Investment and General Philosophy

What is my philosophy to life?

Generally, it is to do good. To do good and enact meaningful change. This meaningful change will occur through the mechanisms of wealth, capital, and private action. This can blend in to politics after a certain point.

At the heart of it all, is always systems. The systems of regulation and markets. The systems of companies and supply chains. And the systems of our personal rules and interactions with the wider world.

Moving on now to the specific investment philosophy to hold.

Remember that I believe in capital as a means of change. And so we will strive to accumulate power via capital, as fund managers, venture capitalists, and more.

We are here to build capital and make money. We do this through investment decisions. At first, we must merely be investors at large. There is no private equity, or deep operations. Activist investment comes after as well.

So how do we approach making money?

We will start with a qualitative lens from the social sciences. This involves deeper looks at the business story, the fundamentals, and on-the-ground experiences. There are many angles and unique insights lost to reductive financial analysis.

We will apply quantitative tools and be comfortable with them. Just as science is limited in being descriptive, we will recognise the power of quantitative tools but not be limited by them. Validation and projections are made possible. But they are not the source of truth - as they never can be. The causal flow should be clear.

We will be somewhat active in the set up of trades. It is time horizon agnostic. But must have clear exit strategies predicated on our entries. And this involves following along whatever the story is. This may tend to medium term set ups.

In the process of this, we will maintain a strong moral code. What is efficient is not always what is good. We will stick to the latter in cases of disagreement.

This is what I think is lacking and would like to see. Deep analysis of the fundamentals, in ways in which the social sciences seem to better capture. But still screened and linked to the end goal of financial returns and the world of captial. For that is where power lies.

I want to see clear links from the analysis to the bottom line. Too much financial analysis is pre-biased to some vague reductive lens of financial returns. And all the nuance that matters is missed. And from the other side, it may be too academic - and there is no clear extrapolation (which reasonable analysis demands - staking something on an actual prediction to be useful).

So this is what I offer in investment philosophy: We will start with fundamental qualitative factors in the world. And we will construct and tease with rigour investment set ups.