Where the Light Is: Kaplan’s 1964 Drunkard’s Search, the Body Count That Stood In for Winning, and What the Long-Term Equity Investor Does With the Value a Ledger Cannot Show

Line chart of intangible assets as a share of S&P 500 market value: 17 per cent in 1975, 32 in 1985, 79 in 2005 and about 92 in 2025

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Manish Goel, FCA

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←Being First Is Not Staying First: Lieberman and Montgomery’s 1988 First-Mover Advantages, Golder and Tellis’s Test on 500 Brands, and What the Long-Term Equity Investor Should Ask of an Early Lead

Cynefin: Snowden and Boone’s Domain Map, and Why Naming the Domain Comes Before Choosing the Method→

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9 November 2026
Hanlon’s Razor: Bloch’s 1980 Printing of an Older Warning, the Arithmetic of Intent and Error, and Why the Long-Term Equity Investor Writes the Tripwire Before the Surprise

8 November 2026
Occam’s Razor: Ockham’s Fourteenth-Century Rule of Parsimony, the Bayesian and Predictive Case for It, and Why the Long-Term Equity Investor Counts the Assumptions in a Thesis

7 November 2026
The Stockdale Paradox: Collins’s 2001 Name for Faith in the End and Honesty About the Present, and Why the Long-Term Equity Investor Needs Both Without a Date Attached

6 November 2026

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Where the Light Is: Kaplan’s 1964 Drunkard’s Search, the Body Count That Stood In for Winning, and What the Long-Term Equity Investor Does With the Value a Ledger Cannot Show

More posts

The Half-Life of Facts: Burton and Kebler’s 1960 Borrowed Metaphor, Poynard’s Forty-Five-Year Measurement of Clinical Truth, and Why the Long-Term Equity Investor Dates Every Input to a Thesis

Hanlon’s Razor: Bloch’s 1980 Printing of an Older Warning, the Arithmetic of Intent and Error, and Why the Long-Term Equity Investor Writes the Tripwire Before the Surprise

Occam’s Razor: Ockham’s Fourteenth-Century Rule of Parsimony, the Bayesian and Predictive Case for It, and Why the Long-Term Equity Investor Counts the Assumptions in a Thesis

The Stockdale Paradox: Collins’s 2001 Name for Faith in the End and Honesty About the Present, and Why the Long-Term Equity Investor Needs Both Without a Date Attached