And from The Great Wall Street, July 14:
The Forgotten Genius Who Could Outsmart Anyone—And Why Investors Should Study Him
Look, I get it. Buffett quotes are everywhere. You can’t open a finance article without tripping over one. And to be clear, Buffett is brilliant. This isn’t some cheap shot at him. But trying to copy the playbook of someone managing hundreds of billions, with a time horizon measured in decades, doesn’t make much sense if your holding period is closer to a few months and you’re working with a couple of million, not the GDP of a small country.
Buffett has said it himself: with smaller sums, he’d invest differently—and get much better returns. I’ve written before about how your time horizon changes which metrics actually matter. Still, people keep clinging to See’s Candies, moats, and the Circle of Competence like they’re God-given. They’re not.
Let me introduce someone who’s inspired me since I was a college student. You won’t find him mentioned much in the investing world: John von Neumann. He’s one of the people I admire most, not just for his intellect, but for how he thought.
Now, before you click away thinking "Who the heck is that?" stick with me. Among mathematicians, mentioning von Neumann is like name-dropping Babe Ruth at a baseball game. The man was a legend.
Most people have never heard of him. And that's a shame, because his story is absolutely fascinating with an heartbreaking end.
Ready to meet one of history's most remarkable minds?
The first time I came in touch with John von Neumann was when I was an undergraduate student taking my first class in functional analysis. I noticed something weird: this guy's name was attached to half the theorems we were studying. At first, I thought it was just coincidence.
Then his name started popping up everywhere. Quantum mechanics? There's von Neumann's "Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics"—a book I devoured in one weekend. Even my master's thesis ended up being on topics related to von Neumann's work on operator algebras.
At that time I only knew about his work in pure mathematics and physics. Turns out, while von Neumann was casually revolutionizing the foundations of physics, he was also inventing game theory, creating the Monte Carlo method, laying the groundwork for modern economics and decision making under uncertainty, building the first computers, and helping design the atomic bomb. You know, just typical Tuesday activities....
....MUCH MORE
