For First-Time Readers
Start here.
The purpose, the strongest evidence, and the clearest next steps—without searching through the archive.
I started this account in 2022 with $500 of saved earnings and gift money, as a teenager who noticed I was making decisions the same way most people do: on a feeling, after the fact, with a story ready to explain whatever happened. I'd get excited about a company, buy it, and only really work out why after the price had already moved — which meant I couldn't tell whether I'd made a good decision or just had a good outcome. That's the problem this site was built to solve.
The problem: impulsive decisions
Most bad investing decisions aren't bad because the underlying idea was wrong — they're bad because the decision got made in the moment, under pressure, without a clear view of the tradeoffs. The fix isn't more conviction. It's a written Investment Policy Statement — position caps, a sell discipline, a blackout window before earnings — set before the moment of temptation, not during it.
The discipline: thesis before outcome
Every position on this site gets a dated, public thesis before the outcome is known: what has to be true, what breaks it, how it is sized, and what competing view deserves attention. That ordering is the entire point. A thesis judged only by whether the stock went up isn't a thesis, it's a bet dressed up afterward — and it's how people fool themselves into thinking they have an edge they don't. Separating the two is what lets a call be judged on its decision quality, not just its result.
The habit: revising in public
Being right about a company matters less than being honest about how much of the book depended on it, and about the calls that didn't work. Every rule I've broken and every thesis that missed gets reported in the open, not quietly corrected — see What I Got Wrong for a live example. A track record I can edit after the fact isn't a track record. Learning to actually revise a belief, in writing, where it's checkable later, is the whole practice.