Making Cents Sense

Investing culture loves excitement. Every cycle produces a new obsession: disruptive tech, moonshot growth stories, overnight billionaires, and charts that only seem to go up. The headlines celebrate speed. Social media rewards bold predictions. The loudest voices often sound the most confident — right up until the market reminds everyone that gravity still exists. Meanwhile, a quieter class of investors follows a very different philosophy. They care less about beating the market every quarter and more about surviving every market cycle. They value sleep as much as returns. They understand that the real challenge in investing isn’t hitting home runs — it’s staying in the game long enough for compounding to do the heavy lifting. That philosophy lives at the intersection of two ideas: Low beta High discipline Together, they form the backbone of defensive income portfolios — strategies designed to generate steady cash flow while reducing the emotional and financial damage ca...

For more than a decade, disruption was the dominant narrative. Startups were supposed to upend entire industries overnight. Legacy companies were labeled obsolete before their earnings even had a chance to wobble. Growth at any cost was celebrated. Profitability was optional. Stability was boring. Then reality intervened. Supply chain shocks. Inflation spikes. Interest rate resets. Geopolitical fragmentation. Technology cycles that move faster than regulation can keep up. Capital that became more selective. Consumers that became more cautious. The post-disruption era is not anti-innovation. It is anti-fragility. And in this environment, earnings stability has become one of the most misunderstood—and most valuable—traits an investor can evaluate. This isn’t about avoiding growth. It’s about understanding which growth is durable. It’s about identifying which business models can absorb volatility and continue generating predictable cash flows even when the macro narrative changes. ...

There was a time — not long ago — when profits were optional. If a company could tell a convincing story about total addressable markets, network effects, or “platform transformation,” investors lined up. Earnings? That was a problem for the future. Cash flow? A footnote. Free cash flow? That was for dinosaurs and dividend investors who still used spreadsheets instead of vibes. And then something shifted. The growth premium — that magical multiplier investors were willing to pay for companies promising explosive expansion — began to compress. Multiples shrank. Excuses evaporated. Suddenly, “adjusted EBITDA before stock-based compensation” didn’t feel like a warm blanket anymore. The market rediscovered something radical: Cash matters. If you’re investing in a post-growth-premium world, the rules have changed. Not entirely — but meaningfully. And if you’re still chasing narrative without examining cash flow, you may be playing yesterday’s game. Let’s talk about what investing loo...

Why Slower Growth Doesn’t Mean Slower Returns There’s a certain romance in hypergrowth. Explosive revenue curves. Total addressable markets measured in trillions. CEO interviews that include phrases like “paradigm shift” and “category-defining platform.” Wall Street loves a rocket ship. But rockets burn fuel fast. And eventually, gravity wins. Meanwhile, over in the unglamorous corner of the market, something quieter happens every day: companies grow up. Revenue expansion slows. Margins stabilize. Capital allocation becomes more important than market domination. Narratives shift from “disruptor” to “incumbent.” The market often responds with boredom. And boredom, my friends, is where opportunity hides. This is the world of mature but mispriced companies — enterprises that have decelerated but not deteriorated. Businesses whose best hypergrowth days are behind them, yet whose cash flows, assets, and competitive positioning still justify far more respect than their multipl...