Why Risk Management and VUCA are your friends

Getting money requires taking risks, being optimistic, and putting yourself out there.

But keeping money requires the opposite of taking risk. It requires humility, and fear that what you’ve made can be taken away from you just as fast. It requires frugality and an acceptance that at least some of what you’ve made is attributable to luck, so past success can’t be relied upon to repeat indefinitely.  

For the most prolific investor ever, let’s take stock of what he DIDN’T do: 

He didn’t get carried away with debt.

He didn’t panic and sell during the 14 recessions he’s lived through.

He didn’t ruin his business reputation.

He didn’t entrench himself based on one strategy, one world view, or one passing trend.

He didn’t rely on others’ money (managing investments through a public company meant investors couldn’t withdraw their capital).

He didn’t burn himself out and quit or retire.

He survived. Survival gave him longevity. And longevity-investing consistently from age 11 to age 94 is what made compounding work wonders. That single point is what matters in describing his success.  

Guessed already who he is? 

In this five part series, we shall explore what it means to be an investor in times of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (we’ll also cover this)) and from there how to create value and make time work for you to grow your fig tree.