While working on SpikeSpeak, I stepped out for a bite to eat. As I walked in the shade on 28th Street, a car pulled over, its driver rolled down the window and started speaking to me in Italian. From what little I understood, he was asking for directions to FDR Drive, a major highway nearby. I answered him in Spanish that he had to turn left on Third Avenue, right on 34th Street, and he’d be there. He was profusely grateful, and somehow his English seemed to improve. He told me it was his first time in New York, that he just finished a fashion show at the Javits center (a major local arena), and gave me his business card. He said he was representing Armani and happened to have a few pieces in the back of his car he wanted to get rid of before flying home.

Somehow, being offered cheap Armani goods from a car on a side street, coupled with his rapidly improving English seemed a bit too good to be true. I waved him off and walked. After turning the corner on Third Avenue I stepped into a shop, turned around and looked at the intersection through the window. The light changed, and my new friend’s car drove straight through the intersection, never turning on the avenue in the direction of the FDR, about which he had stopped to ask. Having avoided his hook, I walked to to a very pleasant plate of sushi, sharing a beer with the sushi chef.

This was just like the market: when something seems too good to be true, it usually is a fake. When an indicator rings a quiet alarm, like that rapidly changing accent, we better listen. Avoid wishful thinking. The world is full of goodness, but it does not usually take shape of a stranger offering discounted goods. Wishing to believe that we are special makes us ignore warning signs – in life in general and in the markets in particular.