Hi, I’m Guy Spier

Welcome to my personal online home.

I manage the Aquamarine Fund. We have $350 million in assets and around 150 investors – a group including friends and family and others who have decided to join me in this journey.

A few years ago, I authored “The Education of a Value Investor”.

More broadly, I am on a quest for wealth, wisdom and enlightenment.

I host an annual investment gathering called VALUEx in Klosters, Switzerland.

I also write, host a podcast, speak occasionally and host an email list.

Getting in touch:

If you:

• are interested in investing with me, you will have to fill out this form before we can talk to you.
• want to attend VALUEx, you need to be connected with and known to current members of the community.
• want to talk about investments or have investment ideas: I’m certainly interested. A good idea can come from anywhere, and I appreciate your thinking of me. I request that you write the idea up so I can read it first. The write-up does not have to be long or extensive. But it needs to be in writing – something that I can read and evaluate.
• want to be mentored or discuss job and career matters: I love helping hard-working, smart people, and you may write to me. But there is a limit on my bandwidth. There are only so many inbound messages that my staff and I can respond to. I hope you will understand. And: whatever your reason for getting in touch, please read this piece by Patrick McKenzie first. I am most likely to respond if you demonstrate that you can express some worthwhile and interesting thoughts clearly and concisely – in writing.

My now(s)

Podcast and YouTube Channel

I’ve enjoyed starting a podcast. I have also started a YouTube channel.

My goal with the podcast is not so much to create a show as it is to use the medium as a way of learning in public.

You can listen to it here:

• Apple Podcasts
• Simplecast
• Spotify

Investing and Investment Research

I want to learn more about the following industries/areas:

• Cloud computing
• SAAS
• Cybersecurity
• Luxury Goods
• Credit Ratings
• Elevators
• Stock Exchanges

If you think you can teach me something, send me a message. And feel free to join my (experimental) personal slack channel:

People I’ve been learning from
(in addition to investors I like to learn from)

Scuttlebutt

I’m exploring how to use new social media to do better investment research – especially when it comes to scuttlebutt. And so I’m experimenting with the following media:

• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Email
• Expert Networks
• Podcasts

Knowledge Management

Much of the above spills into the area of Personal Knowledge Management and I’ve become a big fan of

• Roam Research
• Tiago Forte and Building a Second Brain
• Anne Laure Le Cunff and Ness Labs.
• Soenke Ahrens and the Zettelkasten system.

I have started using Roam Research as a regular companion. I also use Evernote and have many Moleskine ruled notebooks that are filled with “fleeting notes”. i have also started using Zotero and Papers.

Books

I published a list of useful books in the bibliography of my own book. But that was some years ago. I’m impressed with people like Derek Sivers and Pat Collison who keep visitors updated on what books they have been reading.

In the past, I used to order pretty much every book that I came across that was interesting – and so I have a pretty large anti-library. But reading Soenke Ahrens and others switched me on to the danger of the collector’s trap – in which one simply collects containers of knowledge but does not process them. Today I try to do it slightly differently – I’ll first make notes on the book and why it might make sense to read it. Then I might order it later.  It’s all part of my goal of becoming a little more directed in my reading.

Once a book makes it into my library, I may just handle it once,  or I might pick it up and browse or skip through it, And I might give it a thorough read and then hold it back before re-reading. In my view, my library is a bit like a cocktail party: not everyone merits a long and deep friendship.

Rather than try to create some sort of finished list of books, My plan here is simply to post perhaps with comments, some of the books that have been in my hands recently.

This list is not complete or in order. It’s just a conversation starter.

• Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
• Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
• Le Rouge et le Noir by Stendahl
• How the World Works by Vaclav Smil
• A Concise Introduction to Pure Mathematics (4th edition) by Martin Liebeck
• The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson
• The Curious Economics of Luxury Fashion by Don Thompson
• Who is Michael Ovitz? by Michael Ovitz
• Freezing Order by Bill Browder
• Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev
• The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
• The Shortest History of Germany by James Hawes
• Why Mahler? How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed the World by Norman Lebrecht
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• Capitalism and the Jews by Jerry Z Muller
• Richer, Wiser, Happier by William Green
• The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker
• Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris
• Swiss Made by James Breiding
• 12 Rules for Life – Jordan Peterson
• Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes by Franz de Waal
• 100 Baggers by Chris Meyer
• Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s insights into China, the United States and the World
• Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies matter in China and the Rest of the World by Bell and Wang
• Pandemic 1918: The Story of the Deadliest Influenza in History by Catharine Arnold
• 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy by Hamilton Helmer
• Essays by George Orwell
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

Leisure and Family

When I’m not working or reading, I love spending time with my family and doing sport – mainly cycling, swimming, running and tennis with a little bit of squash. You can follow me on Strava here. 

If we are not already connected, probably the best way to be in touch is via Twitter: @gspier is my handle.

We are in the midst of cataloguing my library using a free app called LibraryThing.

You can search it here: