Sightlines | Somerset Advisory

The Race We’re Actually Running

Prologue

At dawn, the meadow shimmered. The air was cool and heavy with dew. A crowd of woodland creatures had gathered for a race they did not quite believe would happen: the tortoise had challenged the hare.

The hare was, of course, the favorite. Quick, charming, confident. He bounded to the starting line with a grin that could outshine the morning. The tortoise arrived late, as if time itself were patient with him. He nodded to the hare, to the crowd, to the path that stretched beyond the trees.

When the signal came, the hare was gone, a blur of motion, the wind catching his ears as he laughed at the absurdity of it all. “A race,” he thought, “against a creature who barely moves.”

He darted past flowers and field mice, his shadow tumbling over stones. He could already see the finish line in his mind. Certain of his victory, he slowed. He found a patch of shade beneath an oak tree and decided to rest. Just for a minute. Just until the tortoise came into view so the victory would feel more satisfying.

The forest quieted. The hare slept. The tortoise moved on, step by steady step, unmoved by the crowd and untempted by haste. He did not look ahead or behind. He simply kept moving.

Hours passed. When the hare awoke, the light had shifted. The air felt heavier, uncertain. He bolted forward, heart pounding, realizing what he had done. By the time he reached the meadow’s edge, the tortoise was already there, breathing evenly, nodding once more to the path that had carried him home.

We know the ending: slow and steady wins the race. But in older versions, the story does not stop there. In one, the hare demands a rematch and wins easily. In another, the course crosses a river. The hare, though faster, cannot swim. The tortoise, calm and prepared, drifts across to victory. In yet another, the two become friends, each learning that speed and endurance were never enemies, only different strengths.

Across versions, one truth endures: progress built on discipline outlasts performance built on momentum.

The Hall of Mirrors

We see the same race play out in the markets every day.

The hares are easy to spot. They chase what is moving fastest. They sleep well when prices rise and panic when they fall. In their world, speed masquerades as strategy. Index investing, in its purest form, mirrors this pattern of momentum, up on the way up, down on the way down. It reflects rather than leads, amplifies rather than questions.

In our Hall of Mirrors letter earlier this year, we wrote about how modern markets increasingly echo themselves, data feeding data, algorithms training on the reactions they helped create. Momentum becomes reflection. Reflection becomes movement. It can look like truth, but it is only light bouncing off glass.

And yet, beyond the glare, something quieter endures.

Patience, prudence, and principle. Those three still win the long race.

At Somerset, we plod, plan, and protect. We have clients who have been with us since the Great Financial Crisis. Very little has changed in our investment philosophy since then, because what we set out to do still works: keep, protect, and grow.

We prefer to hit singles. We choose quality over novelty, cash flow over headlines, humility over speed. We do not try to win the race before the race is over. We build portfolios to finish well.

The Tortoise’s Temperament

The hare’s story is about movement. The tortoise’s story is about temperament.

In markets, temperament is what keeps you from mistaking volatility for danger or excitement for opportunity. It is what allows a family to stay invested through seasons of uncertainty because they understand their plan.

Our strategies do not rely on prediction. They rely on preparation. We focus on owning businesses that we believe have strong fundamentals and explore alternatives that aim to provide steady income. We believe patience is active work, the kind that reviews, rebalances, and reassesses without losing conviction.

Patience is not passive. It is endurance with direction.

When we review performance, we do not ask, “Did we beat the S&P this quarter?” We ask, “Are we on pace to meet your goals ten years from now?”

That is the difference between the hare’s sprint and the tortoise’s stride. The hare lives by comparison. The tortoise lives by conviction.

The Clients Who Stayed

We have walked beside families through more than one cycle of exuberance and fear. Some have been with us since 2008, through moments when patience felt foolish and markets felt merciless.

They stayed. They trusted that slow, steady, and sound would compound. And over time, this patient temperament, in our experience, has often been rewarded.

We have seen this story repeat. Every few years, a new generation of investors rediscovers volatility. They rush toward what is popular, then retreat when it turns.

But our clients, those who have seen entire seasons come and go, often maintain confidence when the market appears volatile.

Because they believe: this race is not simply measured in weeks or even years. It is pursued through the discipline of decades.

Another version of the same fable 

Long before Aesop, another storyteller told a similar tale. In the Indian Panchatantra, the race did not unfold on dry land but across a river. The faster creature—sometimes a rabbit, sometimes a deer—sprinted ahead, confident that victory was certain. But when the river appeared, his speed became useless. The slower one, often a turtle, had prepared for water as well as for land. He slipped into the current and crossed to the far bank while the faster animal paced in frustration.

The lesson in that older telling is different. The Greek story praises endurance. The Indian story praises foresight. Together they hold the full wisdom: patience without planning drifts but planning without patience drowns.

Across cultures, the story resolves the same way. Wisdom triumphs where speed fails. Yet in the Indian telling, the lesson widens. It is not only about enduring time but about anticipating it.

That dual wisdom sits at the center of our work. We honor the slow rhythm of compounding, but we also design for the crossings—the moments when the current changes and preparation matters more than pace. That is why we diversify, rebalance, and plan for liquidity long before it is needed. We do not only measure returns; we measure readiness.

In every family’s journey, there will be rivers. Transitions of business, of health, of generations. The true work is preparing for those crossings before they appear on the horizon.

The tortoise, in either story, is not simply slow. He is steady because he is sure of where he is going and what the terrain requires. He is not racing the hare. He is mastering himself.

The Beauty of Boring

There is a certain poetry in the boring things. Quarterly reviews. Cash flow discussions. Tax-loss harvesting. Rebalancing. The routines that rarely make headlines but build resilience over time.

The hare would not have liked that kind of race. It does not draw a crowd. But the tortoise would have recognized it instantly.

Boring is not the opposite of beautiful. It is the foundation of it, the steady beat beneath the noise.

That is why our process is deliberately rhythmic. The CLARITIES framework gives every step its place.

CLARITIES | A Somerset Framework

Cash Flow — Keeps your pace.

Listening — Defines your priorities.

Allotment — Sets your stride.

Retirement and Real Estate — Determines your distance.

Insurance — Protects your progress.

Taxes — Refines your route.

Investments — Guides your movement.

Estate — Ensures you finish well.

Stewardship — Gives the journey meaning.

Each piece builds the next. It is not glamorous, but it is enduring. We do not measure ourselves against the market’s reflection. We measure ourselves against your purpose.

Momentum and Meaning

Momentum feels like progress. Meaning is progress.

That is why momentum strategies, especially in crowded index markets, can lure even the wisest investors into the hare’s mindset. They look safe because everyone is running in the same direction. But when the crowd turns, it turns quickly.

Momentum investing is efficient until it is not.

We believe that positioning, rather than prediction, helps protect our clients. We build around quality businesses that generate real cash and we integrate alternative strategies designed to smooth volatility rather than chase it.

That does not mean avoiding change. It means respecting it. We adapt where innovation creates value, whether through private credit, direct indexing, or new forms of alternative access. But we do so with intention.

Even the tortoise, if you notice, never stops moving.

The Quiet Advantage

There is a paradox in investing. What feels slow often compounds fastest.

When measuring wealth over twenty or thirty years, we believe the advantage goes to those who did not trade every headline. Patience turns time into a collaborator rather than an opponent.

Markets are efficient not only on the upside but also on the downside. That is why discipline matters most when others lose theirs.

The tortoise never mistook rest for progress. The hare never understood stillness as strength. But we can.

The tortoise’s real gift was not slowness. It was focus. Every step had direction. Every pause had purpose.

That is the rhythm we follow.

What We Have Learned

In the fifteen years since the Great Financial Crisis, markets have changed, technologies have transformed, and information has accelerated. But the fundamentals of stewardship have not.

Protecting capital and growing it are not competing goals. They are the same goal viewed over different time horizons.

Enduring wealth requires endurance of spirit, the ability to stay steady when others sway.

And trust, once earned through seasons of volatility, compounds faster than any index.

Our race is long. It is measured not in miles per hour but in the miles that matter—education funded, retirements lived fully, legacies preserved with care.

Finishing Well

The fable ends simply. The tortoise crosses the line. The hare looks on. The forest applauds. But I like to imagine what happens next.

Maybe the hare, humbled, asks to walk with the tortoise for a while. Maybe the tortoise smiles, adjusts his pace, and says, “Of course.”

Even in the stories we tell our children, redemption matters more than victory.

At Somerset, that is what we aim for—not the race that ends with applause, but the one that ends with understanding.

We prefer the kind of race where time does the winning for you.