A Newsletter (& Blog) Mini-Manifesto
April brought the launch of our client newsletter, and I thought the Mini-Manifesto I wrote to kick things off appropriate for the blog as well.
Does a newsletter [or a blog] expressly require a launching manifesto? Perhaps not, but it can’t hurt, right?
This newsletter [and blog] is intended to inform and hopefully entertain. You are the owner of the capital that I am here to help preserve and grow, so I also hope my writing fosters a deeper conviction and understanding of our approach.
First, I am granting myself, “permission to speak freely, sir/ma’am” around issues and ideas that impact our livelihoods. Financialization, and, I would argue, the heavy and ever present hand of policymakers makes that scope ever wider. In a world where seemingly everything within that scope has become political and a source of division, this is not to be purposefully contentious, but because the mission trumps what I believe are increasingly arbitrary and destructive political lines.
As I’ll discuss in the Market Nonupdate, I also wish to dispense with sterile commentary and pretensions of certainty. I’ve intentionally tried to create a philosophy and structure that embraces uncertainty and doesn’t need all the answers or to get everything right. Borrowing from one of SW’s principles,
Own every mistake; learning and reflection are our lifeblood. When portfolios are built to endure, mistakes are not fatal; recognize and grow from them.
What I do have and want to continue to develop and nurture in these pages is years of deliberate study and drive to be a better investor. That study and this embedded strategic humility has led to another principle and an understanding of what I think better truly means,
Consistently good compounds to great. We must keep our ego in check. Wealth that endures requires being consistently good, not vain attempts at greatness.
Consistently good. That’s the mission. It’s far from the eye-watering returns of movies and headlines, but I believe it’s the path to wealth that lasts. For every Roaring Kitty Gamestop instant-millionaire, there’s a legion of bagholders who didn’t make the cutting room floor of the movie. We all need to be reminded that missing out on the speculation du jour is of no real concern here.
This requires patience. The reason I don’t care about all the gambling masquerading as investing is I’ve seen this movie a few times. I’ve seen time and again what is presently viewed as opportunity quickly devolve into peril. Conversely, I’ve seen countless opportunities forged from precisely where the consensus viewed peril.
Patience, fortitude, and discernment are our enduring advantages. While we don’t rely on prediction, capital preservation allows us to act from strength - to patiently wait for opportunity when others see volatility and avoid peril when others are blinded by recent fortune.
As Warren Buffet more succinctly put it, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” This is not about extreme conservatism and putting up blinders to genuine opportunities. While our disposition towards enduring all outcomes preclude us from ever going all in, I don’t believe it should bind our hands from exploring and prudently taking advantage of opportunities that emerge or battening down the hatches a little tighter when storm clouds form. Never at the expense of resilience and always on the margin, but I believe these small decisions can add up over time. I want to honestly explore these possibilities.
May we all improve as investors and allocators of all our precious resources, not just money.
-Matt