Principles

These principles change rarely. When they do, we will say so here and date the change.

I. Price is what you pay. Value is what you can verify.

The market sets a price every second. Value has to be worked out, from cash flows, assets and balance sheets that we can inspect ourselves. If we cannot check it, we do not count it.

II. Leave room for error.

Every valuation is wrong to some degree. We buy only when the price sits well below our estimate, so that being wrong costs us little. A margin of safety is the one forecast we trust.

III. Time is the advantage.

Most market participants are measured by the quarter. We are not. We hold for decades and let compounding do work that cleverness cannot.

IV. Custody is ownership.

An asset held by someone else is a promise. We prefer the asset. Digital assets stay in our own custody, with keys under our control. Other assets sit in structures we can see through.

V. Markets over mandates.

Prices carry information that no committee can replace. Policy that overrides them, through cheap money, bailouts or price controls, leaves costs that someone pays later. We plan for that.

VI. Sound money, sober expectations.

Currencies lose purchasing power over long periods, some faster than others. We measure results in real terms and favor assets whose supply cannot be expanded at will.

VII. Few decisions, made well.

We act rarely and concentrate on what we understand. We avoid leverage we could not carry through a bad decade, and we stay away from what we cannot value.

VIII. Trust is earned and checked.

We trust people, and we verify records. Open ledgers, audited accounts and plain contracts make that possible. Where they are missing, we ask why.

Vera Aestimatio

Our motto is Latin for "true valuation." It describes the whole of the job: find what a thing is truly worth, then compare that with its price.