The Cost OF Waiting For Certainty
Why waiting for perfect information means missing the opportunity
Yamazaki 18 is a Japanese single malt whisky from Suntory’s flagship distillery. The price has multiplied many times over in a decade as global demand for premium Japanese whisky exploded in the 2010s and aged expressions became especially scarce.
When Suntory filled those barrels in 2007, they had no reliable model for what global whisky markets would look like in 2025. They made a decision without perfect information. They could not have predicted that 2025 demand would far outstrip what they distilled eighteen years ago.
We face the same constraint with our portfolios. The opportunity exists today. The information we want will exist in eighteen months. By then, the opportunity is gone.
Two Ways This Shows Up
First. Someone has been researching an opportunity for months. The work is done. The cash is ready. But the same question keeps coming up. “What if I am wrong?”
Three meetings later, we are having the same conversation. Not because new information has emerged. The research has not changed. But the discomfort of acting has not gone away either.
By the time they feel ready, the opportunity has moved.
Second. Someone holds a position that is clearly not working. It even creates discomfort and sleepless nights. Every quarter, they look at it again. Every time, the answer is “let me wait one more quarter.”
Waiting will not change the outcome. But selling means admitting the decision did not work out.
Three years pass. The opportunity cost accumulates quietly.
This is not about market timing. This is about regret aversion. We are not waiting for information. We are waiting to avoid the feeling of being wrong.
Regret from action feels stronger than regret from inaction. I observe this in practice. If we act and it goes badly, everyone can see we were wrong.
If we wait and miss the opportunity, the pain is private. Nobody knows about the chance we passed on.
Our brains treat these two regrets differently, even though the financial cost can be identical.
Psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Medvec studied this pattern for decades. They found that in the short run, people regret their actions more than their inactions.
Did something and it went wrong? That haunts us immediately. Researched something but never acted? That fades faster.
The problem is that this reverses over time. Long-term studies show we regret our inactions more than our actions. The opportunities we never pursued bother us more than the decisions that did not work out.
But our brains do not know that in the moment of decision. In the moment, acting feels riskier than waiting.
My research on 203 Singapore investors for my MBA thesis found that 78% were more concerned about a large loss than missing a substantial gain. The fear of being visibly wrong outweighs the quiet cost of opportunities missed.
Why We Wait
Three patterns keep this paralysis alive.
First, hindsight makes past timing look easier than it was.
We look back at market bottoms and think “that was obviously the time to act.” It was not obvious then. We remember the conclusion, not the uncertainty.
The clarity we see now did not exist then. When the next opportunity comes, there will be thirty new reasons to wait.
Second, status quo bias makes waiting feel like action.
We are not doing nothing. We are monitoring. We are researching. We are waiting for one more data point. This feels productive. It feels like prudent risk management
But it is paralysis dressed up as patience.
Economists Ted O’Donoghue and Matthew Rabin, in their paper “Doing It Now or Later,” studied why people procrastinate on decisions with immediate costs and delayed rewards. The discomfort of acting is here, today. The benefit of acting is somewhere in the future.
Our brains overweight the immediate discomfort. So we wait and wait. We tell ourselves we will act next quarter or soon.
The difference is that patience has a decision rule. “I will act when condition X is met” or “I will exit when it breaks level Y.”
Paralysis has no rule. Just an endless need for more certainty.
If there is no pre-defined trigger, waiting is not patience. It is avoidance.
Third, social regret multiplies the pain.
If we act and we are wrong, people will know. Our spouse will question the decision. Our family will remember.
In Singapore especially, this matters. Face and family expectations shape financial decisions more than Westerners realize. Admitting a mistake is not just personal, it is social.
This pattern shows up in how people frame losses to family. Selling a losing position means explaining what went wrong. Holding it means the decision stays “in progress” rather than “failed.”
The financial cost of holding is real. But the psychological cost of admitting the loss to people we care about can feel worse. The loss gets reframed as “unrealized” rather than real.
In Singapore, this pattern has a name. Kiasu. The word means “fear of losing out.” It combines regret aversion with social comparison.
We do not want to miss the opportunity, but we also do not want to be wrong publicly. These two fears can paralyze us. We end up doing nothing.
Swedish researchers studied millions of pension savers and found extreme inertia. When the default fund changed its risk profile, most people did nothing. Even after fraud allegations hit major fund providers, large numbers of savers still did nothing.
This is not ignorance. This is the psychological power of “do nothing” as the safest-feeling choice.
What Helps
A good starting point would be to stop asking whether we will regret the decision. A different approach to consider might be to ask which regret we will carry longer.
The pain of a bad decision fades faster than the pain of a decision we never made. Our brains adapt to losses we actually take. We process them, learn from them, move on.
But the opportunities we passed on stay with us. They become “what if” scenarios that grow larger over time.
The Certainty Audit
One. What am I waiting for exactly?
Be specific. Not “more clarity” or “better timing.” What actual information would change the decision?
Write it down. If it cannot be named precisely, it is not an information problem. It is a discomfort problem.
Two. If I had that information, would I actually act?
Honesty test. Most of the time, the answer is no. There would be another reason to wait.
This reveals that the real constraint is not information. It is fear.
Three. What did I think about this six months ago?
Look at notes from six months ago. Was there enough information then? If yes, what happened to that conviction?
If no, did waiting provide better information or just more time to second-guess?
Four. What is the cost of waiting one more quarter?
Not the cost of being wrong. The cost of not deciding. What could be done with that capital in the meantime?
Five. If nobody was watching, what would I do?
Remove the social regret. No spouse, no family, no colleagues. Just the decision itself. What would feel right?
Most of the time, we already know the answer. The constraint is not information. It is the fear of being wrong in front of people who matter to us.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Good decision-making does not mean rushing. It means knowing the difference between analysis and avoidance.
Set decision rules before emotion enters. Accept that perfect timing does not exist. Act on sufficient information rather than waiting forever for perfect information.
Suntory filled those barrels without knowing 2025 would create extraordinary returns. They could not have known. But they made the decision when the decision needed to be made.
Eighteen years later, the discipline paid off.
Our timing will not be perfect. That is not the standard. The question is simpler. Did we act on sufficient information, or did we wait because acting felt uncomfortable?
The cost of waiting for certainty is rarely visible until after the fact. By the time everyone agrees with us, the entry point has moved.
Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. The author is a licensed wealth advisor. Please consult a qualified professional before making investment decisions.