So What is the Goldilocks Zone in the Investment World ?

With so much demand on your attention, your time, money, energy, expertise it's no surprise that we turn to investment professionals for guidance. Subhash Jogia explains getting it just right is really an inward journey.

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Ikigai - Your Inner Yellow Brick Road

If-Only Questions

The first conversation with an advisor invariably starts with fact finding, exploring your priorities and eventually meandering to pseudo-psychological discovery of the meaning of life and the pursuit of happiness. Now, it is essential to take stock of short term realities, long term aspirations and your risk appetite in between. But sometime after you're done with form filling, balance sheets and P&L, you find yourself pondering on deeper, existential meaning-of-life questions like, 'do I want to keep working 90hr weeks?' and 'what am I saving for?', 'what is my legacy?', and 'will my daughter thank me when I'm gone?'.

And then a little further down your inner Yellow Brick Road, you ask your 'if only' questions. 'If only someone had told me this, I'd have bought shares in Amazon, Apple, Google and Tesla', 'I wouldn't have wasted so much effort on X', 'This wasn't anywhere near as important as I thought 20 years ago'. Isn't hindsight as brutal as it is cathartic?

But then you resolve not to repeat the same eternal loop as your Mum & Dad did and your Grandparents before them: You yearn to 'get it just right' this time.

Your Ikigai

You'd be right in thinking that making the 'right decisions at the right time' is eternally elusive. After all 'right' is as subjective and unique as your definition of happiness. As researchers of the Blue Zone and their centenarian residents can testify, there are a few universal ingredients to a long and happy life. And understanding your Ikigai, your reason for being is one such ingredient. It's the reason why you jump out of bed on dark winter mornings, why you persevere against seemingly insurmountable obstacles. It's why you make all the difference. It colours your thoughts, your actions and decisions. It drives you to pursue a purpose far greater than yourself.

With that greater clarity (do you ever know for sure and won't it change over time ?), investing your time, resource and energy can be considered in the context of your Ikigai.

What is 'Just Right'

As any Wall St. trader, investment advisor and estate agent will tell you, investing is at least a mind-game as it is about the hard numbers, bottom line, risk, timing and T&C's. It's also your outlook, your attitude, your belief and faith you bring to the decision table.

With this perspective in mind, we'll explore in the next article just the right ingredients to look for when conducting investment due diligence of transformative deep tech ventures.