The Pilot Who Flew Their Own Portfolio in the Sky!
The Man Who Flew His Portfolio
There was a man who owned an aircraft he could not see.
He knew it was there because, whenever he became frightened, he could feel it pulling against the wind.
The aircraft was called a portfolio.
It had no wings that could be measured, no instruments that could be trusted completely, and no destination that appeared on any map.
The pilot had spent years buying pieces of its machinery.
Some parts were powerful.
Some were even reliable.
Some were experimental.
Some had been purchased because someone else had said they were going to fly.
There were even a few pieces that nobody could explain.
The pilot, being a pilot had learned that this was normal.
One evening, while the aircraft was resting above a dark ocean of numbers, the pilot looked through the cockpit window.
Below him were the familiar lights.
VFV.
XEQT.
GOOG.
MSFT.
AMZN.
VRT.
TMDX.
HHIS.
And, farther out in the darkness, a small experimental craft called LTBR, which appeared to have been assembled by someone who had misplaced several important instructions.
The pilot sighed.
He wondered whether he had too many aircraft.
Then he wondered whether he had too few.
Then he wondered why he was wondering.
A voice beside him said,
“You are trying to make the sky behave like a road.”
The pilot turned.
There was nobody there.
“Who said that?”
“You did.”
“I did not.”
“You did, years ago. You simply forgot.”
The pilot looked at the instruments.
The altitude was uncertain.
The direction was uncertain.
The weather was uncertain.
The fuel was real.
That, at least, was comforting.
He said, “I want to know where I am going.”
The voice answered,
“You already know.”
“I do?”
“You want freedom.”
The pilot considered this.
“Yes.”
“You want enough that you do not have to ask permission.”
“Yes.”
“You want your money to produce something useful while you are living your life.”
“Yes.”
“And you want the whole machine to survive the weather.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you surprised that you have built an aircraft instead of a straight line?”
The pilot laughed.
Outside the cockpit, a cloud passed beneath the wings.
He could not see through it.
For a moment he felt the old temptation.
Sell everything.
Buy something certain.
Simplify.
Stop thinking.
Then another thought arrived.
Perhaps simplicity was not the absence of complexity.
Perhaps simplicity was knowing what each thing was for.
HHIS was not pretending to be VFV.
VFV was not pretending to be HHIS.
XEQT did not need to produce the same kind of flight.
A speculative little aircraft did not need to carry passengers across an ocean.
A great engine did not need to become a sailboat.
The mistake was not owning different machines.
The mistake was asking each machine to become the same machine.
The pilot leaned back.
Below him, the lights continued to move.
There was something else he had begun to understand.
A portfolio could be measured every day.
Its value could be written down.
Its gains could be calculated.
Its losses could be displayed in red.
Its distributions could arrive with satisfying regularity.
But none of those numbers could answer the question that mattered most.
What was the money for?
He had once believed the answer was growth.
Then income.
Then security.
Then freedom.
Eventually he discovered that these were not four answers.
They were four names for different parts of the same journey.
Growth gave the aircraft altitude.
Income gave it endurance.
Security gave the pilot courage.
Freedom gave him somewhere worth flying.
The voice was quiet now.
The pilot looked around.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“What happens if I make a mistake?”
“You will.”
“That is not very comforting.”
“It is not supposed to be.”
The pilot smiled.
The aircraft continued through the night.
Far ahead, there was a thin line of morning.
He could not see the destination.
He could see only enough sky to take the next heading.
And suddenly that seemed sufficient.
For the first time in many years, he stopped asking whether his portfolio was winning.
He asked a different question.
“Is it doing what I built it to do?”
The voice answered,
“Now you are learning to fly.”
And somewhere beneath the wings, while the world was still asleep, the engines became very quiet.
Not because they had stopped.
Because the pilot had finally stopped fighting the wind.
