📅 Day 57 — Pruning the Portfolio: Growth After the Crash

If Day 9 was the cold shower and Day 56 was the storm, then today is the pruning shears. 🌱

I walked past a neighbor’s garden this morning and noticed she’d cut back half her roses. At first glance, it looked brutal. But seasoned gardeners know: pruning isn’t destruction, it’s renewal. Without it, the plant exhausts itself in tangled stems and weak blossoms.

Markets work the same way. Crashes look like carnage, but they’re also resets. Bloated valuations get trimmed. Weak business models get clipped. What’s left is leaner, stronger, and ready for the next season.

Investors who panic in pruning seasons are like gardeners who rip the whole plant out of the soil because it looks “ugly.” They miss the point. The ugliness is the setup for beauty.

This is where the Treasure Edge hides — opportunities in the rubble, seeds planted when everyone else swears the soil is dead. Yes, it’s hard to buy when the headlines scream “collapse,” but pruning seasons are when future bouquets are decided.

Of course, pruning isn’t instant gratification. After the cut, there’s the long slog — the DCA Doldrums, when you keep watering and waiting, adding little by little, with nothing flashy to show for it. Boring? Absolutely. But then one spring morning, the whole trellis explodes in color and the compounding feels like magic.

So if you’re staring at your portfolio today and wincing at the shears, remember: crashes aren’t the end of growth. They’re the gardener’s way of making sure the next bloom is worth the wait.