This was a very thought provoking letter. Thank you.
I currently feel like I’m trying to cling to my orderly “indexed” life while things are unraveling around me. But maybe I need to embrace the skew, the fat tail, the chaos that was always around me that I basically ignored all my life? Is this the lesson?
Part of my skew-blindness problem is that to date my life has been very orderly, charmed, and probably too easy, and now that the fat tail has emerged where I can actually see it, I am having to confront things that I didn’t really think about before. Like the greater possibility for nuclear war, the value of the US dollar crumbling, and the general “world order” as I understood it falling apart. And it’s freaking me out.
This was great Bob. Your Midwest background always shines for me because of my small town Nebraska childhood. And the rest of your message is amazing and as always relatable to both investors as well as industry pros. Thanks!
Hiya Bob. No wonder you & Housel are friends. You see the world similarly. This may not be a great metaphor, but seems to me that people would have more interesting lives and better investments if they treated them both like Movie Studios treat their products - using trial & error to find some fat tailed hits while worrying less about the misses. Unfortunately loads of people spend their lives trying to “de-risk” instead of chasing opportunity. Makes me wonder how many folks bought NVDA 6 years ago and sold it three years later when it had tripled? Sure glad I held on! It’s up 5000% now and with some luck will be my 2nd ten-bagger one day. AMZN was the first - Bezos may have had an unnecessarily ostentatious wedding, but he sure thought different & right about e-commerce.
I’m looking forward to Part 2 of this newsletter. Thanks!
Bob, this is some of the best and most inspiring writing I've read on Substack. Original, thoughtful and wonderful storytelling. Well done!
Thank you (and thanks for reading).
One of your best Bob! I’m going to read this many times over in the next week.
This was a very thought provoking letter. Thank you.
I currently feel like I’m trying to cling to my orderly “indexed” life while things are unraveling around me. But maybe I need to embrace the skew, the fat tail, the chaos that was always around me that I basically ignored all my life? Is this the lesson?
Part of my skew-blindness problem is that to date my life has been very orderly, charmed, and probably too easy, and now that the fat tail has emerged where I can actually see it, I am having to confront things that I didn’t really think about before. Like the greater possibility for nuclear war, the value of the US dollar crumbling, and the general “world order” as I understood it falling apart. And it’s freaking me out.
This was great Bob. Your Midwest background always shines for me because of my small town Nebraska childhood. And the rest of your message is amazing and as always relatable to both investors as well as industry pros. Thanks!
Hiya Bob. No wonder you & Housel are friends. You see the world similarly. This may not be a great metaphor, but seems to me that people would have more interesting lives and better investments if they treated them both like Movie Studios treat their products - using trial & error to find some fat tailed hits while worrying less about the misses. Unfortunately loads of people spend their lives trying to “de-risk” instead of chasing opportunity. Makes me wonder how many folks bought NVDA 6 years ago and sold it three years later when it had tripled? Sure glad I held on! It’s up 5000% now and with some luck will be my 2nd ten-bagger one day. AMZN was the first - Bezos may have had an unnecessarily ostentatious wedding, but he sure thought different & right about e-commerce.
I’m looking forward to Part 2 of this newsletter. Thanks!
Enough with indexing. The risk is where it's at.
This was wonderful and special to read. Thank you, Bob!
Thank you (and thanks for reading).
Totally worth it. Life is in tails as always. 🥳
How about AI warp speed to a 32 hour work week?