Using a scoring system, a macro signal, and the discipline to wait — by a urologist who spent many years as a fairly poor investor, then built a framework to fix it.
The Independent Investor — publishing September 1, 2026.
A friend's hot tip. A breathless headline. Four accounts, a hundred statements, and no honest answer to how any of it had performed. Every decision made on adrenaline and a 1%-of-assets annual fee — paid to someone whose strategy I couldn't describe.
Same four accounts. Same hundred statements. But every holding now has a score, every account a clear role, and every decision a written rationale. The complexity didn't shrink. It just stopped being frightening.
A surgeon doesn't operate on a hunch. There's a workup, a differential, a checklist — the same careful process whether the patient is straightforward or not. HVIF™ brings that habit of mind to a portfolio.
HVIF™ stands for the Hybrid Value Investment Framework. Value — following Graham and Buffett — means paying attention to what the business is worth, not what its share price is doing this week. Hybrid means that quality alone isn't enough: the framework pairs fundamental analysis with wider market conditions and entry timing. The result is a repeatable process rather than a series of hunches.
Q_SCORE rates a company on five pillars — moat, returns, earnings quality, valuation, and capital allocation — on a single scale. A high score earns a closer look. A low score saves you from a story that sounded better than it was.
The Tide grades the wider market: interest rates, the yield curve, credit spreads. It doesn't predict the future — nothing does — but it makes sure the weather is part of the decision rather than a surprise afterward.
The Gate is a short entry check on the individual purchase. All three aligned — quality, conditions, timing — only then does capital move.
Every business gets rated the same way, so comparisons mean something. No gut feel, no story stocks — a score you can defend, built from inputs you can verify.
A good company bought into a deteriorating market is still a difficult position to hold.
The Tide weighs the things that quietly govern markets — interest rates, the shape of the yield curve, the spreads in the bond market — and produces one clear reading. At the calm end, conditions favour investing freely. At the other end, the sensible move is patience and cash. Most of the time it sits somewhere between, and says so plainly.
HVIF™ doesn't guarantee outperformance — no system can make that promise and mean it. What it does is give every decision the same structure: the same questions, in the same order, whether the market is rising or falling and whether you feel confident or not.
Used carefully over a few years, it took most of the worry out of managing my own money. The uncertainty didn't go away — it never does — but the way through it became clear. That turned out to be the part that mattered.
“To be a successful independent investor you need a framework, a little discipline, and a little help from artificial intelligence — and you need to know that no-one cares about your money more than you do.” — from the Preface
The HVIF™ tools are in development for a 2026 launch alongside the book. Here's what's coming — join the waitlist and you'll get early access as each tier opens.
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Launching alongside the book in 2026. Pricing is preliminary.
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Launching alongside the book in 2026. Pricing is preliminary.
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Part memoir, part method. Read it straight through, or start with the scoring system in Part Two and double back when you want to know where a rule came from.
Forty years of questionable decisions — a Vancouver Stock Exchange mining stock at twenty, the Microsoft that got away, fifteen years building AccuroEMR, a vineyard in the Similkameen. Each story ends with the lesson that became a named part of the framework.
The core of the book. The three-signal rule. Five quality pillars. Nine bond-market factors. Four Gate conditions. ETFs, cash, and diversification — each given the same rigour as individual equities, each chapter opening with the failure that made the rule necessary.
The current market through the HVIF™ lens. Surviving black swans. How artificial intelligence changed what is possible for the independent investor. A chapter on what it actually feels like when the framework works. And a final chapter on the most expensive trade — the one you didn't need to make.
Plus thirteen appendices — scoring worksheets, sector references, the Universe Discovery Pipeline, and the complete HVIF™ v5.5.5 master prompt.
Macro conditions and the EA‑BF reading.
The five-pillar Q_SCORE in practice.
The equations and mechanics, plainly shown.
Stories from practice, markets, and the dock.