Guy Spier has been one of my favorite investors for a while now. And I know I’m not the only person he’s inspired along his value investment journey.
From 1997 to 2024, he managed Aquamarine Capital, “an investment manager whose investment philosophy was inspired by the original 1950s Buffett partnerships,” as its website states. He also:
… previously worked as an investment banker in New York and as a management consultant in London and Paris. He has an MBA from the Harvard Business School, class of 1993, and holds a first-class degree in politics, philosophy, and economics from Oxford University. On graduating from Oxford, he was co-awarded the George Webb Medley prize for the best performance that year in economics.
Guy currently lives in Switzerland with his wife, Lory, and their three children, Eva, Issac, and Sarah.
The man is a master at interviews. He and his business partner, Mohnish Pabrai, got to have a private (now famous) lunch with Warren Buffett in 2007. And he’s the author of The Education of a Value Investor, one of the best books I’ve ever read about the journey from ambition to wisdom.
Yet today, Spier is focusing on a very different narrative – one that manages to be even more inspiring still.
Sadly, it’s based on hardship that might very well turn into tragedy. But it’s a miserable turn of events that Spier is determined to make the most of.
As he explained in a Friday interview on CNBC’s The Path with Becky Quick, he has grade 4 glioblastoma. It’s an aggressive form of brain cancer that’s too rare to garner serious studies, and the median survival is just 15 months after diagnosis.
Spier was diagnosed in November 2024.
As such, he’s coming clean about what really matters in life. And I think his latest words of wisdom are well worth commenting on.
Even living by.
A life worth living
Portfolio returns. Market forecasts. Asset allocation. Stock selection.
They’re all important. I won’t sit here and tell you today that money means nothing. Obviously, we need it to pay the bills, feed ourselves and our families, and prepare for our futures.
But it’s hardly the most important thing in life – as Spier actively and purposely pointed out in his interview the other day. Wealth should never be the ultimate goal, only a tool that supports the things that do matter most.
I know that Spier is questioning how he spent his pre-diagnosis life right now. He was very open in Friday’s interview with statements like, “You see these great people working for their whole lives to make some [medical] discovery that may make our lives better. I do have some regrets in that regard.”
And here’s the thing: None of us are perfect. So we’ll all find reasons for remorse when we honestly face our own mortality.
But from my outside perspective – having never met Guy Spier personally – I can tell you he created quite the worthwhile legacy even before his realization that he doesn’t “have all the time in the world.”
For instance, that sit-down lunch he and Pabrai did with Warren Buffett years ago? They paid $650,000 for the privilege. And Spier admitted he was terrified going into it that the “Oracle of Omaha” wouldn’t like him.
After all, this was his business inspiration. His idol!
Yet what he learned from the experience… above and beyond the investment advice he got… was that he “would never be Warren Buffett, and there wasn’t any point trying.” Moreover, that was okay.
In fact, it was exactly how it was supposed to be.
Too many investors spend years and even decades trying to model their investments on someone else. But that day, Spier’s goal changed from becoming Buffett to becoming the best version of himself.
It’s not the Joneses who matter
Spier has been and still is very purposeful about encouraging others to do the same. As he wrote in The Education of a Value Investor:
Value investors have to be able to go their own way. The entire pursuit of value investing requires you to see where the crowd is wrong so you can profit from their misperceptions. This requires a shift toward measuring yourself by an “inner scorecard.”
That’s the kind of advice his contemporaries can and have benefited from. So will future generations. I can’t imagine there ever being a time when those words won’t be relevant.
A few months ago – after 28 highly successful years – Spier closed Aquamarine’s external fund and returned the full $470 million of its outside capital to investors. Yet as Friday’s interview shows, he’s still busy challenging us to do better than everyone else…
By refusing to focus on everyone else.
This is a personal race. And we’re better off when we run with that knowledge instead of trying to constantly compete with the crowds.
“The batting average of the Grim Reaper is 100%,” he told Becky Quick. “He gets us all in the end.”
But that just means “every day: it’s basically a gift.”
So treat it as such, including by appreciating the resources we have around us.
One of the most moving moments in the interview was without a doubt when Spier explained why he was taking such an inspirational view of his remaining life:
What I do know is that the love I feel from my wife, my children, my family, and friends gives me the courage to make the best of what I have been given. Without that love, everything would be infinitely more difficult.
Look, I know most of us talk the talk about what matters most in life. And we’ll mean it to varying degrees.
Yet it’s so easy to get caught up in keeping up with the Joneses… in the fear of missing out (FOMO)… with fear in general… with greed in general… and in the everyday responsibilities of this rat race we’re caught up in.
I hope we all take the time today to reconsider the truth that Spier is living out even as I’m writing this and you’re reading this: that all the wealth-building in the world doesn’t matter one bit if you think that’s what it’s all about.
Happy SWAN investing!
Brad Thomas
Editor, The Wide Moat Daily
The Wide Moat Show
Source: Chat GPT
Here’s an abbreviation that might be new for you: HALO.
In the investing world, it now stands for businesses with “heavy assets” and “low obsolescence.”
Attributed to Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO Josh Brown, HALO investments are assets that AI just can’t disrupt, from major oil companies to major food companies to major retailers.
Ritholtz has his list, of course. And here at Wide Moat Research, we have ours… including some with compelling valuations I covered in last week’s Wide Moat Show.
You can catch the full episode right here.
