Universa Investments
January 2019

Nietzsche's self-proclaimed fundamental doctrine was a thought experiment:

Imagine a demon approached you and declared that you would have to live your life exactly as you have lived it-including your same investment returns, with "every pain and every joy"-over and over again, for eternity.

This is Nietzsche's "eternal return of the same" or, in this case, the "eternal return of the same return." At its heart, it's a hypothetical test: "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" Would you kiss or curse the demon? From an investing standpoint, your answer would surely depend on your results, ex post (the actual results).

But it's possible to set yourself up ex ante (before you know those results) to say "yes" to that question-and "yes" to your same investing fate forever-regardless of the market's path. This is "amor fati"-the love of one's fate-an existential imperative that is Nietzsche's "formula for greatness in a human being," and is the secret to successful investing.