The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed albums in history, having famously spent 741 weeks (nearly 14 years) on the Billboard Top LPs chart from 1973 to 1988.
Source: Wikipedia
There is something haunting about the album's ending…
After an album spent exploring greed, time, conflict, pressure, and mortality, the final songs — Brain Damage and Eclipse — arrive like the emotional reckoning at the end of a long journey. The music feels uneasy. Reflective. Almost claustrophobic. Roger Waters wrote much of Brain Damage as a meditation on mental instability and the fragile line between rational thought and chaos, inspired in part by the tragic unraveling of former bandmate Syd Barrett.
To set the mood for today's post, I am including a YouTube link to the album's closing songs, complete with the lyrics for you to reflect upon, below.
Pink Floyd Brain Damage/Eclipse (lyrics)
What has always struck me most about those songs is not simply the theme of madness. It is the idea that the voices surrounding us slowly shape how we see the world.
“And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes…”
That line has stayed with me for decades because, after nearly forty years as a financial advisor, I have learned something important:
Most bad financial decisions are not made in isolation. They are nudged, reinforced, and echoed by the voices around us.
Sometimes by television personalities. Sometimes by social media. Sometimes by coworkers, neighbors, siblings, or lifelong friends. And sometimes by the loudest voice of all — the one inside our own head.
Rick Kahler recently wrote an article about what he calls “shadow advisors.” They are the unofficial people who influence our financial decisions, whether we realize it or not. They are not fiduciaries. They are not planners. They are often not qualified at all. Yet they can have enormous influence over how people save, invest, spend, and react emotionally to markets.
Over the years, I have seen the influence of shadow advisors everywhere.
Sometimes they take the form of people you know, love, trust, and interact with daily…
The brother-in-law who always “has a great idea.” The golfing buddy who suddenly became an expert on crypto after one lucky trade. The coworker who turns every lunch break into a discussion about the coming economic collapse. The friend who insists the market is rigged.
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head, but it's not me
Sometimes they take the form of a trusted, so-called expert you see or hear on a platform that lends them credibility…
The cable television host who convinces viewers that the world is ending every single night at 6:00. The social media influencer posing in front of rented Lamborghinis while selling financial certainty in sixty-second clips.
The lunatic is in the hall
The lunatics are in the hall
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paper boy brings more
And perhaps most dangerous of all, that voice inside your head that quietly whispers:
“What if they’re right and you’re missing out?”
I have witnessed this voice cost investors fortunes. Not because people are unintelligent. Because they are human.
I have watched disciplined investors abandon carefully built plans during bear markets because someone at work told them, “This time is different.”
Sir John Templeton famously called those the four most dangerous words in investing. This phrase is used to justify irrational market behavior, suggesting that historical economic rules no longer apply during bubbles or crashes, often leading to significant financial losses.
Having been in this business since 1987, I have seen this play out in multiple cycles, including the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s and the real estate bubble of the mid-2000s. I saw relatively conservative investors wanting to put nearly all of their assets into internet and technology stocks in late 1999 because they feared missing out.
By late 2006, clients were telling me they should borrow money to buy Florida real estate because “it always goes up.”
I have seen people panic out of portfolios near market bottoms because the fear around them became overwhelming.
This happens almost every time the market dips 10% or more. The bigger and faster the drop, the more the noise and clanging cymbals of cable news and social media drive people to want to do somethingrather than wait for the market to rebound, which it has historically always done. As a reminder, the chart below, from our friends at Capital Group, shows bull markets in blue and bear market downturns in red. Despite overwhelming evidence, people tend to be driven by short-term downturns… often to their detriment.
Source: Capital Group
I have watched people invest substantial assets into obscure “opportunities” pitched by acquaintancesat networking groups or country clubs, only to discover that “too good to be true” usually is. Even worse, many continue adding money, convinced the investment will recover someday… until it doesn’t.
Fear of missing out is powerful. But fear of looking foolish may be even stronger.
One of the hardest realities about financial planning is that long-term discipline often feels uncomfortable in the short term. Good planning can feel boring. Patient investing rarely makes for exciting cocktail party conversation.
The problem is that successful investing often feels emotionally unrewarding or unexciting in the moment. Warren Buffett, long considered to be one of the wisest and most admired investors of the last century, reminded us of this emotional conundrum this way:
Source: A-Z Quotes
Meanwhile, speculation always arrives dressed like opportunity.
That is the dark side of financial planning. Not markets themselves. Not volatility. Not recessions.
This is emotional surrender. It is allowing outside voices to overpower your own thoughtful judgment. It is confusing noise for wisdom because the noise is louder.
In Part II, I want to explore the final song on Dark Side of the Moon — Eclipse — and why successful investing ultimately comes down to emotional endurance, perspective, and learning how to navigate the darkness without surrendering to it, so we can keep “Moving Life Forward.”
© 2026 Jesse Hurst
Senior Wealth Manager
The views stated are not necessarily the opinion of Cetera and should not be construed directly or indirectly as an offer to buy or sell any securities mentioned herein. Due to volatility within the markets mentioned, opinions are subject to change without notice. Information is based on sources believed to be reliable; however, their accuracy or completeness cannot be guaranteed. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
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Featured Blog Image Source: iStock.com/Roman Prysiazhniuk