What a Bear Market Does to Your Reading Habits
The sources change, the tone changes, and the change is in the reader rather than in the sources.
I kept a note of what I was reading through a full cycle. The pattern in my own consumption was more revealing than anything I read.
What happened to my sources
During the advance: technical material, protocol documentation, things about how systems work.
Early in the decline: the same, plus more market commentary. The commentary arrived because I wanted an explanation for the price.
Mid-decline: almost entirely market commentary and criticism of the sector. I read several long pieces arguing that the whole thing was worthless, and found them more compelling than I would have a year earlier.
Late in the decline: almost nothing. Not from discipline. From fatigue.
Recovery: technical material again.
The interpretation
I read to manage a feeling rather than to learn something.
During advances, the feeling was curiosity and the reading was useful. During declines, the feeling was discomfort, and the reading was either seeking an explanation for the price or seeking permission to exit.
The critical pieces I found compelling mid-decline were not better than the ones published during the advance. Several were the same authors making the same arguments. What changed was my receptiveness.
Why this matters
The month-three rationalisation has a media component. The arguments that show up in your reading when you are uncomfortable are not selected by quality. They are selected by mood, both by you and by the publications, which produce criticism when criticism is what gets read.
If your position on an asset shifts in the same direction as its price, with the same timing, that is worth noticing. It suggests the reading is following the sentiment rather than informing it.
What I changed
A fixed reading list. Two sources that write about mechanisms, read regardless of what the market is doing. No additions during declines.
Primary sources for anything with a number. Protocol documentation, regulator publications, issuer disclosures, venue-level data from the venue I buy through rather than aggregated figures.
Reading criticism deliberately during advances. This is the one that has been most useful. The strongest arguments against something are best encountered when you are least motivated to dismiss them.
No market commentary at all. Not because it is worthless, but because my record shows I consume it as emotional management rather than as information.
The uncomfortable observation
The best reading I did in a full cycle happened during the boring periods, when neither fear nor excitement was directing it.
Those periods are also when I was least motivated to read anything, which is the ordinary shape of the problem: attention is available exactly when it is least useful.
This is a personal account of holding through market cycles. It describes what one person did and why. It is not a recommendation, and past cycles do not predict future ones.