A few days ago, I was talking about the phenomenon of resolutions with the owner of the gym Momentum Performance, in St-Bruno. He explained to me that, like all gyms, he observes a sharp increase in attendance at the beginning of each new year. Unfortunately, this phenomenon lasts only a few weeks. After that period, most people abandon their good intentions.
A few years ago, I had the idea of writing a blog about acquiring new habits, after reading the book Atomic Habits (★★★★) by James Clear. In short, it is not easy to adopt new habits, whether it be going to the gym regularly, losing weight, saving more, or any other habit likely to make us better.
That is why, in my view, it is preferable to continue doing what we already do well.
If you truly wish to adopt new resolutions for 2026, I suggest identifying just one and making sure you adopt it definitively in 2026 and in the years that follow, not just for three weeks. It is illusory to believe that we can adopt many new habits in just a few months. It is demoralizing, in my opinion, to set many new resolutions only to abandon them after a few weeks. The author of Atomic Habits suggests that it is not the big resolutions that change a life, but rather the small daily adjustments.
For 2026, I intend to continue the habits I have adopted over many years and that serve me well. I will continue to train regularly, to learn by reading books, and to spend a great deal of time with my immediate family. In my work, I aim to maximize the time I devote to researching new investment opportunities and to monitoring the companies we already own in our portfolio.
In my view, the worst thing to do is to try to change what has worked well for us for a long time to adopt the trend of the moment. It is better to adopt a few good habits that we will keep for life than to be a weathervane, constantly adopting many new habits only to abandon them just as quickly.
In the field of investing, it is also important to avoid being a weathervane that changes position with the trend of the moment. It is essential to adopt an investment philosophy that has proven itself and in which we have confidence, and to keep it for the very long term.
This does not mean that we should be inflexible and never change anything about the way we invest. We must evolve and adjust certain parameters to improve over time. But the worst thing to do is to drastically change the way we invest simply because it did not work as well as expected last year. In my opinion, many investors experienced such a situation in 2025, and several of them may be tempted to change course and invest in the stocks and sectors that performed particularly well. That would be, in my view, a mistake that could cost them dearly.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy new year, filled with health and happiness!
Philippe Le Blanc, CFA, MBA
Chief Investment Officer at COTE 100
_______
This article is also published on 
(in French)
