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Epictetus Fund: Stoicism as a Path to Sustainable Financial Success

“There are things that are up to us, and things that are not up to us. Wisdom is being able to tell the difference and focus on the first.” Epictetus, Stoic philosopher (c. 50–135 AD), author of the Enchiridion.

We live in a world where markets move faster than we can read the news. Crises, rumours and randomness crash over us like waves — and it often feels like we control nothing.

But there is one thing we’ve learned for sure: we do not control the market. We do control ourselves.

“Let your mind be like a rock against which the waves break: they crash and howl, but the rock stands.” Zeno of Citium (c. 334–255 BC), Stoic philosopher from Cyprus, teacher of Epictetus.

Our mission is not to predict the future. Our mission is to build the ability to make sound decisions today, so we tilt the odds in our favour tomorrow. This is not about luck. It is about discipline, clarity and honesty.

This site is part of a 25‑year real‑time learning project. In practice, we want to show how applied Stoicism, time and compounding can take you from poverty into the middle class, or from a mid‑sized business into a large one. This is the path we’re walking ourselves, and we’re documenting it openly so that anyone who shares this mindset can learn alongside us.

Epictetus Fund is not “philosophy on the side” and “business on the side”. It is the journal of a player‑philosopher who puts his own time and capital at risk and shows his decisions, mistakes and lessons in real life.

We publish the fund’s TWR almost in real time and we do not hide drawdowns behind pretty averages. By its very meaning, TWR is all about whether the fund manager made new money or lost old cash over the reporting period — basically, a proper gut-check on how well the fund manager did their job. Once a quarter, we write letters to partners in the spirit of Buffett — in plain English, with no corporate fog: what worked, what didn’t, and what we learned.

Stoicism was not invented to “generate alpha”. But one of our goals is to show, in practice, how easily it can do exactly that when you treat it as a practical tool — in our case, inside a real financial business.

Three Stoic Disciplines: Desire, Action, Assent

Stoic philosophy rests on three core disciplines. We applied them to a financial business — and they work. Here’s what that looks like from day one.

1. The Discipline of Desire: what we want

We want to build a serious financial business over 25 years — a fund with consistent income generation, clean intentions and transparency to the outside world. In our specific case, that also means moving beyond “mid‑sized” into “large”.

2. The Discipline of Action: what we do

To turn that desire into reality, over seven years we built our own way of running a financial business. We call it the Manifesto — a five‑layer operating system.

3. The Discipline of Assent: how we improve ourselves and our decisions

The discipline of assent is about training ourselves as portfolio managers and capital owners. How do you come out of 25 years with a win? How do you handle anger, anxiety and greed?

We do not want:

instant fame
“guaranteed” high returns
winning at any cost

We do want:

long‑term resilience
honesty with clients and with ourselves
a legacy that outlives us

To desire, in the Stoic sense, is to choose what is within our control and to let go of what is not. Simple to say. Hard to live.

Epictetus statue with temple and compounding inscription

To turn that desire into reality, over seven years we built our own way of running a financial business. We call it the Manifesto — a five‑layer operating system:

Philosophy of choice (Epictetus), mission, scientific mindset, Fund Code
A 25‑year master plan
Execution Manual
Annual dossiers and annual execution
Post‑mortem analysis and the steward‑level of owners

We launched a 25‑year project called “Epictetus Fund” — fully public, with honest TWR reporting and letters written in Buffett’s style. We show, in the open, how Stoicism is applied inside a real financial business.

No hype. No dirt. No fluff.

We just execute the Manifesto. Step by step. Day by day. Year by year.

Here Stoicism meets its modern heirs in the work of Kahneman and Tversky. They translated old Stoic truths into the language of behavioural economics:

Loss aversion → Stoic acceptance of loss as part of how the world works
Overconfidence → Stoic indifference to the crowd’s opinion
Herd behaviour → Stoic independence from the majority view
Illusion of control → Stoic separation of what is up to us from what is not

We don’t “fight” these instincts head‑on. We learn to see their nature — and refuse to let them drive the bus.

This is how the three Stoic disciplines — desire, action and assent — become the operating system of the Fund. Desire sets the frame: what we are aiming at and what we will not accept. Action is written into the Manifesto and our daily routines. Assent is tested by reality — through our honest TWR, visible drawdowns and quarterly Buffett‑style letters where we publicly dissect our decisions as part of the Epictetus Fund 25‑year experiment.

Our View on Analysis: Technical and Fundamental

You will rarely see us talk about technical or fundamental analysis on this site or in our letters. That work lives in the lower levels of the Manifesto:

Level 4 — annual dossiers and annual execution
Level 5 — post‑mortems and the steward‑level of owners

This is internal work, not a public debate. We do not ignore it. On the contrary: we treat it as technical, and we are happy to let AI handle the data crunching, pattern‑spotting and risk calculations faster and more accurately than a human.

Our job is not to compete with AI, but to see where humans are irreplaceable: making the actual calls, owning the responsibility, maintaining our 30/30/40 structure (“World All‑Stars”) and staying anchored in Stoic philosophy, deliberate choice and process.

We believe in a 30/30/40 build:

30% — a systematic market engine (beta core): passive participation in the Train of Progress
30% — a concentrated growth sleeve (alpha pool): focus on high‑potential growth
40% — organic dividend growth (defensive anchor): a stabilising stream of free cash flow from dividends

Our focus is Stoic philosophy, choice and process. Not forecasts. Action. The results of that work are visible in our honest TWR, which we publish almost in real time.

We know our final station. The names of the intermediate stops are of secondary importance.

We do not know the exact pace at which we will generate free cash flow in any given year.

We do not make promises.

But we see our target as modest: roughly doubling capital every seven years. That is enough so that, 25 years from now, the Fund can generate a steady profit stream that outperforms most financial and operating businesses in the world working with the same initial capital.

Because time and compounding are on our side.

Epictetus Fund is not just a business. It is a path.

And we walk it together: family, team, relatives, partners — and, of course, AI.

Ahead lies big business. Today is live‑fire testing of the disciplines.

Everyone participates on equal terms. Everyone learns. Everyone grows.

P.S. The first two levels of the Manifesto are public: our quarterly letters and our honest TWR are open to anyone following the Epictetus Fund experiment. Levels three, four and five are available by subscription: there we open up the full operating system of the Fund, the tickers of the “World All‑Stars” portfolio, and near real‑time alerts on every rebalance, every buy and sell in the underlying assets and the derivatives on them — plus the steward‑level: post‑mortems, error reviews and rapid course‑corrections when needed.

This is no longer the shop window. It is the workshop — where you see the engine, not just the speedometer.

Annual access to the Epictetus Fund workshop is 99 dollars a year. One clear price. No hidden fees. No fine print.

Join the Workshop