A King Who Owned Everything Still Told You to Spread Your Bets. You Should Probably Listen. Solomon had more wealth than anyone alive. Buffett said you only get twenty punches. Both were saying the same thing.
Three thousand years apart, two of the wealthiest minds in human history gave the same advice.
One was a king.
The other was an investor from Nebraska. 🦄
Solomon wrote it in Ecclesiastes: “Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.”
Warren Buffett said it in a lecture: Imagine you have a punch card with twenty slots. Every investment you make for the rest of your life punches one hole. When the card is full, you are done. No more moves. Ever.
Read both of those slowly.
Solomon — a man who had more gold, more land, more resources than anyone breathing — still told you to spread your wealth across multiple ventures.
He did not say put it all in the best one. He said spread it. Because you do not know what is coming.
Buffett — a man who built one of the largest fortunes in modern history — still told you to be ruthlessly selective.
He did not say buy everything that looks good. He said treat every investment like it costs you something irreplaceable.
Because attention and capital are finite.
These two ideas sound like they contradict each other. They do not. They complete each other.
The First Lesson: Spread Your Bets
Solomon was not guessing. He was speaking from a position of total abundance and still choosing caution.
That is the part people miss. This was not advice from a man who had nothing and was hoping to build something. This was advice from a man who had everything and was trying to protect it.
He could have said: find the single best investment and go all in. He had the wealth and the intelligence to do that. He chose not to. He said seven ventures — and then immediately corrected himself. No, eight.
Why eight? Because the future is unknowable. Disaster does not announce itself. Markets do not send invitations before they collapse. Political systems do not warn you before they shift. Technologies do not ask permission before they make your current holdings obsolete.
The only rational response to uncertainty is distribution. Not random distribution. Not spray and pray. Intentional distribution across ventures that each serve a purpose.
Solomon was not telling you to diversify for the sake of diversification.
He was telling you to build a structure that can absorb a hit from a direction you did not see coming.
One of the reasons I hedge with gold.
The Second Lesson: Make Every Punch Count
Now layer Buffett on top of that.
Twenty punches. That is it. Twenty decisions for your entire investing life.
Most people burn through twenty in a single year. They hear a tip at dinner. Punch. They see a ticker trending on social media. Punch. They panic-sell during a dip and panic-buy during a rally. Punch, punch, punch.
By the time they are forty, they have used two hundred punches on things they cannot even remember buying.
Buffett’s point is not that you should only own twenty things. His point is that every position should carry the weight of a decision you cannot take back. Because the quality of your thinking changes when the stakes are real.
When you only get twenty punches, you stop buying things because they seem interesting. You stop buying things because someone on a podcast said they were a good idea. You stop buying things because the chart looked good for fifteen minutes.
You start asking: Does this belong in my life’s work? Does this serve the thesis I am building? Will I still want to own this in ten years?
Most holdings cannot survive that filter. And that is exactly the point.
Where Solomon and Buffett Agree
Here is where the two ideas merge into one principle:
Spread your bets — but make every single one of them count.
Not twelve bets. Not thirty bets. Not the number of tickers it takes to make a brokerage screen look impressive.
A focused set of ventures. Each one intentional. Each one serving a role the others cannot fill. Each one earning its seat through connection, not convenience.
Solomon said eight. Buffett said make them count. Put those together and you get a portfolio that is small enough to understand completely and broad enough to survive what you cannot predict.
That is not a compromise between two strategies. That is the strategy.
Why Eight Works
There is a reason Solomon did not say four. Four is concentrated. One disaster takes out a quarter of your wealth.
There is a reason he did not say twenty. Twenty is diluted. You cannot understand twenty ventures deeply enough to know why each one matters.
Eight is the number where intention and protection overlap. Large enough to absorb a direct hit. Small enough that every piece carries meaning.
When I finally built my thesis — power, intelligence, infrastructure, computation, workers, healthcare, security, communication — the number of roles that needed filling was less than 20, with a focus on 8. The scripture confirmed what the logic already demanded.
Nuclear energy. Grid infrastructure. Artificial intelligence. Quantum computing. Robotics. Healthcare technology. Cybersecurity. Space technology.
Each one fills a role. Remove any one of them and a gap opens that weakens the rest.
Add a ninth and you are either duplicating a role that is already covered or adding something that does not connect. But if I’m missing one, let me know. I’m always up for finding holes in a thesis.
Eight is not a magic number. It is the natural result of building a thesis with no waste and no gaps.
What Most People Do Instead
Most people hear “diversify” and buy more things.
Most people hear “be selective” and freeze.
The result is one of two extremes. Portfolios with forty holdings and no thesis. Or cash sitting in savings accounts because the fear of choosing wrong is louder than the cost of choosing nothing.
Both are expensive. The first one dilutes your returns across things you do not understand. The second one guarantees you lose purchasing power every single year to inflation while you wait for the perfect moment that never arrives.
Solomon and Buffett are both telling you the same thing: Act. But act with architecture. Move your money, but move it with a blueprint.
Do not let fear turn you into a collector. Do not let confidence turn you into a gambler.
Build something intentional. Something you can explain in one breath. Something that survives the disaster you did not see coming because every piece was chosen to carry a specific weight.
The Punch Card and the Proverb
Imagine taping Buffett’s punch card to the wall next to Solomon’s proverb.
Twenty punches. Eight ventures. You do not know what disaster may come upon the land.
Now look at your portfolio. How many punches have you wasted on things you cannot explain? How many of your holdings exist because of impulse, not intention? How many of them serve no role except filling space on a screen?
Solomon had everything and still chose to spread wisely.
Buffett had decades of experience and still chose to punch sparingly.
If the richest king in ancient history and the most successful investor in modern history both arrived at the same conclusion — intentional, connected, focused distribution of resources — then maybe the question is not whether their advice applies to you.
Maybe the question is what you have been doing instead.
Today’s FL10 Minute Workout: Lean Out
10 min · No gym · No equipment · 2 min each
- High Knees
- Speed Skaters
- Walking Lunges
- Mountain Climbers
- Plank