🛡️ Risk first
🔎 Every investment judgment should start by sizing the risk—especially reputational risk.
🧱 Build in a margin of safety.
🚫🤝 Avoid dealing with people of questionable character.
💰⚖️ Demand adequate compensation for assumed risks.
📈🔥 Beware inflation and interest-rate risks.
🕳️⛔ Avoid big errors; avoid permanent capital loss.
🧭 Independence
👑🗣️ Only in fairy tales do emperors get told they’re naked.
🧠📏 Objectivity and rationality require independent thinking.
🗣️✅/❌ Agreement or disagreement proves nothing—only the correctness of your analysis and judgment counts.
🐑➡️📉 Imitating the herd leads to regression to the mean (merely average results).
📚 Preparation
🛠️💡 The way to win is work, work, work—and hope for a few insights.
📖🧠 Become a lifelong autodidact: devour books, stay curious, aim to get a bit smarter every day.
🗓️🏋️ The will to prepare beats the will to win.
🧩🌐 Build mental models across major disciplines.
❓❓❓ If you want to get smart, keep asking: why, why, why?
🪞 Intellectual humility
🌅 Admitting what you don’t know is the dawn of wisdom.
🎯📦 Stay within a well-defined circle of competence.
⚖️🔎 Seek and weigh disconfirming evidence.
🎯🚫 Resist false precision and false certainty.
🙈➡️🧠 Don’t fool yourself—you’re the easiest person to fool.
🔬 Analytical diligence
🧪✅ Scientific method and effective checklists minimize errors and omissions.
💎≠💵 Value ≠ price; progress ≠ activity; wealth ≠ size.
👀✨ Prefer thinking about the obvious over chasing the esoteric.
🏢📊 Be a business analyst, not a market/macro/security soothsayer.
🌊➕🧭 Consider total risk and effect; think in second- and higher-order consequences.
🔁🧩 Think forward and backward: invert, always invert.
🧰 Allocation (capital allocation)
🧮🎯 Proper capital allocation is an investor’s primary job.
🔄📈 Highest and best use is measured against the next best use (opportunity cost).
💡🏆 Good ideas are rare—when odds are great, bet big.
💔📉 Don’t fall in love with an investment—stay flexible and opportunity-driven.
⏳ Patience
✋🧠 Resist the human urge to act.
📈🧮 Compounding is the eighth wonder—don’t interrupt it unnecessarily.
🧾💸 Avoid needless taxes and friction; never trade for trading’s sake.
👀🍀 Be vigilant when luck shows up.
🛤️😊 Enjoy the process as well as the returns.
✅ Decisiveness
⚡🎯 When the right opportunities appear, act decisively and with conviction.
🐻😨 / 🐂🤑 Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.
🕰️🎯 Opportunity is rare—grab it when it comes.
🧠🤝 The opportunity meeting the prepared mind—that’s the essence.
🔁 Change
🌪️🧩 Live with change and accept irreducible complexity.
👁️🌍 See the world as it is and adapt to it; don’t expect it to adapt to you.
🛠️🧪 Constantly challenge and refine your favorite ideas.
🧊🪞 Acknowledge reality even when you dislike it—especially then.
🎯 Focus
🧹🎯 Keep it simple—don’t forget your primary mission.
🏛️✨ Reputation and integrity are priceless—and can be lost in an instant.
🎭⚠️ Beware hubris and boredom.
👓📌 Don’t miss the obvious by getting lost in details.
🚫🗞️ Exclude noise and sloppiness: a small leak can sink a great ship.
🐘🧹 Face your big problems—don’t sweep them under the rug.
📗 Excerpt from Poor Charlie’s Almanack — see link below.
🛠️ Tools & recommendations (Amazon affiliate)
✅ I only recommend what I use myself.
💸 I earn a small commission via these links—at no extra cost to you.
👉 
🧠🛡️ #Polarization #AttentionEconomy
