Feeling sure about prosperity? Dhirendra Kumar says that’s your cue to pause

The market is celebrating. The Reserve Bank of India just pulled off a surprise double cut—slashing the repo rate by 50 basis points and the CRR by a full percentage point. 

Social feeds are flooded with “virtuous cycle” charts, confident forecasts, and declarations that prosperity was inevitable.

But investor and Value Research founder Dhirendra Kumar is sounding a different note: caution.

He calls out the market’s sudden certainty as a classic case of hindsight masquerading as foresight. “When economic indicators align favourably,” Kumar wrote on X, “the explanations flow like the early monsoon rain.” But if these outcomes were so obvious, why didn’t everyone see them coming?

The answer, he says, is simple: they didn’t.

Kumar deconstructs the myth of the “perfectly choreographed” economy. GDP is up, inflation is tame, the currency is stable, and liquidity is high. Suddenly, everyone’s a macro expert, retrofitting today’s numbers into yesterday’s storyline. Forgotten are the forecasts from just months ago warning that high rates, weak demand, and global headwinds would crush growth.

“This phenomenon,” Kumar writes, “extends far beyond macroeconomic analysis.” Every bull market, he argues, produces its share of late-arriving visionaries—investors who ignored sectors on the way up, then claim to have called the rally all along.

The real risk? Believing the narrative too much. During boom times, overconfidence leads investors to chase perfection and ignore risk. During downturns, fear keeps them sidelined just when opportunity is emerging.

Kumar urges investors to resist extrapolation. The same factors that drive a virtuous cycle today—like controlled inflation or falling crude—can reverse just as quickly. Stability isn’t permanence. Prosperity isn’t predestined.

That’s why, he says, the smartest investors don’t anchor to stories. They anchor to goals. Risk tolerance, diversification, and long-term discipline matter more than any central bank surprise or trending chart.

The rally may feel inevitable now. But Kumar leaves readers with a sharper truth: in investing, the only thing that moves in a straight line is the narrative—until it doesn’t.