By Andy Serwer
With missiles flying and markets careening, it's worth remembering what's really important.
For me it began with a text from my pal "Deep Blue," which initially didn't seem terribly promising. "I'm not an investor letter type of reader," he wrote, "but this one is worth sharing, especially the last four or five pages."
The letter was from Guy Spier, 60, investment manager of the Aquamarine Fund, and the first section did little to pique my interest. Spier is a value investor, with holdings in BYD, American Express, and Bank of America. His $470 million hedge fund underperformed the S&P 500 index last year by 11.3% to 17.9%, but since inception in September 1997 it has beaten the market -- a familiar value investor's narrative.
The letter picked up soon enough. "Since my decision to close down the fund and to return outside capital..." Hmm. "This decision is not about performance or about the markets or timing. It's about my health."
What?
"With 28 years of managing Aquamarine behind me," Spier writes, "I expected to follow my hero Warren Buffett and keep going for another three decades -- long enough to build a 60-year record and fully harness the power of compounding...but as the Yiddish proverb says, 'Man plans and God laughs.' Or, in the words of Mike Tyson, 'Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.' My punch in the mouth came in late November 2024."
Spier, who lives in Zurich, was skiing with his family and on the ride home had a seizure. (Luckily, his wife was driving.) Then came the gut punch: "The histology confirmed grade 4 glioblastoma, or GBM."
I closed my eyes and sighed. GBM is a fast-growing type of brain cancer that manifests in uncheckable tumors. It is incurable, with a median life expectancy of 12 to 18 months -- in other words, a death sentence. My best friend Matt succumbed to GBM; so did John McCain, Ted Kennedy, and New York Mets catcher Gary Carter. I remember Matt telling me as he lay dying, "You don't want to go like this."
Born in South Africa and raised in Israel, Iran, and England, Guy Spier received a degree in economics at Oxford and an M.B.A. from Harvard. He's a fairly well-known investor, particularly among Buffettologists. In 2008, he and a friend forked over $650,000 to have lunch with Buffett, which, he insisted, "was worth every dime." Spier wrote The Education of a Value Investor, hosts a value investors conference in Switzerland, and has a YouTube channel.
In the letter, Spier thanks his "best teachers," a pantheon of value investors including, "first and foremost," Buffett and his late partner Charlie Munger, as well as Lou Simpson, Tom Russo, Peter Cundill, Tom Gayner, Nick Sleep, Mohnish Pabrai, and Li Lu, and firms Ruane Cunniff and Tweedy Browne.
Spier reviews his portfolio with an erudition that comes from an investor whose clock is ticking. On mining stocks, he writes: "The portfolio activity was bad enough but what I really regret is the time spent thinking about the space: what the marginal cost curve is; which mines are, or might be, coming online; how demand might decline if there is a recession; who has the balance sheet strength to see it through and who doesn't. All of this is ephemeral knowledge with a short half-life. Even if there is money to be made, there are better ways to spend one's time."
Spier then turns to his condition. "If you have a disease that is common enough -- or one that allows people to live for a long time -- a large interest group naturally forms around it. In the case of glioblastoma (GBM) we face a two-pronged problem. On the one hand it counts as a rare disease....At the same time, the life expectancy remains short. So, we face a 'bathtub' problem. If a disease is particularly rare or has a short life span, there isn't much 'water' going into the tub, and there is a big drain on the other side. This means that at any one time, there isn't a large focus group to drive solutions. I want to change that empty-bathtub dynamic. It is possible this letter might lead to something that either cures me or prolongs my life. At the very least, it may simply direct attention toward a cure that benefits others."
Spier then enumerates lessons he has learned from his situation.
"Whatever gifts nature gave you, use them. Don't have any shame. So long as you are not doing damage to yourself or anyone else, go on and enjoy them. I used to look disparagingly on people who used their looks to get ahead. No longer."
"Delete envious people."
"Keep a positive attitude and don't complain. I've tried all the other things and they don't work."
"Meditation -- it's not worth it...meditation activates the reptilian freeze mechanism, so it is counterproductive. What works for me is movement and curiosity."
In closing, Spier writes of a Hebrew word, hineni, which means "Here I am." "But it also means so much more," he writes. "Hineni signifies that the protagonist is ready to do what the Almighty asks -- before he even knows what will be asked. The task now is to confront what has been given to me -- without complaint. I was prepared to play the music of compounding capital for decades to come, but that is not the music I have been given. Hineni. Here I am."
Spier says the response to his letter has been "massive and overwhelming, " with 8,000 downloads and counting. Spier and his team have received over 700 emails.
Small wonder. These are words to contemplate and remember.
Write to Andy Serwer at andy.serwer@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 13, 2026 21:30 ET (01:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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