Letter №4 | July 2026
Epictetus Fund · Monthly Letter · Published August 2026
Dear subscribers,
this is Message №4 | July 2026.
“Following nature” for Zeno isn’t a bumper sticker, it’s the demand to see the Logos as the rational order of the world (markets included) and to align our inner reason with this order – to remain a rock among the waves, not just the agitation of the water itself.
For Zeno, the universe is one living organism, shot through with the Logos: a rational fire, a structure, a chain of causality we call nature, fate and god all at once.
To “live according to nature” means, at the same time, to accept the universal order (cosmic nature) and to realise our own human nature: to develop reason, virtue and resilience. In this sense the outer world and the soul, as part of a larger design, sit in a single circuit: the soul is a fragment of the Logos, and our task is to bring its movement in line with the wider flow of causes.
In the context of Micron, ERIE and any other names: prices can “do whatever they like” – this is just the visible surface of a dense causal network (macro, courts, regulators, crowd psychology). Our job isn’t to predict every wave, but to make sure no wave breaks the ship from within. The market is under no obligation to match our wishes; it’s part of the larger Logos, not our personal fantasy. Our response: we build the portfolio architecture so that it can take unpredictable hits and stay standing.
In July we did a lot of work on the Manifesto at Operator level (third level), where several add-ons appeared for special regimes, including mandatory trimming rules and Addendum №1 on changes in the Tudor account. At Architect level (second level) we added clarifications on the three types of companies inside the DivGrowth block (Worth, Balanced, Income) and what weight each of them carries inside the block (35/50/15). This is the practical logic that keeps reason from being dragged around by emotion and makes decisions repeatable.
The mistake of a stoic investor is not that the market falls, but that he betrays his own system under the pressure of fear or greed. The aim is not to maximise every single trade, but to live with “a good flow of life”: long-term compounding, honesty, patience, respect for the laws of nature. Real “good” is a resilient mind that doesn’t snap – neither from an ERIE drawdown nor from a Micron parabola.
Micron, ERIE, Cboe, UnitedHealth – they’re not “heroes meant to save us”, but different channels through which the Logos runs streams of profit, loss and risk. Our task is not to demand that all these streams are always pleasant, but to use them in line with nature and reason: add when there is a margin of safety, cut when the thesis is broken, and stay calm when the market is noisy. On a 25-year horizon, almost any tick on the screen will be processed by the mind as just another working day – on one condition: that Trader, Operator and Architect keep the discipline of the system intact.
