or late at night when we finally have a moment to look at something. That’s not a good decision-making environment for anything, let alone a six-figure capital commitment.
Four Things That Have Changed How I Think About This
I’m still refining this. These aren’t principles I’ve held for years. They came from expensive lessons.
Separate direction from velocity. In medicine you already know this. A trend moving slowly and a trend moving fast require different responses, even if they’re pointed the same direction. The same is true in investing. Ask both questions before you enter any position.
Liquidity runway comes before the thesis. It doesn’t matter how right your directional read is if you can’t hold the position long enough for it to play out. Physicians often have high incomes but tighter liquidity than people assume, because so much is tied up in retirement accounts, a mortgage, practice overhead, or existing deals. Know your real number before you commit.
Set your criteria before the noise starts. When things are quiet, that’s the time to decide what you would act on if the environment shifts. If you wait until things are falling apart, you’re making decisions under emotional and social pressure you didn’t need to invite. Pre-decide your posture.
Learn to sit in the discomfort of being early. Being early and being wrong look identical for a stretch of time. If you can’t hold that without second-guessing the position, you’ll never apply a contrarian framework when it actually counts.
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Where This Leaves You Right Now
The questions worth sitting with aren’t “when is the bottom” or “when do rates come down.” Those are timing questions and they’ll send you in circles.
The better questions: What is sentiment telling you in the markets you care about? Where is there genuine distress that others are avoiding? What is your actual liquidity position, and if an opportunity opened in the next six months, are you ready to act on it?
Physician investors tend to overthink the analysis and underprepare the infrastructure. The math on the deal gets attention. The balance sheet that lets you act on the deal gets less.
The Real Lesson
What cycle investing actually requires isn’t a better prediction. It’s a better process. One you build in calm conditions, before the pressure arrives.
The Buffett quote is right. But it only works if you’ve done the preparation to act on it. Most people hear it, nod along, and then freeze when the fearful moment actually arrives. Not because the principle is wrong. Because they hadn’t built the capacity to act on it before they needed to.
Medicine trained you to read direction. The velocity piece, and the infrastructure to act when the moment comes, that’s the part you have to build yourself.I’ve been on the wrong side of that. I’ve also learned from it. And that learning, expensive as it was, is what I’d point any physician investor toward before anything else.
Disclaimer: I am not a CPA, attorney, or financial advisor. The information in this post is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as tax, legal, or financial advice. Please consult a qualified professional about your specific situation before making any decisions.
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Peter Kim, MD is the founder of Passive Income MD, the creator of Passive Real Estate Academy, and offers weekly education through his Monday podcast, the Passive Income MD Podcast. Join our community at the Passive Income Doc Facebook Group.
