The average French retail investor typically invests in CAC 40, the country’s most notorious index. As I was walking in Paris, I saw a press corner displaying a magazine cover, promising to reveal growth perspectives for this index in 2026. Specialized French press sounds as if CAC 40 was the beginning and the end of investing. Investing outside of France, or maybe Germany and the US for the boldest, seems unthinkable.

Yet CAC 40 is nowhere near the top growing indexes of the last 20 years. So why choose the French index rather than another ? Familiarity ? Patriotism ? Informational laziness ?

This exposed an internal contradiction that I feel : despite an everlasting love for every square meter of my country, when it comes to investing, I don’t think of France. For one simple reason : I’m looking for performance.

France gives me this contradictory feeling that I call Lucid Love : loving something wholeheartedly, and yet not looking away from its (numerous) flaws. The more I think about it, the more I see it as absolutely vital for sound decision-making.

The natural human reflex is choosing what you love. Or what is closest. This has a name : Tribalism. When tribalism is strong, loyalty outweighs competence. The most familiar is chosen. That behaviour is partly responsible for the slump in which several third-world countries have been bogged down for decades. If your affiliations prevail when it comes to making decisions, these affiliations become servitude.

To escape this, some fall in a different trap : a form of utilitarianism, or what I would call mechanical love. Loving people for what they produce, and not who they are. A form of mechanization of the heart. You can sometimes feel this when people are very specific about relationships, like a checklist of features (salary, height, shape…). Ultimately, this vision turns you into a perpetual assessor whose only religion is usefulness. If something isn’t useful, let’s just dump it.

Lucid love draws a clear line between the two worlds. There are things you love, and things that perform. Sometimes they are the same. Many other times, they’re two different things, and you don’t mind. Your love is not altered by notions of performance. Yet you respect performance, even from your worst enemy. It is a sweet spot between blind tribalism, and a cold performance-only mindset.

It implies there is no restriction to the love you can have for someone or something. And it means there is no guilt to feel for criticizing that thing you love. It also means understanding that some choices are to be made based on love, and some others, on performance and efficiency. But it’s up to you to make the difference between the two.

That balance comes straight from the Christian view of the individual : Jesus never treated people as categories. He addressed each person directly. And he insisted that each person would answer for their own actions. And he paired this with a command to love every neighbour. Actions and outcome matter. But never to the point of cancelling love.

That is why they say “God can only count to one”. And that one is every one of us.

Paul

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