Investment Philosophy

The courage to differ


Do you sincerely want to beat the markets?
If you sincerely want to beat the market, you will need courage, as well as investment knowledge. Individual investors have courage, but lack investment knowledge, while institutional investors have investment knowledge but lack courage. Our experience shows that one can beat them all, if one can combine these two inter-dependent attributes.


If you lack courage, our service is not for you.

Courage is:-

  • The courage to make a small number of big decisions, decisively.
  • The courage to choose the long term gain at short term cost.
  • The courage to pay for independent research, without any performance guarantee.
  • The courage to manage risk as a fact of investment life, rather than denying it.
  • The courage to believe that you know better than recognised authorities.
  • The courage to persist, in the face of adversity and increasing adversity.
  • The courage to reject well-known brand names in favour of esoterica.
  • The courage to play the odds, in the certain knowledge that some bets will fail.
  • The courage to differ from the investment crowd.


Our top-down system is designed to maximise investment knowledge of what matters most

Courage requires knowledge.

  • It was dangerous for the Titanic to sail among icebergs, but not if Captain Smith had had sonar.
  • It was dangerous for Victory to break the line of battle, but not if Admiral Nelson’s gunners could out-shoot the enemy.
  • It was dangerous for the Santa Maria to sail over the edge of the known world, but not if Christopher Columbus had a map of the New World.
  • It was dangerous for the crew of Endurance to be abandoned in Antarctica, but not if Ernest Shackelton could get help.
 

We provide investment advice rather than manage other people’s money, because the best way to resist fear is to understand, rather than trust someone else.



We do not provide advice on leveraged investments because these maximises fear. 

Fear saps courage

  • Fear and greed increase in proportion to financial leverage, so intensifying emotional pressures to sell low and buy high
  • Fear of job security turns professional investors into closet index-linkers, slavishly imitating peer group benchmarks
  • Fear of quarterly reporting schedules inhibits professionals from making sound long-term investment decisions
  • Fear of unrelenting free news-flow dilutes quality subscriptions for those who act on the balance of evidence available to them
  • Fear of ‘proven’ hindsight statistics distracts investors from applying un-proven foresight to their decision-making process
  • Fear of missing out tempts investors, large and small, to buy into bubbles, even when they are obvious to all, including themselves
  • Fear of disappointing clients generates obfuscation among financial intermediaries, so confusing investors with ambiguity