The Great “Lock-in” of 2025

Every few years, the investment world latches onto a phrase that captures the moment. In 2025, it’s “The Great Lock-In.” You have probably seen it floating around — people documenting their efforts to lock in better habits with money, health, and time. In many ways, it’s a cultural correction after a decade of excess, noise, and distraction.

The parallel to investing is obvious. Markets have spent years swinging investors from one narrative to another — AI booms, crypto busts, inflation scares, rate cuts that never come soon enough. Through it all, the same truth remains: it’s not what the market does that defines long-term outcomes. It’s what investors do.

Morningstar’s Mind the Gap study makes the point starkly. Over the last 10 years, investors in U.S. equity funds lagged the very funds they owned by nearly 2% per year. Not because of management fees, but because of behaviour. People chased performance, exited after losses, and re-entered too late. In short, they traded discipline for emotion — and they paid for it.

The irony is that the largest risks to financial well-being are rarely visible on a Bloomberg screen. They live in habits: saving when it’s easier to spend, diversifying when it feels uncomfortable, staying put when headlines scream for action. True diversification, as we wrote recently in our "The #1 Diversification Mistake Investors Make" article, means holding assets that don’t always rise together. That means you will always own something that looks like it’s not working. The investor who can accept that discomfort usually ends up with a smoother ride.

A Style That Still Works

There’s also something to be said for investment style — not just habits. One style in particular that has stood the test of time is value investing. The idea is simple but powerful: buy companies for less than what they’re worth and let time and compounding do the rest.

It sounds easy, but in practice, it takes patience. Value strategies often look wrong for years, especially when momentum stocks are leading the market. Yet history is clear: periods of underperformance are often followed by strong rebounds. For investors willing to lock in the discipline, value investing provides both downside protection and a margin of safety — two things that matter more than ever in a world of lofty multiples and crowded trades.

This is the essence of the Great Lock-In. It’s not about finding the next hot theme. It’s about locking in the behaviours and disciplines — whether that’s consistent saving or sticking to a proven style — that give compounding the room to do its job. Automating savings. Rebalancing without hesitation. Owning unloved companies that still generate cash. In practice, it’s dull. In results, it’s transformative.

Takeaway

There will always be a fresh story to chase. But the quiet discipline of good habits, paired with a style grounded in patience and value, is what tilts the odds in your favour.

And in investing, as in life, tilting the odds is all you need.

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