42 Years in Finance, One Book: How Chris Belchamber’s Invest Like the Best Draws His Right Clients
“Write it because you feel you have to. There’s something in them that they really need to commit to [...] something you can only communicate by writing down every word.”
Chris Belchamber, author of Invest Like the Best
Chris Belchamber spent 42 years in finance, including as managing director of proprietary trading at JP Morgan, and once sat one on one with John Meriwether and walked away from Long-Term Capital Management the year before it collapsed. He wrote Invest Like the Best to put his contrarian, low-risk approach into print. Five years later the book still works as a lighthouse, drawing the clients who understand his method, and he is building a newsletter and new videos with his son off the same timeless foundation.
Walking away from the master of the universe
Clip · Chris Belchamber on walking away from LTCM · 18s
In 1997, four years into a run of extraordinary returns, Chris was recruited to join the most famous hedge fund in the world. The meeting did not go the way they expected.
“I had a one-on-one with John Meriwether [...] toward the end of the meeting we just fell out, because we talked about risk and we didn’t see things the same way [...] they were 30 times leveraged [...] So no surprise, within a year...”
Chris Belchamber
Long-Term Capital Management imploded the following year. The episode became part one of his book, and the spine of how he thinks about risk.
The false choice at the heart of the book
Clip · Chris Belchamber on the false choice · 17s
Chris’s central argument is that the industry sells a choice that does not have to exist: that higher returns require higher risk.
“Whenever I do a seminar and ask, is there anybody here who’d like to have a higher return with less risk? Everybody puts their hand up. Everybody. But when it comes to actually doing it, it’s just... not that.”
Chris Belchamber
Why he finally wrote it down
After moving from JP Morgan into advising everyday investors, Chris kept running into the same wall: his approach was so different that talking about it was not enough.
“Instead of talking about it, it would probably make my life easier if I just wrote it all down [...] it’s timeless. If you don’t get this, to some degree you’re gambling.”
Chris Belchamber
What the book produced
The first thing it produced was for him. Eighteen months of committing his thinking to the page did something he did not expect.
“Clarity and purpose [...] you have to commit it to print, to black and white, you live by it. It focuses the mind in an incredible way. That’s what I got most out of it.”
Chris Belchamber
The second thing was the right clients. The book now does the filtering for him, drawing the people who understand his method before they ever call.
“If people want more wealth and security, I don’t think there’s a better way [...] it’s definitely my North Star.”
Chris Belchamber
Timeless like gold
Five years on, Chris is still drawing on the same book, making videos with his son to bring part one to a wider audience, and only now starting to market it in earnest, because the foundations have not dated.
“It’s timeless, it’s like gold. Whatever happens has already happened before.”
Chris Belchamber
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