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Read "Pioneering Portfolio Management" by David Swenson, the guy who runs the Yale endowment. Fascinating book on investing; one of his "super powers" as an in

Read "Pioneering Portfolio Management" by David Swenson, the guy who runs the Yale endowment. Fascinating book on investing; one of his "super powers" as an investor is the fact that the Yale Endowment is immortal, and can invest on 100 year timelines. The rest of us who need to retire can't afford to think like that. But if you can afford to think like that, new opportunities open up that no one else can compete with you on. And that time perspective makes issues like the dot-com crash or the 2009 financial crisis look laughably irrelevant. If you zoom out the performance graph to the entire history of the US stock market, the great depression looks a bit more like a temporary downturn, whose total value is a small percentage relative to today's current level.

11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
> new opportunities open up that no one else can compete with you on. Would appreciate a couple of examples.
- existencebox 9y ago
  Not a particularly _safe_ example, but Venezuela recently released 100 year treasury bonds. I'd imagine this is not a retail investment vehicle; traditionally.
  - amitagrawal 9y ago
    Argentina is not particularly a glowing example of an entity with such a long investment horizon given how frequently they've defaulted on their debt.
  - whatok 9y ago
    Argentina; not Venezuela.
  - twic 9y ago
    If they pay a coupon every year, and you can resell them on a market at any time, then the fact that they won't mature for a hundred years doesn't make them unsuitable for ordinary investors. Now, a hundred year term deposit, with interest payable at maturity ...
paganel 9y ago
> the Yale Endowment is immortal This reminds me of a book I've just read, Ernst Kantorowicz's "The King's Two Bodies", where he describes how the concept of "fiscus" (what later would be called the "royal purse", or the "royal domain") became "immortal" somewhere around the 1200s in Britain. This also reminded me that I wanted to check if anyone had made a connection or had written a book/study about the possible relation between today's big corporations (think Google, Apple) and what people in the Middle Ages had called in Latin as "corporatio" (or "corporate body", in the English translation).
aswanson 9y ago
If you have children and expect they will as well , you can assume at least a financial legacy 60+ years beyond your death and plan accordingly. Wealthy families assume immortality in that manner, e.g. Vanderbilts, Mellons, etc.

11thEarlOfMar 9y ago

> new opportunities open up that no one else can compete with you on. Would appreciate a couple of examples.

existencebox 9y ago
Not a particularly _safe_ example, but Venezuela recently released 100 year treasury bonds. I'd imagine this is not a retail investment vehicle; traditionally.
- amitagrawal 9y ago
  Argentina is not particularly a glowing example of an entity with such a long investment horizon given how frequently they've defaulted on their debt.
- whatok 9y ago
  Argentina; not Venezuela.
- twic 9y ago
  If they pay a coupon every year, and you can resell them on a market at any time, then the fact that they won't mature for a hundred years doesn't make them unsuitable for ordinary investors. Now, a hundred year term deposit, with interest payable at maturity ...

paganel 9y ago

> the Yale Endowment is immortal This reminds me of a book I've just read, Ernst Kantorowicz's "The King's Two Bodies", where he describes how the concept of "fiscus" (what later would be called the "royal purse", or the "royal domain") became "immortal" somewhere around the 1200s in Britain. This also reminded me that I wanted to check if anyone had made a connection or had written a book/study about the possible relation between today's big corporations (think Google, Apple) and what people in the Middle Ages had called in Latin as "corporatio" (or "corporate body", in the English translation).

aswanson 9y ago

If you have children and expect they will as well , you can assume at least a financial legacy 60+ years beyond your death and plan accordingly. Wealthy families assume immortality in that manner, e.g. Vanderbilts, Mellons, etc.