A Tale of COMLB26
My license plate, the math of 26% compounding, and why time is the greatest asset an investor can own.
My license plate reads COMLB26.
Most people see random letters. I see an instruction. LB is pound, as in compound, so the plate reads:
Compound at 26%.
What hooked me was never the return itself. It was the math hiding behind it.
The magic of 26%
At 26%, money doubles every 3 years, almost exactly. Ten doublings take 30 years and turn $1,000 into about $1 million.
Then it keeps going:
- Start$1,000
- 30 yrs$1 million×1,000
- 60 yrs$1 billion×1,000,000
- 90 yrs$1 trillion×1,000,000,000
Every 30 years, add three zeros.
No leverage. No lottery ticket. No single brilliant trade. Just uninterrupted compounding.
Why the rate matters so much
A few percentage points sound small. Over 30 years, they’re the difference between a nice result and a life-changing one:
Same 30 years. The rate changes everything.
An honest word about 26%
That chart can quietly sound like a promise. It isn’t.
Sustaining 26% for decades isn’t just hard; it’s historically rare. Warren Buffett compounded Berkshire Hathaway at roughly 20% a year for nearly six decades, one of the greatest records ever. Very few investors have matched it.
So COMLB26 isn’t a forecast. It’s a direction of travel: a target ambitious enough to force serious thinking about how great returns are actually earned.
Time is the real asset
Most investors measure how much money they have. Few appreciate how much time they have.
A newborn has something no billionaire can buy: a 90-year runway.
- At birth$1,000The seed
- Age 30$1 millionAt 10%: about $17,000
- Age 60$1 billionAt 10%: about $300,000
- Age 90$1 trillionAt 10%: about $5.3 million
Same seed. Same child. The only inputs are rate and time.
This is no longer just a thought experiment. Under the new Trump Accounts, US children born from 2025 through 2028 get a $1,000 government deposit, invested in a low-cost US stock index fund and locked up until they turn 18.
A trillionaire at 90 is the 26% fantasy. At a more market-like 10% a year, the same $1,000 becomes about $5,600 by 18 and about $490,000 by 65, without anyone adding a cent.
The money is modest. The head start is not. A child who leaves that seed alone gets something most of us got far too late: decades of compounding.
What I learned chasing it
From Peter Lynch: invest in what you understand. Stock prices swing far more than business values do. A great company can fall 30–40% while its long-term story barely changes. That gap between price and value is the raw material.
From Charlie Munger: superior returns come from superior judgment, not superior spreadsheets. Build a latticework of mental models (incentives, psychology, probability, competitive advantage) and let them reinforce each other.
From the market itself: buy outstanding businesses when they’re meaningfully undervalued, then leave them alone. Along the way I found a few multibaggers that went 10×, 20×, and beyond. A handful of winners drove most of the results. That’s how wealth usually works: not linearly, but in a few big steps.
Why Buffett started early
People study Buffett’s stock picks. The bigger lesson is that he started as a child.
The vast majority of his fortune arrived after age 50. His judgment didn’t suddenly improve; by then the base was large and the runway was long. Time amplified every good decision he’d ever made.
COMLB26 was never really about 26%
It was about the relationship between patience, discipline, and time.
Extraordinary wealth is usually ordinary returns sustained for extraordinary periods.
Twenty-six percent just makes the math impossible to ignore.
My plate still reads COMLB26. Today it’s a reminder: the goal was never overnight success. The goal is to compound, learn, and thrive for decades. Everything else is a byproduct.
Calculation note. Figures are rounded and start from $1,000: at 26%, that becomes about $1.03 million after 30 years, $1.05 billion after 60, and $1.08 trillion after 90. Over 30 years, $1,000 grows to about $7,600 at 7%, $66,000 at 15%, $237,000 at 20%, and $1.03 million at 26%. The Trump Account example assumes a constant 10% a year, close to the US stock market’s long-run nominal average; $1,000 then grows to about $5,560 by 18 and $490,000 by 65. Account details are as published by the US Treasury and may change. All figures assume a constant return with no taxes, fees, inflation, or withdrawals. Real returns are uneven, and the order in which they arrive matters.
Disclaimer. Educational content only. Not investment, legal, tax, or financial advice. References to specific investors or programs are illustrative and imply no endorsement or expectation of comparable results. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All investments involve risk, including possible loss of principal.
Sources. US Treasury · Charles Schwab