This space is a collation of resources that I use for deploying capital. It is meant to be opensource. Rather than sharing any credentials that I may or may not have, I wanted to put together some of my thoughts, research, methodology and performance for public access and critique.

The motive here is to flip the order of trading time for money. The goal then is to share that time in interesting pursuits with interesting people. For me, a simple way to do that is by buying stakes in quality, cash-producing, well-run businesses that are available at attractive prices and holding them for extended periods of time.

The philosophy is marrying thriftiness to class and betting heavily when quirks of human fear or greed oscillate to extremes. It is like buying a barely used luxury car from someone in a rush to relocate to Texas. Or buying a sealed Apple product of the previous generation from a fanboy. In this neck of the woods, this philosophy is called value investing. People pull out a pinky and toast to these words, “Price is what you pay; Value is what you get.” The premium wine of course, is from Costco. Strangely though, it has been observed that some people get it and other, very smart ones, don’t.

The rationale of why this works is very simple. All humans are irrational in pockets. It is a brilliant adaptation for energy conservation of the 35W system, we call the brain. (Turns out compute power is expensive even outside of silicon.) We put guardrails like checklists and public scrutiny, in this case, to better the odds of quality decision-making.

The community values of almost everyone who enters the space of value investing seem to have (may I dare say) a cult-like consistency to the lineage of the people who founded and promoted this philosophy. These folks are almost always readers, writers, deep thinkers, generous givers and articulate teachers. I have also noticed high integrity in conduct, high meritocracy in judgment, honesty about ones flaws and long-lasting loyalty in friendships.

The fringe benefits have been very rewarding. I have enjoyed going down the multi-disciplinary rabbit holes of evolution, psychology, behaviours, accounting, finance, statistics, technology, business, history, philosophy, geo-politics and even economics. Met many interesting books and characters (dead, alive, virtually and in the flesh) along the way.

The right way to grow wealthy is slowly. The best way is the one that works for you. There are many paths to nirvana. For me, it is deep research and highly concentrated bets backed by conviction and capital for extended periods of time in exceptional businesses brought at fair prices.

The alternative to concentrated bets is diversification. Both, of time, and assets through indexing. This has been wildly successful at beating most of Wall Street over extended periods of time. But in markets, past performance does not guarantee future results. The US Dollar took the crown from the British pound as the global reserve currency. The Dutch guilder preceded the Royals. Indexing will most likely work in the future but where you index, will also matter.

The game of investing unfortunately is a zero sum game. In any buy-sell decision, from a capitalistic standpoint, over an extended period of time, there is a clear winner. You can be a successful investor if you invest in the developing the knowledge and the psyche.

The dilemma for me now is to be or not to be (a fund manager). It is one thing to have a private inner score card and to pursue market-beating-performance with your own capital. It is a totally different ballgame to do it publicly and with other people’s money. For this ultra-low cost operation, pay-for-performance model with no traditional management fees to be viable, both the gains or managed capital have to be meaningful. Until then, enjoy the open access to the current holdings. You never know when fellow partners expect confidentiality. It could be you, consider joining the waitlist!