What does not fit can tell you the future

Opinion
Be open-minded when you read about things that you do not grasp in full, or when something contradicts your view.
Published

November 6, 2026

I want to highlight a view Stephen Schwarzman, co-founder of Blackstone, shared in an interview Bloomberg posted in October 2026. It offers valuable insight for anyone who invests or trades, including those who have succeeded in investment. He says that the pieces that do not fit tell you the future:

“Part of it is having the curiosity because those pieces that don’t fit tell you the future and the future is always key to having a successful present.”

I would add “can”. The pieces that do not fit can tell you about the future that is not priced yet. When you investigate them further, you may realize that they do not fit because of a sudden change, or the start of a change, in the fundamentals. I add “can” because you do not know that until you have done enough research on why those pieces do not fit.

Two tracks

My interpretation of how Schwarzman views investment opportunities is that there are two tracks. In the first track, you deal with information that you do not currently understand, as when Jack Ma told Schwarzman about artificial intelligence (AI). Rather than dismissing it, you should read about it, because it can later present an investment opportunity.

In the second track, you already have a view of things, and suddenly you get new information that does not fit your current view. Some people may dismiss it as noise. But as in Schwarzman’s case, it can tell you something about the future that is not priced yet, because it is not yet obvious.

AI and electricity

Schwarzman’s own example starts in the first track:

“We did see the whole AI revolution, and that’s just because of an accident. When I was in China in 2015, I was sitting on a bus with Jack Ma, who was the founder of Alibaba, and he started talking about that. And I literally had no idea what he was talking about and he explained that this would be the most consequential technological change which would change the world. So I have a bunch of academic relationships, one of whom was the head of MIT. And he said,”Jack’s underselling this.””

In 2021 Blackstone bought a data center company for $10 billion, which Schwarzman says is now 15 times larger. The second track came from that business:

“So what doesn’t fit now? During this AI data center thing, we learned that, you know, certainly the developed world is going to be short electricity. Now we’ve become huge investors in that area before other people did it.”

The investments in data centers came with the benefit of additional information that Blackstone would not have gained otherwise. If everything that is forecast for AI comes true, what is currently not fitting into that picture? What is missing, and where is the missing piece? It is electricity, and the infrastructure for it, given the capacity that AI will require.

A company that fires people

Take a company that makes a huge profit, and people love the stock. If it starts firing people, it can be that it is becoming more efficient, more productive per employee, and it does not require as many employees. Then there is nothing new that would change the fundamentals. But if the company fires people because its management expects worse times ahead, then that is a change in the fundamentals that is not priced yet, given that the stock price has not moved much in response to the firing.

If you do enough research and see that the company is firing people because it expects worse times ahead, and the stock price has not moved much, then those pieces that did not fit do tell you about the future that is not priced yet. When things become obvious, when people realize that the company is firing people because it is heading into worse times, it will already be priced. Then the pieces do fit, and the future is already priced.

A sketch of one company's share price before and after it starts firing people The share price increases while the company does well. Then the company starts firing people, and the price does not move much. In one path, the company has become more efficient, and the price keeps increasing. In the other path, its management expects worse times ahead. The price stays where it is until the worse times are obvious, and then it falls. The prices are made up.

Five questions

I put the two tracks into five questions.

  1. Do I understand it? If I do not, I read about it, because it can later present an investment opportunity.
  2. Does the new information fit my view? If it does, the future is already priced.
  3. If it does not fit, why not? It can be noise, good news or bad news, so I research which one it is.
  4. Does the reason change the fundamentals? If it does not, the future would probably just continue.
  5. Has the price moved? If it has not, the piece that does not fit can tell me about a future that is not priced yet.

Limitations

The limitation is that this was a short interview, and I do not know exactly how Schwarzman thinks, because he does not map it out in detail. This is my own interpretation.

Conclusion

So stay open-minded and do not be discouraged when information comes to your table, when you read about things you do not fully grasp, or when something contradicts your view. Instead of being discouraged, you should be encouraged to read about it and think about what the new information could mean.