Buy and Hold Is Dead: How to Make Money and Control Risk in Any Market

Chapter 7. Contemporary Darwinism

Our prior discussion encourages a healthy lifestyle. But that notion runs deeper than conditioning to include a parallel to Darwinism. A healthy lifestyle must also be one capable of surviving environmental changes. In our modern economy, assuming that capitalism prevails over socialism, contemporary Darwinism takes precedence. In order to survive, contemporary species, which include investors, corporations, and governments, must adapt to changing economic conditions over time. Survival of the fittest applies here. However, that does not mean that investors need to be healthier, faster, or stronger to flourish. Instead, other resounding qualities do exist, and I will define those in this chapter. In the end, we will realize that our modern economy is itself an environment subject to the same definitions offered hundreds of years ago by Charles Darwin. Furthermore, we will find that we are merely part of that evolutionary process. Uniquely though, unlikely the species that Darwin defined, we can also control our fate.

Charles Darwin changed the world's perception of evolution in the mid-1800s when he introduced his theory of natural selection. Most of us have already studied Darwin's theory, at least to a certain degree. His science suggests that species evolve from a series of mutations and extinctions over time. In the end, only the strongest survive, but the definition of strongest varies from species to species. Mutations for some may provide ...