Could your investment beliefs survive a Socratic examination?

Socrates is widely regarded as one of the fathers of Western philosophy. He worked in Athens four centuries before our era, surrounded by disciples including Plato and Xenophon, who would later carry his thinking forward. The Socratic method is not a body of doctrine. It is the discipline of asking questions and examining assumptions. He gave no advice, sold nothing, and considered himself unknowledgeable. Free of conflict of interest and unmoved by dominant opinion, he sought only truth, without compromise. The pursuit cost him his life: judged guilty of corrupting the youth by stimulating the kind of thought the Athenian elite found uncomfortable, critical thinking, he was sentenced to drink hemlock. This publication adopts his frame. It gives no advice. It questions the conventional wisdom most investors hold without realising they hold it. I know that I know nothing is the editorial humility that makes confident analysis possible.

The reader is the pilot. The publication provides the instruments: charts, frameworks, history, tools. Pilots master their instruments before flying off the rules. The writer never flies the plane. The writer equips the pilot.