The number of the day: 2.9

I just got back from Jackson Hole, where I met a guy who sold his company for about $10M a while back.

For the last decade he's put those winnings into public stocks. His return: 21.8% a year. The S&P 500 did 13.5% over the same stretch.

Being that I'm a nosy son of a bitch, I asked to see his brokerage accounts. (My excuse is that I'm gathering info for you, my dear reader.) He actually showed me.

$100 he invested in 2014 is now worth $1,063. The same $100 in an S&P index fund is $457. He beat the market 11 out of 12 years.

But that's not what floored me. Then we put his brokerage accounts into Claude and had it count how many decisions he makes a year. A decision means buying into a company or selling out of one.

The answer: 2.9 decisions a year. That's 22 moves in seven and a half years. At one point he went three straight years without doing anything.

[INSERT CHART: decisions-a-year-v4.png]

We confuse motion with results

Goalkeepers do it too. Researchers studied 286 pro penalty kicks and found the best move was to stand still in the middle. Keepers dove left or right 93.7% of the time anyway, because getting scored on while doing nothing feels worse than getting scored on while diving.

Investors are the same. In a study of 66,465 households, the 20% who traded the most earned 11.4% a year while the market made 17.9%.

Look at my buddy's 2022. He got smoked: down 27% while the market fell 18%. That was his one losing year against the index, and he made six moves that year. Then he sat on his hands for three years. In 2023 he beat the market by 13 points, in 2024 by 8, and in 2025 by 8.

Buffett put it best in his 1990 letter: "Lethargy bordering on sloth remains the cornerstone of our investment style."

It's not just an investing thing

Bain studied about 800 companies for a book called Decide & Deliver. The top fifth at making and executing decisions returned about 6 points more to shareholders than everyone else. The difference held in every country, every industry, and every company size.

The winners weren't smarter. They were clear about who makes the call. My buddy is a committee of one. That's why he can sit still for three years. Most companies have twelve people who think they get a vote.

How to know a decision is worth making

[YOUR SECTION: how he decides. What makes him buy, what makes him sell, and what he did during the quiet years.]

• Is it a one-way or two-way door? Bezos's rule: decisions you can't undo deserve slow, careful thought. Reversible ones should be made fast.
• Would you spend a punch on it? Buffett says invest like you get only 20 punches on a card for your whole life.
• Name the one person who decides. If the answer is "the team," it's nobody.

Most decisions are two-way doors. Make them fast. A few are one-way doors. Make those slowly, make them yourself, and make very few of them. My buddy made 2.9 a year.

Reply and tell me the one decision you're NOT going to make this year. I read every reply.

I love you,

Sam