Learn the why. Not just the what.
Investing fundamentals, market logic, and the discipline behind good decisions.
Wirecard: When the Watchdogs Chase the Critics
Wirecard's collapse showed that institutional endorsement is not evidence, and that scepticism was punished by the very authorities charged with protecting investors.
Archegos: How a Single Portfolio Cost Banks Ten Billion Dollars
Archegos combined extreme concentration, heavy leverage, and exposures invisible to each lender individually, demonstrating how quickly such a structure unravels.
The COVID Crash: The Fastest Fall and the Fastest Recovery
The 2020 crash and recovery demonstrated that the shape of a decline carries no information about its duration, and that acting on a correct forecast about the world can still produce a poor result.
1974: The Long Returns Available at the Moment of Greatest Despair
The 1973-74 decline produced a level of pessimism so complete that equities were widely written off. The returns available to those who bought at that point were extraordinary.
The Lost Decade: Ten Years of Holding and Nothing to Show
The 2000s produced a negative total return for the broad American market over a full decade, testing the assumption that a long horizon guarantees a reward.
A Ninety-Four Percent Decline: The Price of Owning a Great Company
The businesses that produced the greatest long-term returns inflicted devastating declines along the way. Owning them was never the difficult part; keeping them was.
Missing the Best Ten Days: A Statistic That Requires Careful Handling
The best-days statistic is real but is frequently deployed misleadingly, since the symmetrical calculation for the worst days produces an equally dramatic and opposite result.
The Crashes That Never Came: The Cost of Waiting for the Fall
Predicted crashes that failed to arrive are absent from the record, yet the cost of waiting for them is real and has been substantial for those who did.
What Thirty Case Studies Have in Common
Across four centuries of financial disaster, a small number of mechanisms recur: leverage, concentration, correlation, narrative, and the substitution of price for value.
Position Trading vs. Long-Term Investing
Position trading holds for months on a view about conditions; long-term investing holds for years on a view about businesses. The similarity of their timeframes conceals a fundamental difference in reasoning.
Swing Trading: Understanding It Without Being Seduced by It
Swing trading seeks to capture price movements over days or weeks. It demands genuine discipline, and it is frequently adopted by people who mistake its accessibility for ease.
Day Trading: What the Data Actually Says About the Odds
Studies across multiple countries and decades have found that the large majority of day traders lose money, and that persistent profitability is confined to a very small minority.
Trend Following: A Rules-Based Way to Stay Humble
Trend following is a systematic style that responds to established price movements rather than forecasting them. Its virtue is the abandonment of prediction; its cost is frequent small losses.
Style Drift: How Investors Quietly Abandon Their Own Plan
Style drift is the slow erosion of a stated framework through small, defensible exceptions. It is rarely a decision and almost always the accumulation of many.
Choosing a Style That Fits Your Temperament
A style only works if it is sustained, and sustainability depends on temperament far more than on the theoretical merits of the approach.
Why Copying Someone Else's Style Usually Fails
A style cannot be separated from the circumstances, horizon, and temperament of the person who built it. Copying the visible decisions while lacking the invisible foundation is a recipe for abandonment.
Concentration vs. Diversification as a Style Choice
Concentration expresses confidence in one's analysis; diversification expresses humility about it. The choice between them is a claim about the reliability of one's own judgement.
The Role of Cash in Every Investing Style
Cash serves as reserve, optionality, and psychological ballast. Its cost is real and its function is misunderstood by investors who evaluate it only on the return it fails to produce.
Rebalancing: The Style-Agnostic Discipline
Rebalancing restores a portfolio to its intended proportions, preventing unintended concentration. It is mechanically simple and psychologically difficult, which is the whole of its story.
How Market Regimes Reward Different Styles
Market conditions favour different styles at different times, and no approach is rewarded continuously. Recognising this pattern is what makes it possible to endure a style's difficult periods rather than abandoning them.
Blending Styles Without Losing Coherence
A deliberate blend of styles requires that each component have a defined role and a defined proportion. Without that structure, blending becomes indistinguishable from having no framework at all.
Measuring Whether Your Style Actually Works
Evaluating a style requires an appropriate benchmark, an appropriate timeframe, and a distinction between the quality of decisions and the quality of outcomes. Most investors have none of these.
The Long-Term Investor's Style: Patience as a Strategy
Patience is not merely a temperament but a structural advantage available to those who can extend their horizon beyond the ones most participants are constrained to.
What Is an Investing Style, and Why It Matters More Than Any Single Trade
An investing style is the consistent framework behind every decision you make. Understanding yours matters far more than the outcome of any individual trade.