Market return · 15%/yr
$1.60MS&P 500 average annual return over the last decade
The Pragmatic Portfolio
Put long-term capital behind the world's value creators.
Pragmatic Capital is a San Francisco Bay Area investment partnership founded to help long-term investors close the return gap created by conventional Wall Street portfolios. Through deep research, we construct a lean portfolio of powerful businesses creating value in the real world.
Explore the Pragmatic PortfolioThe problem · The compounding chasm
The market creates value.
Conventional portfolios leave too much behind.
The return gap is not a temporary shortfall. It is lost compounding—an opportunity cost that expands with every passing year.
Average investor · 7.5%/yr
$0.42MThe average investor captures 52% of the market's growth
The gap widens exponentially over time.
The endpoint is dramatic. The path reveals why: every year of missed growth leaves less capital available to compound in the next.
Starting capital
$100,000
Market
$1.60M
Average investor
$0.42M
Market return · 15%/yr
S&P 500 average annual return over the last decade
Average investor · 7.5%/yr
The average investor captures 52% of the market's growth
The Pragmatic Portfolio
Purpose-built to
Close the Gap.
Most conventional approaches are wrappers around benchmarks—model portfolios designed to be cloned, scaled, and sold. The benchmark dictates what they own, how much they own, and what counts as risk. The result is a portfolio built to resemble the market, including its laggards and value destroyers—not to capture its value creators.
The Pragmatic Portfolio starts from the ground up. Deep research identifies a lean set of exceptional businesses with the power to shape their markets. These four asymmetries are designed into The Pragmatic Portfolio to place long-term capital behind that power—and help it compound in service of an enduring mission.
01 · Opportunity
Asymmetric Payoffs
Capture outsized returns by investing against consensus.
Non-consensus opportunity
02 · Insight
Asymmetric Knowledge
Take advantage of blind spots created by consensus' shallow research.
Depth where the market is shallow
03 · Selection
Asymmetric Exposure
Avoid the laggards by focusing on proven value creators.
Exposure to value creation
04 · Structure
Asymmetric Risk/Reward
Hedge the downside without limiting the upside using options.
Downside discipline · Upside retained
Continue into the investment discipline
Explore the Pragmatic Framework
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