Investment Portfolio Quotes

Mayflower-Plymouth is a company, and it's an ecosystem. We are an Investment Holdings company that holds mostly small and medium sized businesses in our portfolio. And we also provide a variety of resources and business services such as consulting - in the interest of helping businesses to be better.

By adopting a Permaculture Investing approach, we seek to create investment portfolios that are not only profitable but also contribute to the health and well-being of our planet and its inhabitants.

When money is pooled together, it has a greater impact. A million dollars has more impact than one hundred thousand dollars. One hundred ETH has more impact than ten ETH. The more money, the greater the impact.

It’s not possible for investors to consistently outperform the market. Therefore you’re best served investing in a diversified portfolio of low-cost index funds [or exchange-traded funds].

Investing money is the process of committing resources in a strategic way to accomplish a specific objective.

Nature is great at hedging investments. Nature doesn’t hedge by betting for and against the same things. Nature hedges by cultivating resilience.

The wise study the numbers and their ways. The wise count their movements and their stays.

Investment Portfolios should be actively managed.

Permaculture Capital Stewardship, or Permaculture Investing, is about not just having a diversified portfolio, but having a portfolio where all of the assets within the portfolio have synergy and whereby that synergy is channeled toward maximized productivity for both shareholders and stakeholders. A permaculture investment portfolio has a multiplicative value effect.

The rise and fall of Teresa Cornelys proves three things: that the wages of sin are high, that you should “just say no” to opera, and that it’s always wise to diversify your investment portfolio.

We believe in active portfolio management but not aggressive portfolio management.

Little sleep, no investment portfolio, no family around, no hot water. On an evening a few days after arriving in Cange, I wondered aloud what compensation he got for these various hardships. He told me, “If you’re making sacrifices, unless you’re automatically following some rule, it stands to reason that you’re trying to lessen some psychic discomfort. So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don’t have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice, but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence.” He went on, and his voice changed a little. He didn’t bristle, but his tone had an edge: “I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can’t buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that, because you should feel ambivalent. Comma.” This was for me one of the first of many encounters with Farmer’s

I try to be a good investment to God. All the good things he’s given me, I aim to multiply and return to him and his purposes a maximum ROI. I’m just a tree in his fruit garden aiming to produce good fruit.

A business that doesn’t respect human life, animal life and the ecosystem of our planet earth… that’s a business we don’t want in our portfolio. If the business does more harm than good, facilitates more death than life, and causes more destruction than creation… then we view them as a bad investment.

Nature doesn’t hedge by betting for and against the same things. Nature hedges by cultivating resilience. At Mayflower-Plymouth we aim to hedge by cultivating resilience in our portfolios.

Christians are God's delivery people, through whom he does his giving to a needy world. We are conduits of God's grace to others. Our eternal investment portfolio should be full of the most strategic kingdom-building projects to which we can disburse God's funds.

Half of all U.S. mutual fund portfolio managers do not invest a cent of their own money in their funds, according to Morningstar.69 This might seem atrocious, and surely the statistic uncovers some hypocrisy.

At Mayflower-Plymouth, we have a unique approach to minimizing risk in our portfolios. We approach risk holistically.

Start a personal blog and begin developing a public reputation and public portfolio of work that’s not tied to your employer.

Just as in financial investing, you must invest in your knowledge portfolio regularly.

Invest in building a happy life. Create a portfolio of memories. Those are the most valuable assets. They’re priceless investments. And they’ll never go down in value.

Ultimately, incentive structures and systems drive ESG investing, which can be disingenuous. Structurally, public market investors continue to focus on the incentives which maximize their financial returns, even while taking certain ESG inputs into account in their portfolio allocations. Only by regulating and incentivizing the actual outcomes might investors alter their investment strategies towards new rewards based on ESG outputs.

And of course Brian was far more upset about separation from those two blond moppets than about leaving Louise. There shouldn't be any problem loving both, but for some reason certain men choose; like good mutual-fund managers minimizing risk while maximizing portfolio yield, they take everything they once invested in their wives and sink it into their children instead. What is it? Do they seem safer, because they need you? Because you can never become their ex-father, as I think I might become your ex-wife?

But the simple truth is this: the more complex an investment is, the less likely it is to be profitable. Index funds outperform actively managed funds in large part simply because actively managed funds require expensive active managers. Not only are they prone to making investing mistakes, their fees are a continual performance drag on the portfolio.

As we said, even the best venture investors have a portfolio, but investors who understand the power law make as few investments as possible.

At Mayflower-Plymouth, we view a portfolio as an ecosystem.

To acquire an asset at greater cost than value is simply unwise.

In nature, capital is never stagnant. Capital exists in service to life - at all times.

If you find yourself stimulated in any way by your portfolio performance, then you are probably doing something very wrong. A superior portfolio strategy should be intrinsically boring.

We do not need to be rational and scientific when it comes to the details of our daily life—only in those that can harm us and threaten our survival. Modern life seems to invite us to do the exact opposite; become extremely realistic and intellectual when it comes to such matters as religion and personal behavior, yet as irrational as possible when it comes to matters ruled by randomness (say, portfolio or real estate investments). I have encountered colleagues, “rational,” no-nonsense people, who do not understand why I cherish the poetry of Baudelaire and Saint-John Perse or obscure (and often impenetrable) writers like Elias Canetti, J. L. Borges, or Walter Benjamin. Yet they get sucked into listening to the “analyses” of a television “guru,” or into buying the stock of a company they know absolutely nothing about, based on tips by neighbors who drive expensive cars.

Slavery is not a horror safely confined to the past; it continues to exist throughout the world, even in developed countries like France and the United States. Across the world slaves work and sweat and build and suffer. Slaves in Pakistan may have made the shoes you are wearing and the carpet you stand on. Slaves in the Caribbean may have put sugar in your kitchen and toys in the hands of your children. In India they may have sewn the shirt on your back and polished the ring on your finger. They are paid nothing. Slaves touch your life indirectly as well. They made the bricks for the factory that made the TV you watch. In Brazil slaves made the charcoal that tempered the steel that made the springs in your car and the blade on your lawnmower. Slaves grew the rice that fed the woman that wove the lovely cloth you've put up as curtains. Your investment portfolio and your mutual fund pension own stock in companies using slave labor in the developing world. Slaves keep your costs low and returns on your investments high.

Basically, we view a portfolio in the same way that a gardener views a garden. Every business or asset in our portfolio is like a plant in a gardeners garden and is subject to similar expectations; growth, purpose, and productivity.

Many investors have a homogeneous view of portfolio diversification. They’re thinking about large cap vs small cap vs equity vs bonds. And that’s important, but nature views diversification much more holistically. And at Mayflower-Plymouth, so do we.

as modern portfolio theory. MPT, invented in the 1950s, was a technique to build an investment portfolio by examining the past returns and volatility of disparate asset classes. The trick was to split money among investments that don’t necessarily correlate, or move together, to avoid the chance that any one market event could cause calamity.

The easiest way to get rich is to spend as little as possible.

The earlier you put your capital to work, the more likely you are to have a larger portfolio value.

Jesus taught us to be good stewards of capital.

Capital must be consistently accumulated and compounded - that's the expectation.

All stakeholders should benefit from the capital we allocate in our portfolio.

We believe that the capital in our portfolio should be a platform for utility and a facilitator of life.

We believe that active management and passive management are not necessarily contradictory ideas.

We believe that capital must be cared for – stewarded.

All stakeholders should benefit from the capital we allocate in our portfolio, on a net value add basis.

Being net value adders puts us better positioned for long-term growth and longevity – because in the long term, capital flows to net value adders.

The idea that a few things account for most results is not just true for companies in your investment portfolio. It’s also an important part of your own behavior as an investor.

Managing a portfolio is like managing a garden. You don’t just want different kinds of plants in your garden. You want those different plants to have synergy and to work together harmoniously to maximize productivity. In the same way, when different elements in the portfolio have synergy and work together to help each other maximize individual productivity, their collective yields can then be reinvested to maximize the productivity of the whole portfolio. There’s a compounding effect and a multiplicative value effect that takes place with the permaculture investing approach.

Since business is an exchange of value, with the greatest profits afforded to the businesses that add the most value most additionally – being a net value adder positions us to achieve the greatest ROI.

At Mayflower-Plymouth, we analyze global markets, analyze businesses and employ a range of strategies that emulate natural ecosystems to deliver holistic and industry-consistent investment returns. Our approach emphasizes preservation, steady compounding growth and steady returns for our capital partners and clients.

In modern portfolio theory, beta is used as a measure of the volatility and, thus, the risk of an investment. However, Buffett sees the use of beta as nonsense, emphatically stating, “Volatility is no measure of risk to us.

It is imperative to acquire assets at a financial cost that is less than their value. Timing the purchase based on changes in the marketplace or other factors may present great opportunity to widen the margin between cost and value.

In the mutual fund industry, for example, the annual rate of portfolio turnover for the average actively managed equity fund runs to almost 100 percent, ranging from a hardly minimal 25 percent for the lowest turnover quintile to an astonishing 230 percent for the highest quintile. (The turnover of all-stock-market index funds is about 7 percent.)

One reason nature is efficient is because there is no waste. Everything produced creates value for others and is consumed by others on the basis of value. What one life may discard as not valuable is consumed by another life because of its valuable. And all things produced and consumed are continually upcycled, becoming more valuable each cycle. Perhaps it’s because nature has a capital-centric view of things; everything in nature is capital and produces capital which to varying degrees provides value to all other things in nature. Imagine if economies worked like this. Imagine if investment portfolios worked like this. Imagine if businesses worked like this. What a beautiful world it would be.

investors who pay attention to the economy can be more successful because they can take advantage of impending changes. While everyone else is focused on what’s happening right now, economically savvy investors can focus on what’s coming

Business will forever be a platform for people to exchange value. People are largely unpredictable, and value is largely subjective. This is the space where humans will always outperform AI – the space where active management will always be necessary.

If you buy an S&P 500 index fund, your investment is highly diversified and its performance will match that of 500 leading U.S. corporations' stocks. Is it possible to lose all of your money? Yes, but the odds of that happening are slim and none. If 500 leading U.S. corporations all have their stock prices plummet to zero, the value of your investment portfolio will be the least of your problems. An economic collapse of that magnitude would make the Great Depression look like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

Everyone knows about market risk and management risk. But there are a variety of non obvious risks to consider when managing a portfolio of investments. They include political risk, share premiums and discounts risk, Interest Rate risk, Income Risk, Tax law changes risk, valuation risk, and liquidity risk, among others. This is why professional active portfolio management is the way to go.

The economic system pressures me to expand and diversify my investment portfolio, but it gives me zero incentive to expand and diversify my compassion. So I strive to understand the mysteries of the stock exchange while making far less effort to understand the deep causes of suffering.

The most realistic distinction between the investor and the speculator is found in their attitude toward stock-market movements. The speculator’s primary interest lies in anticipating and profiting from market fluctuations. The investor’s primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices. Market movements are important to him in a practical sense, because they alternately create low price levels at which he would be wise to buy and high price levels at which he certainly should refrain from buying and probably would be wise to sell. It is far from certain that the typical investor should regularly hold off buying until low market levels appear, because this may involve a long wait, very likely the loss of income, and the possible missing of investment opportunities. On the whole it may be better for the investor to do his stock buying whenever he has money to put in stocks, except when the general market level is much higher than can be justified by well-established standards of value. If he wants to be shrewd he can look for the ever-present bargain opportunities in individual securities. Aside from forecasting the movements of the general market, much effort and ability are directed on Wall Street toward selecting stocks or industrial groups that in matter of price will “do better” than the rest over a fairly short period in the future. Logical as this endeavor may seem, we do not believe it is suited to the needs or temperament of the true investor—particularly since he would be competing with a large number of stock-market traders and first-class financial analysts who are trying to do the same thing. As in all other activities that emphasize price movements first and underlying values second, the work of many intelligent minds constantly engaged in this field tends to be self-neutralizing and self-defeating over the years. The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks should expect their prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances. He should always remember that market quotations are there for his convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored. He should never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down. He would not be far wrong if this motto read more simply: “Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.” An

Much like a house mortgaged to a bank today, mortgaged slaves were security for those who put up the money for the mortgage, to whom the slaves were “conveyed.” A mortgage financier might be a merchant, a church with an investment portfolio, a college, a bank, or, commonly, a wealthy individual with a large slavehold. A slave put up for sale had to be warranted not only of “good character” (not criminal-minded or rebellious) but “free of all incumbrance” (not already mortgaged).14 Slaveowners had physical possession of, and legal title to, the enslaved, but to speak only of the slaveowners is to underestimate how broad was the stakeholding.

Men are hard-wired for risk taking—particularly young men. The number one killer of fifteen- to twenty-four-year-old males is accidents.6 Female investors hold less risky investment portfolios than their male counterparts and generally take fewer chances with their money. Churches need men because men are natural risk takers—and they bring that orientation into the church. Congregations that do not take risks atrophy. Jesus made it clear that risk taking is necessary to please God. In the parable of the talents, the master praises two servants who risked their assets and produced more, but he curses the servant who played it safe. He who avoids all risk is, in the words of Jesus, “wicked and lazy".

Many new investors, eager to see quick profits, need to develop the patience and research skills necessary for successful long-term investing.

Always remember, the minority dictates the price. A company may have billions of shareholders, but it only takes one shareholder to change the price.

Everybody does some sort of diversification. It is the extent and broadness that varies according to risk tolerance.

All of us need to invest our capital to achieve financial freedom, but most of us are not equipped with the soul and skills to have concentrated portfolios.

Diversification does not guarantee protection from losses. It provides a weighted-average return of the portfolio.

It is a common misconception that if you diversify, you don’t need to learn anything. Just buy a bunch of stocks, and you will be good. Nothing can be further from the truth.

No amount of diversification can replace investment research. If you want to invest, you have to learn.

It may take some time, but capital will eventually flow to the most logical place.

The stock market, as a whole, has and will recover from every downturn.

When you buy a stock, you buy a piece of business, not a quote from a broker. As long as the company is doing good, your investment is safe.

There is an excellent characteristic of stock investment that it can only go to zero.

You must start investing as early as possible. Yesterday was better than today, and today is better than tomorrow. Don’t wait for a significant market drop.

Money managers tend to make irrational decisions just to protect their calendar year performances, even if they believe that decision is not in the best interest of investors.

Annual performance means nothing to individual investors.

Leveraging is not evil but must be used with extreme caution and care. You must understand that over-leveraging is the prime reason for all market blowups.

easy to trade a million-dollar portfolio with nothing more than a few thousand dollars' initial investment

It’s worth emphasising this: the benefits of diversification are greater when average returns are measured with geometric means.18

We are researching and developing human abilities mainly according to the immediate needs of the economic and political system, rather than according to our own long-term needs as conscious beings. My boss wants me to answer emails as quickly as possible, but he has little interest in my ability to taste and appreciate the food I am eating. Consequently, I check my emails even during meals, which means I lose the ability to pay attention to my own sensations. The economic system pressures me to expand and diversify my investment portfolio, but it gives me zero incentive to expand and diversify my compassion. So I strive to understand the mysteries of the stock exchange while making far less effort to understand the deep causes of suffering.

In nature, capital is never stagnant. Capital exists in service to life - at all times. It's a medium of utility, not a souvineer. The capital in our portfolio should work in the same way.

Proper diversification can be achieved with a handful of assets. On the other hand, a poorly selected portfolio with hundreds of stocks and bonds can be inadequate for diversification purposes.

Establishing and maintaining an unconventional investment profile requires acceptance of uncomfortably idiosyncratic portfolios, which frequently appear downright imprudent in the eyes of conventional wisdom. Unless institutions maintain contrarian positions through difficult times, the resulting damage of buying high and selling low imposes severe financial and reputational costs on the institution.

This tendency of overconfidence and poor outcomes is not confined to only retail investors. Institutional investors suffer from overconfidence equally if not more, and their investment results are not superior either.

Every all-time high of the stock market proves that the market has eventually recovered from all downturns, 100% of the time. This strategy is the only one that worked every time without a single failure for centuries.

Proper diversification means investing in uncorrelated assets, and investing in multiple assets needs multiple sets of knowledge, more hours of research, and more market following. It is definitely more work for an investor.

Investment Owner’s Contract I, _____________ ___________________, hereby state that I am an investor who is seeking to accumulate wealth for many years into the future. I know that there will be many times when I will be tempted to invest in stocks or bonds because they have gone (or “are going”) up in price, and other times when I will be tempted to sell my investments because they have gone (or “are going”) down. I hereby declare my refusal to let a herd of strangers make my financial decisions for me. I further make a solemn commitment never to invest because the stock market has gone up, and never to sell because it has gone down. Instead, I will invest $______.00 per month, every month, through an automatic investment plan or “dollar-cost averaging program,” into the following mutual fund(s) or diversified portfolio(s): _________________________________, _________________________________, _________________________________. I will also invest additional amounts whenever I can afford to spare the cash (and can afford to lose it in the short run). I hereby declare that I will hold each of these investments continually through at least the following date (which must be a minimum of 10 years after the date of this contact): _________________ _____, 20__. The only exceptions allowed under the terms of this contract are a sudden, pressing need for cash, like a health-care emergency or the loss of my job, or a planned expenditure like a housing down payment or a tuition bill. I am, by signing below, stating my intention not only to abide by the terms of this contract, but to re-read this document whenever I am tempted to sell any of my investments. This contract is valid only when signed by at least one witness, and must be kept in a safe place that is easily accessible for future reference.

Any so-called 'radical' strategy that seeks to empower the disempowered in the realm of social reproduction by opening up that realm to monetisation and market forces is headed in exactly the wrong direction. Providing financial literacy classes for the populace at large will simply expose that population predatory practices as they seek to manage their own investment portfolios like minnows swimming in a sea of sharks. Providing microcredit and microfinance facilities encourages people to participate in the market economy but does so in such a way as to maximise the energy they have to expend while minimising their returns. Providing legal title for land property ownership in the hope that this will bring economic and social stability to the lives of the marginalised will almost certainly lead in the long run to their dispossession and eviction from that space and place they already hold through customary use rights.

Don't mention that you also happen to manage a six-figure portfolio to your "voluntary simplicity" friends and don't mention that you only have one bedroom to your investment friends unless you're prepared for the resulting discussion.

The problem with fiat is that simply maintaining the wealth you already own requires significant active management and expert decision-making. You need to develop expertise in portfolio allocation, risk management, stock and bond valuation, real estate markets, credit markets, global macro trends, national and international monetary policy, commodity markets, geopolitics, and many other arcane and highly specialized fields in order to make informed investment decisions that allow you to maintain the wealth you already earned. You effectively need to earn your money twice with fiat, once when you work for it, and once when you invest it to beat inflation. The simple gold coin saved you from all of this before fiat.

I carried with me into the West End Bar, the White Horse Tavern, a long list of things I would never do: I would never have my hair set in a beauty parlor. I would never move to a suburb and bake cakes or make casseroles. I would never go to a country club dance, although I did like the paper lanterns casting rainbow colors on the terrace. I would never invest in the stock market. I would never play canasta. I would never wear pearls. I would love like a nursling but I would never go near a man who had a portfolio or a set of golf clubs or a business or even a business suit. I would only love a wild thing. I didn't care if wild things tended to break hearts. I didn't care if they substituted scotch for breakfast cereal. I understood that wild things wrote suicide notes to the gods and were apt to show up three hours later than promised. I understood that art was long and life was short.

I believe when using leverage, the following four conditions must be met. 1. Leverage must be in the general direction of a secular trend. 2. Leverage should never expire. 3. Leveraged positions should not be subject to forced sell. 4. The maximum possible loss should not be more than the invested capital.

If your portfolio is made up of the investments that you have made in the lives of people, you will have amassed a wealth so vast that all the portfolios that will ever float the trading floor on Wall Street would, by comparison, be reckoned as nothing. And if by chance we dared to live by this truth, we would in fact would love like none other.

Want to see how the investment income changes with a change in principal? Simply divide the figures by the change in principal. With a $20M portfolio (twice the principal) just multiply by two: instead of $40,000/month, you’d receive $80,000/month and $1M per year. With a $1M portfolio, divide the results by ten: instead of $40K per month, you’d live comfortably passive on $4,000/month and nearly $50,000/year.

What’s going on there?” THAT’S JUST SOME REAL ESTATE DEALS I’M WORKING ON. “Real estate?” I HAVE A LIFE OUTSIDE OF THIS COMPANY, YOU KNOW. “More than I do,” I said. “Is … that legal? Owning real estate?” YOU MEAN, BECAUSE I’M A CAT? “Well, yes.” I HAVE A TRUST SET UP FOR MY BENEFIT AND A HUMAN LAWYER THAT ACTS AS THE EXECUTOR. I TELL HIM WHAT TO DO, HE DOES IT. “Does he know you’re a cat?” YOU KNOW, IT’S NEVER COME UP. “So, you’re a real estate maven.” I HAVE A DIVERSIFIED PORTFOLIO, Hera wrote. MOSTLY BORING BUT SOME EXCITING PARTS. I DO A LOT OF INVESTING IN EMERGING MARKETS. “Sounds risky.” I’M A CAT, I CAN HANDLE RISK. WORST-CASE SCENARIO IS I LOSE EVERYTHING AND I STILL GET FED AND HAVE A PLACE TO NAP. “That’s … a surprisingly chill way of thinking about things.” SOMETIMES IT’S BETTER NOT TO BE A HUMAN, CHARLIE.

Jesus does not say blandly that treasure in heaven results from our generosity on earth. More passionately, he urges his followers to pursue treasure in heaven, the way a thirsty desert wanderer pursues water, or a savvy portfolio manager scours the financial landscape for investments. John comes nowhere close to the Biblical conclusion. Not through faulty reasoning, but the Objectivist simply starts from a different premise. That premise leads him to the “primacy of the individual.

At Mayflower-Plymouth, we believe in having a long term view with investments. We believe that maximizing long-term ROI requires having a big picture view in terms of business and economics. We believe that equity without income is unnatural – so every portfolio should generate consistent income. We believe in prioritizing not just growth, but also resilience. And we believe that we should employ a multitude of traditional investment approaches toward the achievement of our investment goals.

In forests – Seeds are planted in the soil (capital) and become trees that shed leaves as they grow. Those shedded leaves become added capital to the soil (dividends/yields). The tree also provides a home for other life forms which return capital to the soil. Upon the death of the tree, it’s entire body becomes capital as it is returned to the soil. In this cycle, every tree is an investment which results in the long term accumulation of soil (capital) over time. As the soil grows, it becomes better able to invest in future trees and host future forests. And the yield of them all collectively becomes greater and greater as the capital accumulates. In fact, everything in a natural ecosystem both is capital and exists in service to capital. This duality of capital in natural ecosystems is why capital in natural ecosystems is able to compound and multiply so well. So when it comes to investing - managing portfolios, we apply this duality of capital perspective and pair it with our stewardship identity, which allows us to grow portfolios and maximize wealth.

In judging the importance of moral concerns, recall, social liberals place little weight on In-group Loyalty and Purity/Sanctity (which Fiske lumps under Communal Sharing), and they place little weight on Authority/Respect. Instead they invest all their moral concern in Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity. Social conservatives spread their moral portfolio over all five.197 The trend toward social liberalism, then, is a trend away from communal and authoritarian values and toward values based on equality, fairness, autonomy, and legally enforced rights.

The strategy we’ve adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it. In stating this opinion, we define risk, using dictionary terms, as “the possibility of loss or injury.” —Warren Buffett, 19931

The 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing are: 1. Accumulate & Compound Capital: Consistently save and invest to grow your capital base over time, leveraging the power of compound interest. 2. Utilize Capital: Actively deploy your capital into productive investments that generate returns, rather than letting it sit idle. 3. Retain Maximum & Gradiented Liquidity: Maintain a balance between liquid assets (easily accessible cash) and less liquid investments, ensuring you can meet immediate needs while still investing for the long term. 4. Actively Manage Passive: While focusing on passive income sources, actively monitor and adjust your investments to optimize returns and mitigate risks. 5. Prioritize Long-Term Growth: Focus on investments that offer potential for significant growth over the long term, even if they don't provide immediate high yields. 6. Prioritize Consistent Yields: Balance your portfolio with investments that provide reliable, consistent income to support your financial needs. 7. Add Net Value to all Stakeholders: Invest in ways that benefit not only yourself but also the broader community, environment, and all parties involved. 8. Provide Authentic Data: Be transparent and honest in your financial reporting, providing accurate information to all stakeholders. 9. Collect & Utilize Authentic Data: Base your investment decisions on reliable, verified data rather than speculation or rumors. 10. Diversify Holistically: Diversify your investments across different asset classes, industries, and geographical regions to reduce risk and maximize potential returns. 11. Harvest Yields Equitably: Distribute profits fairly among all stakeholders, ensuring everyone benefits from the investment's success. 12. Reinvest Yields in Most Profitable Assets: Continuously evaluate your portfolio and reinvest profits into the most promising opportunities to further compound your growth.

a young Goldman Sachs banker named Joseph Park was sitting in his apartment, frustrated at the effort required to get access to entertainment. Why should he trek all the way to Blockbuster to rent a movie? He should just be able to open a website, pick out a movie, and have it delivered to his door. Despite raising around $250 million, Kozmo, the company Park founded, went bankrupt in 2001. His biggest mistake was making a brash promise for one-hour delivery of virtually anything, and investing in building national operations to support growth that never happened. One study of over three thousand startups indicates that roughly three out of every four fail because of premature scaling—making investments that the market isn’t yet ready to support. Had Park proceeded more slowly, he might have noticed that with the current technology available, one-hour delivery was an impractical and low-margin business. There was, however, a tremendous demand for online movie rentals. Netflix was just then getting off the ground, and Kozmo might have been able to compete in the area of mail-order rentals and then online movie streaming. Later, he might have been able to capitalize on technological changes that made it possible for Instacart to build a logistics operation that made one-hour grocery delivery scalable and profitable. Since the market is more defined when settlers enter, they can focus on providing superior quality instead of deliberating about what to offer in the first place. “Wouldn’t you rather be second or third and see how the guy in first did, and then . . . improve it?” Malcolm Gladwell asked in an interview. “When ideas get really complicated, and when the world gets complicated, it’s foolish to think the person who’s first can work it all out,” Gladwell remarked. “Most good things, it takes a long time to figure them out.”* Second, there’s reason to believe that the kinds of people who choose to be late movers may be better suited to succeed. Risk seekers are drawn to being first, and they’re prone to making impulsive decisions. Meanwhile, more risk-averse entrepreneurs watch from the sidelines, waiting for the right opportunity and balancing their risk portfolios before entering. In a study of software startups, strategy researchers Elizabeth Pontikes and William Barnett find that when entrepreneurs rush to follow the crowd into hyped markets, their startups are less likely to survive and grow. When entrepreneurs wait for the market to cool down, they have higher odds of success: “Nonconformists . . . that buck the trend are most likely to stay in the market, receive funding, and ultimately go public.” Third, along with being less recklessly ambitious, settlers can improve upon competitors’ technology to make products better. When you’re the first to market, you have to make all the mistakes yourself. Meanwhile, settlers can watch and learn from your errors. “Moving first is a tactic, not a goal,” Peter Thiel writes in Zero to One; “being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you.” Fourth, whereas pioneers tend to get stuck in their early offerings, settlers can observe market changes and shifting consumer tastes and adjust accordingly. In a study of the U.S. automobile industry over nearly a century, pioneers had lower survival rates because they struggled to establish legitimacy, developed routines that didn’t fit the market, and became obsolete as consumer needs clarified. Settlers also have the luxury of waiting for the market to be ready. When Warby Parker launched, e-commerce companies had been thriving for more than a decade, though other companies had tried selling glasses online with little success. “There’s no way it would have worked before,” Neil Blumenthal tells me. “We had to wait for Amazon, Zappos, and Blue Nile to get people comfortable buying products they typically wouldn’t order online.