Everything Around You Is Built to Make You Worse at Investing

Your brokerage wants you transacting more, in more and more degenerate ways. Social media wants your attention, not your growth. And too much of the “investment advice” business gets paid whether you compound or not.

I’d know. I paid all three.

I’ve fired an advisor after underperformance. I’ve over-concentrated into binary-risk stocks that blew up. And I constantly have to remind myself of Buffett’s “20 Punch Card Rule.”

What fixed it wasn't getting smarter. It was better tools, a real process, and principles I actually follow.

If you’re like me, you worked hard to build your net worth. And somewhere along the way you got bitten by the investing bug. An addiction, or should I say a labor of love. Maybe you run money professionally, maybe you just love the challenge: seeing a value trap where no one else does, or finding the holy grail of a mis-priced gem. The why is simple. Compound above market returns for as long as we can, and provide for our families and everything else we want out of life.

But if that’s the mission, then we really have three enemies.

Bad tools. Bad processes. Bad principles.

Bad tools: the metrics we look at, the time horizons we measure them on, the sources of advice we take, even the ways we use AI.

Bad processes: most of us don’t have a bad process. We have no process. No standardized way to approach investing and capital allocation. I didn’t for years.

Bad principles: above it all, your returns are decided by what’s between your ears. The temperament that guides what you do, when you do it, and why.

I founded BID to fight all three. Simple as that. Better tools, real processes, and in time, the principles to get better at investing.

Because here’s what I believe after all my years in markets: the only edge you control is getting better.

Long term greedy,
BID