Very true. My best investment so far has been Illumina a few years ago, which I found because they were blanketing the job boards. Why hire like mad unless you

Very true. My best investment so far has been Illumina a few years ago, which I found because they were blanketing the job boards. Why hire like mad unless you expect to blow up soon? However, I'm not really willing to be a full-time investor at the moment. Index funds and a high-yield savings account do a good enough job of keeping up with the market for very little intellectual investment. Regarding high-risk, high-yield investing, the Kelly criterion comes to mind. It says that given some bias in the outcome of some bet, and a return proportional to the expected result (without the bias), there's an optimal portion of your principal to wager in each round to get the best yield over time. And it's surprisingly low -- in the case of a coin toss rigged 51% in favor of heads, for example, you should only bet 2% of your principal. If you go all in each round, even though the odds are in your favor, you will probably lose everything.