2026 Commencement Address

 

St. Albans Class of 2026,

It is an honor to speak with you today.

And, if I’m being frank, I’m a little surprised to find myself here on the Canterbury Pulpit addressing you. I do love St. Albans and the traditions for which it stands, but I would not say I graduated at the top of my class. Perhaps I’ll paraphrase former President George W. Bush, who said, “To those of you graduating with honors, awards, and distinctions, I say well done. And to all you C students, take heart that you too can one day be the Commencement speaker.”

I have spent most of my professional life on the trading floor. If you have never seen one, imagine a place that is chaotic, competitive, emotional, and full of people who are absolutely certain about things they cannot possibly know.

It is lunchtime in the refectory.

After a lifetime in that world, I was fortunate to learn about risk, reward, timing and judgement.

And today, I want to share with you three lessons I learned from the trading floor.

When you are young, it is likely that you will have a lot of time but no money. And it is good and right that you trade some of your time for money by working.

When you are old, there is no amount of money that you can trade for more time.

Most of your life will be about tradeoffs.

Should you trade security for uncertain gain? Should you trade independence for responsibility? No one else can answer these questions for you.

St. Albans has taught you how to think. What to think is now up to you.

But a trading framework for evaluating these types of decisions is to make sure you can afford to lose what you are risking, and to make sure that you really want what you are trying to gain.

And the clearest example of this kind of thinking is that when you are young and you have less to lose, you should say yes.

Say yes to the assignment that feels a little daunting. Say yes to the work that stretches you. Say yes to the responsibility you are not quite ready for.

I had been out of college for a year when my employer asked me to move to Japan.

I had never been to Japan! I was relieved to find out that they had McDonald’s and 7-11s. But saying yes when I had nothing to lose changed the trajectory of my career and my life.

Not every yes will work out, and you may end up fighting just to get back to where you started. But to go and come back is not the same as never to have left.

So, say yes, risk only what you can lose, and trade your way into a deeper version of yourself.

Compounding is the exponential power of small advantages repeated over time.

Albert Einstein called it the eighth wonder of the world.

Human nature is bad at understanding compounding because we perceive linearity of effort. Working for 2 hours sounds twice as hard as working for 1.

Compounding changes that equation so that more returns come with the later effort.

The famous investor Warren Buffet made ninety-nine percent of his wealth after the age of 50. This is not because he suddenly became a better investor at 50: It is because of the math of compounding.

And that is the trick. Everyone is focused on finding their advantage, but what matters in the long run is not so much what your specific advantage is but rather how many times you can apply it.

There are opportunities to compound all around you:

Habits compound. Relationships compound. Trust compounds.

Look for games that you can play repeatedly with an advantage, and you will be shocked at what you can compound.

A few pages a day becomes a powerful mind. A few dollars saved becomes independence. A few hard choices becomes character. Find where you have an advantage, and compound your way into the man you want to become.

In the market, it is easy to confuse noise with signal, heat with light. The best traders cut through that: They start by asking what do we know to be true?

St. Albans has given you a compass. In times of confusion, start with what you know to be true, and derive your thinking from there, like a proof in geometry.

If you find yourself agreeing with everything a person or a platform says, you are not thinking from first principles, you are subscribing to an ideology.

The deepest truths are rarely complicated. In the words of Winston Churchill, “All the great things are simple … and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”

St. Albans Class of 2026, We love you so much. We are impossibly proud of you.

You arrived here as boys. You leave here as St. Albans men.

And one day soon, on a campus far from here, after the last box is unpacked, after the bed is made, there will be … a goodbye.

When that moment comes, remember: you are loved, and you are ready.

Congratulations, and God bless the Class of ’26!