My first glimpse into the capital competition came early in my career, when I joined the Treasury department of a multinational corporation and suddenly found myself negotiating transactions worth tens of millions of dollars. One of the first things my boss told me was that, when he had worked at a bank, whenever they needed to hit their quarterly numbers, they knew exactly which clients to target. That is why he was relentless about the importance of negotiating well: not only was a great deal of money at stake, but so too were my reputation and that of the company.

Around the same time, a friend of mine started working in the dealing room of a bank. His role was to design and price structured products that private bankers would then sell to their clients. He told me that he was initially nervous, expecting the private bankers to push back against such high-margin, low-value products. To his surprise, however, they reacted enthusiastically, saying they wished they could buy them themselves.

More than three decades later, after managing money professionally for corporations, foundations, and ultra-high-net-worth families, my understanding of the capital competition has become far more sophisticated and comprehensive than it was back then. Yet those early experiences set me on the path towards understanding how the investment world truly works.

How I did that is less usual. Much of that understanding was worked out on foot. I spend an hour or two most evenings walking in the park, and longer at weekends. It is where my thinking becomes clearest, and I have done it for years. Over time I came to see what I was really doing on those walks: building frameworks. Distilling a subject to its essential parts, working out what matters most, what depends on what, and how the pieces fit together. It is simply how I make sense of things and make decisions, in many areas of my life. Nowhere does it matter more than in investing.

Good investing is deeply counterintuitive. What feels right is often wrong. The north star often lies in the opposite direction of our instincts. If we are not aware of this, we keep moving further south. This site is my attempt to share the framework that has guided me throughout my career: a compass to help you find that north star and show you where you stand in the competition.