For many UK growing businesses, using spreadsheets is such an integral part of running a company is like using that noisy kettle that still works.

It’s what we always did, so why change? They are trusted, inexpensive (in the short term), and simple. You can fit everything onto one doc, with employee info on one tab, sick leave on another, expenses in a third, and their hours and salary on tabs beginning after “Sheet 1” (usually only fully understandable by one super user).

For a while, it seems like a perfect system. Then the business hires 10 more employees. One employee works from another location. A boss forgets to fill in a vacation planner. Unbeknownst to everyone, the once thought-up efficient plan is slowly doubling, as well as tripling, to add to time, money, and irritation.

The issue is not the spreadsheet, per se. The problem is that the company grows so big, spreadsheets are just too small on their own to contain it.

The Productivity Drain Nobody Notices

Manual HR doesn’t really fall over. It just slowly pours away your company’s margin every day.

Managers hunting down signed documents, updating the 5 locations where they keep employee records, and checking whether the “latest” version of a spreadsheet is actually the latest. HR admins are doing the same weekly manual tasks: copying data, approving leave requests from chain emails, and calculating absence values in a spreadsheet.

On their own, these little tasks don’t seem like much. Added up, they’re a tidy sum.

A growing company might be burning through dozens of hours every month on tasks like maintaining manual processes that should long since have been automated. All that time could be spent by managers on developing their staff, operational improvements, growth, or really anything other than knowing how to track down that contract the vendor sent a while ago that is almost definitely in the Generally Important Stuff 2019_Q3 folder titled “FINAL_v2_UPDATED” on the general drive.

But, most notably, as companies scale, inefficient manual processes compound. When a team is eight, maintaining a process may work fine, but by the time a company gets to 50 employees, it’s a frustrating mess.

Human Error Becomes a Business Risk

Spreadsheets are labour-intensive and are therefore prone to human error.

An out-of-date phone number may not seem serious until you need an emergency contact. A double entry in the payroll may provide uncomfortable conversations and headaches for the accountants. An incorrect holiday day entered in a spreadsheet can damage employee trust much faster than you may think.

The biggest problem is that unconnected systems introduce inconsistencies. A spreadsheet says an employee has completed the required training. Another sheet says they haven’t. One manager updates a record while the other keeps using the file they saved to their desktop three weeks ago.

This isn’t due to carelessness. This is what happens when there’s too much room for error.

Compliance Problems Can Escalate Quickly

Problems can grow quickly from bad to worse

Storing a few contracts in a shared drive just isn’t good enough.

You also need to keep on top of your employee files, manage right-to-work checks, make sure you’re tracking absence procedures, and keep sensitive data safe. If this information is spread out over a few spreadsheets, emails, and a couple of random systems, maintaining good compliance practices is going to be confusing at best.

Where documents are missing or records aren’t being generated, businesses open themselves up to unnecessary legal and financial risks. Even the smallest oversight can expand to cause real issues during audits, claims or disputes.

It’s another reason why businesses reach a point when manual processes quickly get out of hand, and they decide to look for dedicated UK HR software to manage.

That solution allows firms to centralise their records, automate reminders, and ensure that important documents aren’t getting buried in the depths of a filing cabinet.

Employees Notice More Than Businesses Think

Old, paper-based HR systems have a bigger impact on the employee experience than many leaders believe.

They see that their leave request has taken two days to approve because the right spreadsheet was buried three tabs down. They see when others’ induction processes are ad-hoc. They see themselves waiting three days for a response from HR. They see managers asking for information they already supplied for the second time.

These may sound like minor complaints, but they reflect the way employees perceive their employers. A company that isn’t buttoned up in its operational processes will have a hard time projecting external credibility.

In markets with healthy competition for talent, the operational efficiency of an organisation plays a significant role in effective employer branding. Workers now have an expectation that things will operate smoothly in a workplace, especially as many workplaces tout themselves as forward-thinking, corporate-minded or on a very aggressive growth trajectory.

Technology Creates Room for Growth

HR software is seen as a grudge purchase that businesses can get by without for now, but it’s an outlay that pays off in terms of efficiency and future growth.

Modern platforms cut out the busywork, reduce human error, ensure compliance with automatically enforced policies and shared digital records, and remove time-consuming HR headaches when you scale.

Spreadsheets have value, but relying on them entirely for HR often leads to creeping costs that go unnoticed for far too long.

The ET Alpha Wealth Summit is set to take place on June 4 in Mumbai, where investors, market experts, and analysts will gather to discuss economic implications, opportunities, and market strategies, as well as the do’s and don’ts of market trading, in this one-of-a-kind event.

In a rapidly evolving financial markets landscape, the opportunities for market outperformance seem to be disappearing. However, the Alpha isn’t dead just yet, but is in fact, hiding in fewer, harder-to-find places.

In a market environment where it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the Alpha, there is a need for careful evaluation of the conditions and pre-requisite factors that influence the decision-making process behind the right investment.

The session, ‘Is Alpha Dead? Or Just Harder to Find?’ will explore how one can identify where real outperformance still exists. The discussion will also focus on how to identify and avoid crowded, low-return trades, in retrospect of generating consistent excess value.

This panel will consist of leading industry experts such as Vikas Khemani, Devina Mehra, Prateek Agrawal and Kalpen Parekh, who will share their views and opinions regarding the subject. The Alpha isn’t gone; it’s just hiding in harder-to-find places, and through this insightful panel discussion, these ‘places’ will become clearer to identify.

Following this discussion will be a fireside chat with Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO, Edelweiss Mutual Fund. The session, ‘How to Build a ₹100 Cr Portfolio in a 10–12% World’, breaks down how to realistically build and compound a Rs 100 crore portfolio, through sharper allocation, disciplined risk, and avoiding the crowded trades that dilute returns.
In a market where easy gains are gone, it takes a broader mindset to understand the intricacies in building a portfolio that could compound to Rs 100 crore. The session will explore strategies for building long-term wealth and scaling one’s portfolio towards the Rs 100 crore milestone.These sessions will include practical takeaways on uncovering hidden sources of alpha, navigating crowded trades, and positioning portfolios for sustainable long-term returns in an increasingly complex investment landscape.

In an environment where global equities are swinging between optimism around AI-led growth and anxiety over persistent inflation, elevated interest rates, and geopolitical uncertainty, investors are once again being tested, not on intelligence, but on psychology.

Charlie Munger’s famous list of “human misjudgment tendencies” is not just a philosophical framework. It is, in today’s market, a practical survival guide.

Markets in 2026 are still being shaped by three dominant forces:
(1) higher-for-longer interest rates, (2) liquidity concentration in a few mega-cap stocks, and (3) emotionally driven retail participation.Against this backdrop, Munger’s behavioral warnings feel unusually relevant.

1. The real enemy is not volatility, but emotional distortion

Munger repeatedly warned that investors don’t lose money because they lack information, they lose because they misprocess it.Today’s markets amplify that problem.
Every CPI print, Fed commentary, or geopolitical headline triggers immediate overreaction. Investors are constantly pulled between fear of missing out (FOMO) in AI-led rallies and fear of correction during rate jitters.
This is a classic combination of:

• Availability bias (overweighting recent news)
• Social proof (following crowded trades)
• Stress-induced reaction (panic buying or selling)

In Munger’s language, this is the setup for “avoidable stupidity.”

2. “Envy and FOMO” are silently driving modern portfolios

One of Munger’s strongest warnings was about envy, not as emotion, but as a financial destroyer.

In today’s market, envy doesn’t look like jealousy of a neighbour. It looks like:

• Chasing AI stocks after they’ve already rerated sharply
• Comparing portfolio performance with index benchmarks daily
• Abandoning long-term positions because “others are making faster money”

When liquidity is abundant in a narrow set of names, envy becomes structurally embedded in portfolio behaviour. Investors are no longer asking “Is this a good business?” but “Am I missing this move?”

That shift is dangerous in a market where leadership is concentrated and reversals can be abrupt.

3. The “Lollapalooza effect” is stronger than ever

Munger described the Lollapalooza effect as multiple biases reinforcing each other into extreme outcomes.

Today’s version looks like this:

• Social media hype amplifies narratives
• Algorithmic flows reinforce momentum
• Passive inflows concentrate capital into large indices
• Retail traders amplify short-term spikes

The result: prices detach from fundamentals faster, and corrections become sharper when sentiment shifts.

This is why today’s rallies often feel effortless, but reversals feel violent.

4. Overconfidence is rising with “easy market memories”

A prolonged period of strong returns, especially in largecap tech, creates what Munger called “excessive self-regard”.

Many investors now assume:

“Buying dips always works”
“Quality stocks never go down much”
“The Fed will rescue markets eventually”

But in a higher-rate regime, that assumption is no longer guaranteed. Valuation compression risk is real, and earnings must now do more of the heavy lifting.

Confidence built in one regime often breaks in another.

5. The biggest risk today: avoiding pain too aggressively

One of Munger’s less discussed but critical ideas is “pain-avoidance behavior”.

In today’s context, it shows up as:

• Selling winners too early to “lock in gains”
• Avoiding fundamentally strong but volatile sectors
• Sitting excessively in cash due to fear of drawdowns

Ironically, in trying to avoid discomfort, investors often underperform the very market they are trying to survive.

6. What works in today’s market: Munger-style discipline

If we translate Munger’s philosophy into today’s environment, a few principles stand out:

(1) Concentrate only when conviction is real

Not based on stories, but on durable cash flows and long-term pricing power.

(2) Expect volatility as a feature, not a flaw

Even high-quality companies will see sharp drawdowns in a rate-sensitive world.

(3) Reduce decision frequency

Most mistakes come from over-trading emotional signals disguised as “information.”

(4) Build a bias checklist

Before acting, ask:

Am I reacting to news or value?
Am I following the crowd?
Would I make this decision in isolation?

7. The current market lesson in one line

If Munger were observing today’s markets, the warning would likely remain unchanged:

“The biggest returns still come from avoiding obvious psychological errors, not from predicting the next move.”

Bottom line

Today’s markets are not irrational, but they are emotionally amplified. Liquidity, technology, and information speed have not removed human bias; they have accelerated it.

That is exactly the environment where Munger’s framework becomes most powerful. Because in the end, investing success is still less about knowing more, and more about misbehaving less.

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has extended trading hours for the equity derivatives segment by 10 minutes, with the normal market closing time revised to 3:40 pm from the current 3:30 pm. The change will come into effect from August 3, 2026.

According to an NSE circular, the pre-open session timings in the derivatives segment will remain unchanged, with trading beginning at 9:00 am and the pre-open session ending at 9:08 am through a system-driven random closure in the final minute. The normal market session will continue to open at 9:15 am.

The trade modification window will also remain unchanged and will continue until 4:15 pm.

There will be no change in the methodology used for computing closing prices of derivative contracts. NSE said the volume-weighted average price used for close price calculation will continue to be based on trades executed during the last half hour of trading, which will now be from 3:10 pm to 3:40 pm.

The exchange added that the functional changes arising from the implementation will be made available for testing during mock trading sessions. A separate circular detailing the mock sessions will be issued later.

The exchange will also broadcast a message on NEAT trading terminals at the start of the Closing Auction Session in the equity segment when the operating price range for stock futures is reset. As part of the process, outstanding orders lying outside the revised price range will be cancelled by the exchange in accordance with existing rules.
The exchange also said that a security will cease to be eligible for the Closing Auction Session (CAS) if it is excluded from the equity derivatives segment on both exchanges. In such cases, its closing price will be determined using the existing methodology, based on the volume-weighted average price (VWAP) of trades executed during the last 30 minutes of trading. However, as long as the security remains part of the equity derivatives segment on at least one exchange, it will continue to be eligible for CAS.

The exchange will cancel all unexecuted special orders, including stop-loss and disclosed quantity orders. Any pending orders that fall outside the revised price band will also be cancelled, with members receiving an appropriate cancellation message.