Private Investor
Managing your own capital in public markets, where the research is free, the fees are near zero, and the only remaining adversary is the person making the decisions.
What the job actually is
The private investor has never had it easier. Execution is instant, commissions have collapsed to nothing, and the index fund that beats most professionals costs a rounding error. Every structural disadvantage the amateur used to face has been engineered away.
And the average private investor still underperforms the funds they hold. Not by picking bad funds — by buying them after a good run and selling them after a bad one. The gap between what an investment returns and what its investors return is measurable, persistent, and entirely behavioural. It has a name, and closing it is the whole job.
So this chair is unusual: the analysis is mostly done for you, and the difficulty is all in the temperament. Doing nothing is frequently the correct action and almost never the comfortable one.
The calls that define it
- What to own, and — much harder — what to keep owning through a 30% drawdown
- Whether today's conviction is analysis or the last three weeks of headlines
- How much to hold in one position when it has been right for two years
- When 'this time is different' is a thesis and when it is an excuse
No employer, no mandate, no risk committee. The only oversight is whatever process you impose on yourself before the market gives you a reason to abandon it.
What you'd need to know
The concepts this chair runs on — each one links to a plain-English definition.
Sit in the chair
Reading about a job is the trailer. This simulation makes you do it — free, in the browser, nothing to install and nothing locked.
Where you learn it
The course behind this chair — bite-size levels that teach exactly what the job is tested on.
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