The core of this passage is to tie the "threshold" of investment decisions with the "prediction" of the future.

In simple terms, opportunity cost is "the return of B that you have to give up when you choose A." Therefore, when making investments, the minimum rate of return you can accept actually conceals your guess about the "B" you might encounter in the future.

Just like Buffett believes that there is a high probability of encountering good opportunities with returns exceeding 10% in the future. At this time, if he has a project with an 8% return in hand, he is unwilling to invest—because if he invests in this and a 15% opportunity really arises in the future, the money is tied up, which means he loses 7% of potential returns (15%-8%). So the "threshold" he sets for himself is 10%, essentially fearing to miss out on better options in the future.

But what if the situation changes? For example, if it is clearly known that future market interest rates will remain at 1% for a long time, it means that the returns of other investment opportunities are also unlikely to be much higher. At this time, the cost of "giving up future opportunities" decreases— even if you invest in a project with a 5% return now, you may not encounter anything better in the future, making the opportunity cost almost negligible. Therefore, the previously set 10% threshold should naturally be adjusted downward.

In other words, the line in our minds about "what minimum return is required to take action" when investing is never fixed. It is more like a dynamic ruler: the more optimistic one is about future opportunities (believing there are high returns waiting), the higher the ruler is raised; the more cautious one is about future opportunities (believing there are no good options ahead), the lower the ruler is set.

This is essentially using our imagination of "tomorrow" to delineate the choices of "today." #加密股IPO季 $XRP $BTC $ETH