Compounding Snowballs

Below is another excerpt from my book, "Lighthouse: Women Leading the Way in Finance," that comes out in April 2020.  To me, a lighthouse guides boats in the sea. Its light provides warning of potential hazards along with the comfort of not feeling alone in the vast ocean. My new book is a compilation of female lighthouses in finance: their education, career paths, and struggles. The variety of experience and expertise provides each reader with one or more lighthouses to guide their journey and make them not feel so alone. I am grateful to them for sharing their stories.  It highlights many women in finance professions.  Lighthouses in Heather’s Words “For the first five to eight years of my career, I benefited from the mentorship of Bill Andersen, former portfolio manager at Driehaus [Capital Management], where I worked. He is now the founding principal of Ranger International, and we stay in touch to this day. Bill was so helpful thinking through my different ca...

Below is an excerpt from my book, "Lighthouse: Women Leading the Way in Finance," that is coming out in April. To me, a lighthouse guides boats in the sea. Its light provides warning of potential hazards along with the comfort of not feeling alone in the vast ocean. My new book is a compilation of female lighthouses in finance: their education, career paths, and struggles. The variety of experience and expertise provides each reader with one or more lighthouses to guide their journey and make them not feel so alone. I am grateful to them for sharing their stories.  Lighthouses in Vicki’s Words “I have many lighthouses. I am struck by wisdom and truth-telling so when I hear someone say something that wakes me up I collect it and add it to my list. I'm a synthesizer. I feel like I've been following the breadcrumbs one by one and someday it will all be clear. There is no one thing. It's a series of books, articles, conversations, relationships, tuning into sub...

I am excited to announce that I am publishing a new book "Lighthouse: Women Leading the Way in Finance" due out in April 2020. When I published Early Bird in 2017, I had no idea what opportunities were about to come my way and the number of inspiring people I was about to meet. I remember the cold November Saturday when I hit the publish button on Amazon, and all I could think was it would be incredible to sell 100 copies. But it has been over two years now and I am still blown away by the responses. The biggest thing that sticks with me is the number of people and families who used Early Bird to have family conversations, start investing goals, and launch their investing journey. I gave a number of talks on the power of investing young with some of the world's greatest investors at Ensemble Capital ( link ), Markel ( link ), Google, and Berkshire Hathaway among many others. One incredibly inspiring trip I took was to speak to UMass Amherst Isenberg School of Manage...

I am happy to share my first article on the Intelligent Fanatics website . It was a blast to write and hopefully to read as well!  “Balance sheet growth at Hingham must be safe and it must be profitable, in that order.” -Robert Gaughen

I spoke to Markel's Jitney group recently. Markel is an insurance company based in Richmond, VA. I spoke to them about how investing has influenced my views of the world, why I started, and how my experience has helped me become a well informed investor. Please enjoy the transcipt of the talk I gave: My excitement has been compounding since I was first talking about this opportunity, and I hope your interest has been as well. My name is Maya Peterson. I am high school sophomore with a passion for business, math, behavioral finance, and science. I published a book last year about the power and importance of investing early. It is called Early Bird: The Power of Investing Young. I have a blog called Compounding Snowballs that is three years old now, and many other activities outside of school that keep me busy. I want to talk about the ideas of experience and knowledge, two words that are related, but often misused.  Investing deals with both experience and knowledge. There ar...

Social responsibility means that as an individual or a corporation, you have a civic duty to use your actions to benefit the population. If corporate social responsibility (CSR) is about making a "greener" impact on the environment, creating a diverse and accepting workforce, and/or benefiting society over the long-term, why is it so hard for companies to do? The short answer is the long-term.  People and companies too often focus on the short term: how much money their company will make this quarter. If their drive is making money in the short term, then as Jeremy Grantham says, " G randchildren have no value … We deforest the land, we degrade our soils, we pollute and overuse our water, and we treat our air like an open sewer. All of this is off the balance sheet and off the income statement ".  As a value investor, I look at the potential growth, competitive advantage, fair price, and good management within the company. As a socially responsible investor, th...

Ensemble Capital gave me a wonderful chance to speak to a lot of young people about my book and my story. Here is a write up of some of the questions I was asked by Todd Wenning : Todd Wenning: The title of your book is Early Bird: The Power of Investing Young . Why is there such power in investing when you’re young? Maya Peterson: I am sixteen years old. As a young person, I do not pay rent and I cannot drive myself places yet, but I can invest. Investing is one of the first adult choices a young person can make. It is very powerful to make the choice to invest your money rather than spend it right away. Investing is a decision that will impact your future. Also because you’re young, you have a lot of time ahead of you which maximizes the concept of compounding. Compounding is the idea that if you have a small ball of snow at the top of the hill as it rolls down, it will continue to get bigger. In reality, time is the hill and snow is your investments, so an ideal situation i...