How I Built a $765,000 Portfolio in My 20s – With Zero Hype.

This one metric became the foundation of my investing approach. It helped me identify Palantir at $7 and turn it into a 20X return. It guided my early position in HIMS, which went on to 5X.

Introduction:

In today’s market, it’s easy to get swept up in the noise.

Headlines move fast. Sentiment shifts overnight. And most investors are caught chasing whatever’s trending - meme stocks, volatile crypto tokens, or speculative AI plays they don’t truly understand. Movement is mistaken for strategy. Volatility is mistaken for value. And attention is mistaken for insight.

I chose a different path.

While others were trading on emotion, I was building conviction. I spent my time reading company filings, studying free cash flow, and analysing the behavior of leadership teams. I wasn’t looking for hype — I was looking for businesses with enduring fundamentals. I built theses, not trades.

That decision — to focus on free cash flow per share - changed everything.

This one metric became the foundation of my investing approach. It helped me identify Palantir at $7 and turn it into a 20X return. It guided my early position in HIMS, which went on to 5X. And it shaped my conviction in AMD — well before the broader market recognized the company's structural advantages.

By my early twenties, I had built a $765,000 stock portfolio — largely driven by a concentrated investment in PLTR 0.00%↑ at $7 per share. From the very beginning, I shared my research publicly: hundreds of videos, articles, and deep-dive reports, back when the community around this stock was still under the radar. This track record is verifiable — just ask anyone in the space. That investment generated serious capital for me. But the truth is, I’m only just getting started.

In this article, I’ll walk you through the exact framework I used to build a high-performing portfolio in my 20s. Not vague theories. Not abstract ideas. But the real, step-by-step process I use to identify asymmetric opportunities and hold them through the noise with clarity and confidence.

This is the same system I continue to apply today — and refine over time — as I build long-term wealth in public markets.

If you’re tired of chasing hype and ready to build a foundation rooted in deep research, disciplined thinking, and patient conviction — this is for you.

Let’s get into it.

1) FCF / Share

Long-Term Investing: The Free Cash Flow Principle

If you want to build serious, long-term wealth in the stock market, forget the noise. Forget the hype, the headlines, the CNBC hot takes. Focus on one thing: Free Cash Flow Per Share.

This is the single most important metric in public market investing. Why? Because when a company consistently grows its revenue faster than its costs — and when management allocates capital with discipline — you get a predictable outcome: free cash flow rises. Per share. Over time.

And the market, eventually, rewards that.

Not immediately. Not every quarter. But over the long term, the stock price will reflect the company’s ability to generate and compound real, distributable cash. In the short term, markets are emotional. In the long term, they are mathematical.

So, here’s the playbook:

• Find companies where free cash flow per share is growing

• Ensure management isn’t diluting your ownership or misusing capital

• Hold with conviction — and let time do the work

This is how serious investors win. This is how you move from average returns to asymmetric outcomes.

Everything else? It’s just noise.

The fundamental goal in long-term investing is to identify companies where revenue growth consistently outpaces cost growth over time. When this occurs — and it is paired with disciplined, shareholder-oriented management — we typically see a sustained increase in free cash flow (FCF) per share.

This metric, FCF per share, is critical. Over the long term, stock prices tend to track the trajectory of free cash flow per share. When management allocates capital wisely — reinvesting where returns are highest, avoiding dilution, and returning excess capital to shareholders — this creates the conditions for excellent long-term returns.

While the stock market may behave irrationally in the short term, driven by sentiment and speculation, in the long run, it acts like a weighing machine, eventually pricing businesses in accordance with their underlying fundamentals.

1. Free Cash Flow (FCF):

Free cash flow is the cash a company actually has left over after paying for the essentials — like salaries, raw materials, and equipment needed to run the business.

It’s what’s left after all operating expenses and capital investments (like new factories or R&D) are taken care of.

Think of it like this:

Revenue = your salary
Operating costs = rent, food, bills
Capital expenditure = fixing your car or buying a new laptop
Free Cash Flow = the money left over that you could invest, save, or spend freely

2. Per Share:

Now, to find out how much of that free cash flow belongs to you as a shareholder, you divide total FCF by the number of shares the company has issued. This gives you FCF per share.’

Why Is FCF/Share So Important?

Because it reflects real value creation.

Unlike earnings, which can be distorted through creative accounting or short-term financial engineering, cash doesn’t lie. Companies can dress up their profit numbers — but they can’t fake the actual cash flowing through the business. When free cash flow per share is rising, it’s a clear signal that the business is producing more value for each unit of ownership.

And that tells you several things.

First, it indicates the business is fundamentally healthy — its operations are efficient, costs are being managed, and revenues are outpacing expenses. Second, it suggests that management is exercising discipline, focusing on long-term performance rather than short-term hype or vanity metrics.

Most importantly: over time, stock prices follow free cash flow per share. Not instantly. But eventually. Because while sentiment drives markets in the short run, it’s sustained cash generation — and smart capital allocation — that drives real shareholder returns over the long term.

How to Track FCF / Share – Step-by-Step

Here’s how to find and calculate it yourself, even as a beginner:

Step 1: Find Free Cash Flow

You can find this in a company’s Cash Flow Statement — usually in the "Financials" tab on sites like:

• Yahoo Finance

• Seeking Alpha

• Morningstar

• Company IR websites

Look for the line:
“Free Cash Flow”
(or calculate it manually as: Operating Cash Flow – Capital Expenditures)

Step 2: Find Shares Outstanding

This is the total number of shares the company has issued.

You’ll often find it listed in:

• The company’s 10-K annual report

• Or under “Statistics” on Yahoo Finance

• Or by looking for: “Weighted Average Shares Outstanding”

Step 3: Do the Math

Now just divide:

Example:

• Company A generates $5 billion in FCF

• It has 1 billion shares outstanding

That means each share is generating $5 of real cash flow.

Step 4: Track It Over Time

The goal is to see this number:

• Growing consistently over the years

• Not bouncing up and down wildly

• Not growing only because they’re buying back shares or cutting essential investments

Pro tip:
Track this annually using a spreadsheet. Plot a simple chart of FCF/Share across 5–10 years. That chart tells you more than most analyst reports.

Watch Out for These Red Flags

• FCF is growing, but share count is also rising → bad dilution

• FCF jumps due to one-time events → not sustainable

• High FCF but no reinvestment into the business → growth may slow

• Management spends FCF recklessly (bad M&A, overpaying execs) → poor capital allocation

What You Want to See

• Steady growth in FCF/Share year over year

• Share count stable or decreasing (buybacks)

• Strong return on invested capital (ROIC)

• Management focused on long-term value, not quarterly headlines

• No signs of financial engineering or accounting gimmicks

If you’re serious about long-term investing, this is the metric that separates speculation from ownership.

Anyone can guess what goes up next. Few understand why it actually does.

Track FCF/Share. Study management. Understand the story.
That’s how you win — not in days, but over decades.

Summary: What Makes a Great Investment?

At its core, a compelling investment opportunity arises when a business is likely to see revenues outpace costs over the long term, resulting in sustained growth in free cash flow per share (FCF/Share). This alone is not sufficient — strong, shareholder-aligned management is essential, as they determine whether that cash flow is protected, reinvested wisely, or squandered.

The final component is price. To generate superior returns, you must purchase the business at a valuation that reflects either:

• Pessimism, or

• Fairness, based on moderate assumptions.
  This margin of safety — between intrinsic value and market price — is critical

2) Identifying Multi-Bagger Opportunities

Now that you know how to identify and track real value, let’s talk about how to multiply it.

Because here’s the truth: growing your wealth by 10% a year might keep up with inflation… but it won’t change your life. If you want to achieve asymmetric upside, you need to look for multi-baggers — investments that don’t just return your capital, but multiply it.

10X. 20X. Sometimes more.

But these companies rarely announce themselves. They don’t trend on Reddit. They aren’t hyped on CNBC. And they almost never look obvious when they’re truly undervalued. Instead, they hide in plain sight — wrapped in misunderstood business models, underappreciated metrics, or cultures that are built for long-term domination, not short-term applause.

In this next section, I’m going to show you exactly how to find them.
We’ll explore:

• What separates multi-baggers from average businesses

• The psychological and structural traits that make them endure

• And how to spot exponential potential before the market catches on

Because this is where real investors separate from speculators.
Let’s get into it.

Philosophy of Multi-Bagger Companies:

A multi-bagger is a company whose stock multiplies in value — often several times over a period of years. To identify these rare opportunities, we must first understand the forces at play:

1. Every dollar a company earns attracts competition.
   Success invites disruption. This means great businesses are moving targets — they must constantly innovate to stay ahead.

2. Strong companies are always strengthening their moats.
   Businesses with durable competitive advantages tend to reinvest in those moats, making themselves harder to displace over time.

Nick Sleep’s Investment Framework

Legendary investor Nick Sleep identified a pattern in companies that compound wealth over decades. These companies tend to exhibit:

• Obsessive customer focus

• Rapid iteration

• Constant innovation

These traits allow them to scale efficiently. Over time, they pass on cost savings to customers, enhancing goodwill and brand loyalty. This deepens the moat.

Amazon, for example, often prioritised customer goodwill over short-term profits — because Bezos understood that trust and long-term relationships create enduring value.

This segment of Jeff Bezos is the best example of customer obsession I’ve come across:

“If there’s one thing Amazon is about, it’s obsessive attention to the customer experience end-to-end… It doesn’t matter to me whether we’re a pure Internet play. What matters to me is whether we provide the best customer service… Our investors should be investing in a company that obsesses over customer experience. In the long term, there’s never any misalignment between customer interests and shareholder interests.”

Bezos rallied the entire company around the idea that customers will always want low prices, fast delivery and vast selection. And then executed relentlessly on being the absolute best in the world in those three areas.

In a separate interview, he explains why:

“There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here’s the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf."

These are what I describe as the qualitative of the company – they predict the quantitative.

Alternatively, look at one of my recent investments, namely AMD: Lisa Su, in a quote, has said the following:

Su, frankly, has achieved the impossible. This is one of – if not the most – stunning corporate turnarounds I have ever seen.

“She embarked on a radical refocusing of AMD, including a big bet on a revolutionary (read: then-experimental and untried) way of putting together processors from smaller “chiplets.” Prior to this approach, you made more powerful microprocessors by—short version here—making bigger and bigger microprocessors, a model that had become unsustainable. Su and her team decided to go for a more modular—and hopefully scalable—way of achieving the same goals by packaging chiplets together. AMD dubbed it their “Zen architecture.”

“The old AMD would’ve said, ‘Well, what’s Intel doing? Let me make sure that I’m doing what they’re doing,’” Su says. “This AMD said, ‘Let me do what I think is the right thing, and let’s bet on ourselves.’ If you look today, by the way, all of our competition is doing what we’re doing, which is chiplets.”

This shows you: AMD was previously focused on incessant obsession with their competitors – not, their customers. Yet, under Su, this focus changed, focusing more on making quality product roadmaps over a multi-decade period, irrespective as to if the market in the now understood or agreed with their philosophy or not.

“What I saw was that we had a lot of the pieces, they just weren’t quite put together correctly. We were always trying to be somebody else. We were, “How do I compete in this area or that area?”

There’s a lot that could be said about this transformation — the strategy, the leadership, the execution. But what captures my interest most is the corporate culture that has taken root within the company as a result of its mission and turnaround.

When you listen to Lisa Su speak, you don’t just hear a CEO — you hear the voice of a company that sees itself as an underdog. And that mindset matters. It fosters grit, relentless iteration, and a deep internal drive to win — not for applause, but for progress.

In my view, the emergence of this iconoclastic, outsider culture is one of the company’s greatest assets. Just as an individual’s personality can shape their destiny, the culture of a company ultimately shapes its future. It determines who joins, who stays, how decisions are made, and what gets built.

This isn’t just soft talk — it’s a hard edge. Culture compounds just like capital. And in businesses like this, it can be the single most powerful force behind long-term success.

Organisational Traits: Structure Predicts Fate

At its most fundamental level, a company is simply a group of people working together. Just as personality traits shape individual outcomes, organisational traits determine a company’s destiny.

a) Qualitative Probabilistic Evaluation

We cannot predict the future with certainty — so we must evaluate companies through probabilistic models, informed by qualitative traits:

• Does the company encourage experimentation and innovation?

• Does the company have a culture of cost control?

• Is management long-term focused and ethical?

For another example, showing clearly the culture of experimentation and innovation internally, is AMD again. Lisa Su, CEO, said this:

Another instance of this desire for learning and constant iteration is present here:

We’re probably running 150 pilots across the company. In any given function there’s, “How do you use AI to accelerate software development? How do you use AI to accelerate test plants? How do you use AI to help you track quality issues?” Every one of these has a different proof of concept, and so it does require tone from the top, which is change management

Lisa is currently running 150 pilots across the organisation. Trying to determine what the best course of action is to take. This iteration is referred to as the “innovation stack” – a term that is commonly associated with Spotify, insofar as they continually iterated upon their singular product, as a means of outpacing large incumbent competitors. I see the same dynamic here. Constant iteration and constant feedback loops – accelerating the business in ways that are difficult to compute.

Key Organisational Traits to Evaluate

1. Management Traits

• Capital Allocation: Do they reinvest wisely and selectively?

• Ethical Integrity: Are they fair to shareholders, employees, and customers?

• Long-Term Focus: Do they resist market pressure for short-term results?

• Shareholder Alignment: Do they act in the best interest of owners?

2. Operational Traits

• Customer Obsession: Is the end-user at the centre of decision-making?

• Fast Iteration: Do they adapt, test, and improve regularly?

• Failure Tolerance: Is the company willing to learn from mistakes?

3. Cultural Traits

• Talent Density: Is the organisation filled with high performers?

• Balance of Creatives and Executors: Does innovation meet execution?

• Meritocracy vs. Politics: Are ideas chosen based on value, not hierarchy?

• Decentralised Decision-Making: Are decisions made close to the information? This improves adaptability and scalability.

Another trait I always look for is a company’s internal incentives and culture. When I bought Palantir Technologies at $7 per share, one of the main reasons was its distinctive and powerful culture.

Culture isn’t just a feel-good concept — it’s a forward-looking indicator. It shapes behavior, attracts talent, and sustains long-term execution. Companies with a clear mission and strong internal alignment tend to outperform over time because their employees aren’t just working for pay — they’re building toward a shared purpose.

In Palantir’s case, the culture was unusually mission-driven, deeply tied to Western values and long-term impact. And this wasn’t just marketing. It showed up in how the company attracted and retained top-tier talent — even against stiff competition from Silicon Valley giants.

When a company gets culture right, it becomes a magnet for talent, a fortress against turnover, and a driver of innovation. That’s why I view culture not as a side note, but as a core pillar of any serious investment thesis.

Think about it: if you’re a software developer, you have a choice.

You could join a company like Meta, where you might spend your time tweaking emoji sets or working on incremental updates — tasks that are, frankly, trivial in the grand scheme of things.

Or you could join Palantir — and build some of the most advanced software in the world, used in critical military and intelligence operations. We're talking about truly unique tools, like ontologies, that no other company is developing.

On top of that, Palantir offers a distinct culture rooted in Western values and a clear mission: to preserve and protect the West.

This clarity of purpose creates a rare environment — one that not only attracts world-class talent but also keeps it. While other companies risk losing top developers to the next big trend, Palantir builds deep loyalty through meaning, mission, and unmatched technical challenges.

The Investment Thesis

When a company exhibits these high-quality organisational traits, and this is paired with rising FCF per share, you likely have the foundations of a multi-bagger.

Remember:

• The future is uncertain, so build your conviction through qualitative insight, not forecasts.

• Look beyond the spreadsheet — culture, incentives, and adaptability often predict outcomes better than ratios.

• Price still matters look for these traits when the market is undervaluing the business due to short-term noise or misperception.

The Outsider’s Edge: Traits of Exceptional Leaders

The book The Outsiders (by William Thorndike) profiles eight legendary CEOs who outperformed their peers — not through charisma, but through discipline, independence, and contrarian thinking. Across these leaders, several shared traits emerged:

· Introversion: Less driven by popularity, more by results.

· Novel thinking: They weren’t groomed inside the system; they saw things differently.

· Contrarian courage: They could bet against the market due to their low need for social validation.

· Decentralised control: They empowered teams rather than micromanaging decisions.

These traits are rare, but invaluable — and they often underpin the most shareholder-aligned decisions over long periods.

Evaluating the Limits: How to Assess a Company’s Qualitative Strength

If you want to understand a company at depth, don’t just ask what it does well. Instead, ask:

Where has this company performed under pressure — at the edge of its limits?

Here are powerful qualitative signals to look for:

· Victories against much larger players despite low odds of success.

· Accelerated product improvement and user growth, even during macro headwinds.

· Sharp financial rebounds following large capital expenditures — a sign of disciplined reinvestment.

· Management behaviour during market crashes — do they focus on realignment or reaction?

· Response to failed M&A — has the business lost focus or strengthened its core?

· Handling of downturns — does leadership chase quick profits or double down on long-term investments?

These moments of friction reveal far more than any quarterly report can. They expose the true DNA of the company.

In summary for this segment:

If you want life-changing returns — not just 10% a year — you need to find multi-baggers: companies that can 5X, 10X, or 20X over time. These aren’t the flashy names trending on Reddit; they’re often misunderstood businesses with deep moats, obsessive customer focus, and world-class execution hidden beneath the surface.

The core traits of these companies include:

• Constant innovation to stay ahead of competition

• Relentless reinvestment into their competitive advantages

• Strong cultural and organisational DNA
  (e.g., customer obsession, talent retention, decentralised decision-making, and rapid iteration)

Case Studies:

• Amazon (Jeff Bezos): Built trust and long-term value by obsessing over customers, not short-term profits.

• AMD (Lisa Su): A bold cultural and technical turnaround through chiplet architecture, deep iteration, and long-term product vision.

• Palantir (Alex Karp): A mission-driven culture rooted in Western values, attracting and retaining elite technical talent for critical military-grade software.

What To Look For:

• Leaders who think independently and allocate capital wisely (à la The Outsiders)

• Cultures that experiment, tolerate failure, and prioritise long-term value

• Moments of pressure — downturns, crashes, or failed M&A — that reveal management integrity and strategic clarity

Final Takeaway:

When strong qualitative traits (like culture, vision, and leadership) are paired with rising free cash flow per share and a misunderstood valuation — you likely have the foundations of a multi-bagger. Focus on companies that quietly build for decades, not quarters.

3) Psychology: How to Think & Control Emotions Like a Superior Investor

To outperform in public markets, you must adopt a mindset fundamentally different from the crowd. Superior investing is not just about reading financial statements — it’s about seeing the world through a sharper, more original lens.

a) Markets are highly efficient at absorbing public information — news, filings, macro updates, earnings calls. But where they often fall short is in how that information is interpreted. The edge isn’t in having exclusive data — it’s in developing sharper insight from the same pool of facts everyone else has access to. Real alpha isn’t born from secrecy; it’s born from clarity. From seeing the true implications of what others misread, dismiss, or overlook.

b) Outperformance demands more than just being different — it demands being right when you are. The highest returns go to those who are both contrarian and correct. That’s a rare combination, because it requires two things: the independent thinking to challenge consensus, and the analytical rigor to justify it. Courage gets you into the position. Discipline keeps you there long enough to be vindicated. Markets reward those who can see truth through noise — and act before the crowd catches up.

c) Some of the most asymmetric investment opportunities appear in places where perception and reality have diverged. When a stock is priced for disaster — but the underlying fundamentals are far less dire — you can find situations with limited downside and explosive upside. But identifying those requires more than just numbers. It requires emotional composure: the ability to stay rational when others are panicking, skeptical, or indifferent. That’s where mispricing lives — in the blind spots of mass psychology.

d) Your deepest, most original insights will come when you follow your genuine curiosity. This isn’t motivational fluff — it’s a practical advantage. When you're intrinsically fascinated by a space — whether it’s AI, energy, healthcare, or semiconductors — you'll put in the hours others won’t. You’ll read the obscure filings, listen to the dull conference calls, connect the dots over years — not days. And it’s in that sustained effort, long after the hype fades, that real conviction is forged.

e) Don’t make the mistake of reducing investment decisions to a spreadsheet. Numbers tell part of the story — but never the whole thing. The qualitative factors — leadership quality, company culture, strategic vision, internal incentives — are what shape durability over the long term. These intangibles are messy, harder to quantify, and often ignored. But they’re also where the real long-term edge lies. Because ultimately, it's not just what a business does that matters — it's how it’s run, and why it endures.

In short: think differently, dig deeper, and trust your curiosity. That’s how superior investors win — not just by calculating better, but by seeing better.

Start by reading backwards. When you’re researching a company, begin with the most recent annual reports, earnings calls, and shareholder letters. Then, work your way backward through time. This reverse-chronological approach allows you to track the company’s evolution — to see whether management has followed through on what they’ve said, how their priorities have shifted, and how the business narrative has developed across market cycles. It’s one of the best ways to assess both strategy and credibility.

As you read, take structured notes. Don’t just highlight at random. Use two distinct highlighters: one for key insights or facts, and another for recurring themes or signals that emerge over time. For example, if a company repeatedly mentions “customer experience” across several years of reports, that may point to a deeper cultural or strategic orientation that isn’t reflected in financials alone.

Next, maintain an ongoing investment journal or live document. Update it every quarter with new insights, observations, and metrics. This running narrative becomes your personal knowledge base — a critical asset as you build conviction in your positions or evaluate new ones. Over time, you’ll be able to detect shifts in tone, strategy, or performance that others miss because they aren’t paying close attention.

Discipline compounds. Just like capital.

4) Time & Concentration:

Everyone’s obsessed with the next big play.

The next hot stock. The next AI ticker.

They spend their days refreshing charts… and their nights panicking over red candles.

But here’s what they never grasp:

Time is the most underrated force in investing.

Let me prove it to you — with the greatest trade Benjamin Graham ever made.

It was one single investment… in one great business… held with conviction over decades.

And it returned 562X.

Yes — five hundred and sixty-two times.

This segment is about that principle.

Why time and conviction — not IQ or spreadsheets — are the ultimate drivers of asymmetric wealth.

Why holding onto excellence beats constantly chasing what's "cheap."

And why, in the age of short-term dopamine and 10-second TikTok trades, patience is your superpower.

Let me show you exactly how Graham did it — and how you can apply the same principle today, in a world where compounding moves faster than ever.

Let’s get into it.

Graham’s Investment:

This phenomenon is best evidenced by Benjamin Graham’s best investment–which made him more money than all previous net-net investments.

In 1948 Benjamin Graham made a $712,000 investment in GEICO. 25 years later, his investment would grow into a jaw-dropping $400M. That’s a 562X return in a quarter of a century, a striking feat in itself. Most important and relevant to us is the fact that Graham’s GEICO investment was a huge departure from his usual cigar-butt method. Rather than purchasing a mediocre or even bad company at a cheap price, he bought a fantastic business at a reasonable price. Unsurprising to investors like us all these years later, GEICO made Graham more money than all his other cigar-butt operations combined.

The innovation above was the primary driver behind Graham’s 562x return. But what truly enabled such an extraordinary outcome—rather than a modest 2–3x gain—was his willingness to hold for decades. Most investors sell far too early, often at the first sign of meaningful profits. In my view, this happens because they’re not truly grounded in the company’s fundamentals. Ironically, once a company has already 10x’d, the next tenfold increase is often easier—if capital is wisely allocated. But instead of recognizing this, most investors assume the growth must be over. That’s a symptom of linear, surface-level thinking—rather than the fundamental, asymmetrical investment framework I teach in my course.

This insight is even more relevant today, as network effects have become a defining force in 21st-century business success. If GEICO were founded in the current era—with the same disruptive, cost-efficient model—it’s likely that the 562x return could have been achieved in less than half the time. The core principle behind GEICO’s business remains simple: acquire customers who contribute to a shared risk pool, and compensate them in the event of a loss. But unlike in Benjamin Graham’s time, today’s digital infrastructure and network dynamics allow this model to scale at an exponential rate—something that simply wasn’t possible in the analog world GEICO originally operated in.

This is precisely why Graham’s investment in GEICO is more instructive than ever. As of 2021, the average holding period for U.S. equities has fallen below ten months—a sharp decline illustrated in the chart below. In the pursuit of quick profits, many investors are abandoning the single most effective strategy for building lasting wealth: long-term ownership. When the world’s best investors emphasize that “doing nothing” is often the hardest and most rewarding decision, they’re not being dismissive—they’re being exact.

So, the lesson we can learn from Graham is simple — but profound: time is the multiplier.

Graham didn’t generate his greatest return by being clever, tactical, or hyperactive. He did it by identifying one great business, buying it at a fair price, and holding it — through cycles, noise, and doubt. What transformed his $712,000 into $400 million wasn’t just GEICO’s disruptive model or margin profile — it was decades of compounding. That’s the real secret.

And here’s the kicker: most investors will never experience this.

Why? Because they sell too soon. They take profits after a 2X or 3X gain, thinking “it can’t possibly go higher.” But this mindset reflects linear thinking — not exponential understanding. Once a company has scaled intelligently and built a strong foundation, the next 10X can happen faster, not slower, especially in today’s world of network effects, global distribution, and digital leverage.

This makes holding the most underrated skill in modern investing. It requires conviction — the kind that comes from deep research and a genuine understanding of fundamentals. It requires emotional control — resisting the urge to trade for dopamine instead of waiting for transformation. And most of all, it requires faith in time — that compounding doesn’t happen overnight, but over years of stillness.

In a world where the average holding period is now under ten months, Graham’s approach is more radical — and more relevant — than ever. You don’t need 50 trades. You need one GEICO. One Palantir. One AMD. And the strength to sit with it while the rest of the world flinches.

Time isn't a cost in investing — it's the engine.

If you understand that, everything changes.

Concentrated Portfolios:

In his 1993 Berkshire Hathaway annual letter, Warren Buffett offered one of the clearest rebukes of conventional investment wisdom — specifically, the idea that diversification is always safer. Instead, he and Charlie Munger made a deliberate choice early in their careers: they would focus on making a few truly intelligent decisions, rather than spreading their capital thin across dozens or hundreds of bets.

This wasn’t just a personal preference — it was a strategic response to scale and logic. As Berkshire Hathaway grew, the pool of investments that could meaningfully impact their results became smaller. That meant their best chance of outperforming wasn’t by playing wide — it was by going deep. The bigger the capital base, the more important it became to identify and hold onto just a handful of exceptional businesses.

Buffett and Munger thus adopted a concentrated investment strategy — one that deliberately ignored Wall Street's obsession with diversification. While many financial advisors and academics warn that concentration increases risk, Buffett argues the opposite: concentration, when done with care and conviction, can actually reduce risk.

Why?

Because it forces you to truly understand the businesses you're investing in. It demands deep thinking, rigorous analysis, and emotional comfort with the long-term fundamentals of a company.

In contrast, diversification often becomes a crutch — a way to hedge ignorance, not manage risk. If you don’t know which companies will outperform, you simply buy them all. But if you do know — or at least have a strong, well-reasoned thesis — concentration allows you to allocate capital in alignment with your convictions.

Buffett also criticises the academic view of risk, which equates risk with volatility — measured by a stock’s “beta.” In his view, this definition is both narrow and misleading. Real risk, as Buffett defines it, is not about a stock’s price moving up and down — it’s “the possibility of permanent loss.” A concentrated position in a well-understood, high-quality business is often far less risky than a diversified portfolio of companies you barely know.

And this leads to one of his most powerful principles:

“It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.”

Trying to engineer perfect portfolio balance based on abstract statistical models often misses the point. Investing is not about mathematical elegance — it’s about owning pieces of real businesses. If you understand those businesses deeply, you don’t need to spread your bets. One or two great ideas a year — carefully chosen and patiently held — can do more for your portfolio than a hundred average ones.

Buffett and Munger are proof of this. Berkshire Hathaway was built not on a hundred clever trades, but on a handful of extraordinary decisions — Coke, American Express, GEICO, Apple. Each held with concentration. Each backed by deep conviction.

In a world obsessed with doing more, they chose to do less — but better.

That’s the essence of concentration: fewer bets, more thinking, and far greater potential for asymmetric returns.

Conclusions:

Most people my age are playing the wrong game.

They chase whatever’s trending — meme coins, garbage AI tickers, pump-and-dump momentum plays. They call it investing. It’s not.

What I did was different. I ignored the noise. I studied free cash flow. I tracked management behavior. I focused on the real engine of long-term wealth: Free cash flow per share.

That one principle helped me spot:

Palantir at $7 — with a 20X return.

HIMS — 5X.

AMD — early entry, long conviction.

And the results speak for themselves.

In this breakdown, I show you exactly how I did it —
How to filter through the noise
How to track real business performance
How to identify multi-bagger opportunities before they go mainstream
And how to build conviction around asymmetric plays

I walk you through the actual playbook I used to build a high-conviction, high-return portfolio in my 20s. No fluff. No clickbait. Just the hard truths that 99% of “investors” ignore.

If you’re tired of playing the short game…

If you’re done chasing hype…

And you actually want to master the long game of investing — with a framework that works across decades, not just market cycles —

👉 Subscribe to the channel.
👉 Join the newsletter.
👉 And stay close.

Because over the next few months, I’m going to keep sharing what most people will never understand about markets —

How to build conviction.

How to think long-term.

And how to compound serious wealth in public markets.

No noise.
No fluff.
Just the real game.

Let’s build.