Policy Institute

One of the value investors that I admire and have learnt a lot from is Guy Spier. He recently got diagnosed with Glioblastoma and has decided to return the money of the investors in his fund. He recently explains this in his 2025 annual letter to investors. Here are a few things that stood out for me - On change in priorities - On concluding career on a high note - His thoughts on finding stewards of his own capital - 1. Look at folks with skin in the game 2. Investing being their sole focus 3. Look at folks doing (managing money) as an activity and not as a business 4. Someone who can explain what they are doing 5. Those working in fiduciary capacities He is going to keep a list of funds and businesses where his capital can get invested in case of his untimely death. This is probably the most important section in his letter. How to talk about health to someone who is sick. He has mentioned that folks who have advise or suggestions to reach out to his wife and not him directly probably 5 times in the letter. I am definitely picking up the book next. Some lessons learnt - "The medium term does not exist for me any more. There are only two kinds of time: The ever present now, and the eternal. I only do things that make sense on those two scales of time. The medium term is not interesting." In the end, he talks about a Hebrew word call Hineni, which means "Here I am". "In a sense, Hineni is the act of letting go of the script you wrote for yourself and accepting the one that is being written for you. I find myself saying Hineni now. Here I am. I don’t know what comes next, but I am here to meet it. My task has shifted. For 28 years, my job was to compound your capital. That is no longer my primary task. The task now is to confront what has been given to me—without complaint."