I had a plan for CRM. Invest 25% of my model portfolio using tranches. Each tranche keyed to a trigger price.

This wasn’t guesswork. I worked out a plan in advance using a wide margin of safety. That way, I wouldn't have to make a decision under pressure. I'd just execute the plan.

I got to 10%. Then the price jumped before I could add the rest.

Do I still like the stock? Yes. Has the trade gotten worse? Also yes.

The current price has made the return profile less attractive than what it was.

So I'm sitting here with less than half my target position, a thesis I still believe, and an obvious, seductive question: do I just buy the rest anyway?

I’ve decided not to, and I want to be direct about why

At first, filling the full allocation feels like discipline. I said 25%. I should follow through.

But forcing the rest of the position in at a worse price to satisfy a number you set under different conditions isn't discipline.

Every dollar has to earn its spot on marginal terms. Not "does this fill the allocation," but "is this still the best use of this dollar, right now, compared to what else is available."

Once I stripped out "just get to 25%" as a goal, three questions were left, and they're the ones that actually matter.

Does CRM still represent the best investment available to me right now?

Notice the question doesn’t reference when I first started researching CRM. It’s referring to right now, with the price where it is today.

And it’s competing against everything else on the watchlist and everything still in cash.

Are other opportunities likely to come along?

This is what keeps question #1 honest. CRM can be the best investment now if I’m forced to make an investment. But if I’m not forced to take action, if I get the luxury to sit on my ass and wait for other, more favorable opportunities, then the game changes.

Should I have been more aggressive on the way down?

This one I have to be careful with, because hindsight makes every unfilled tranche look like a mistake. Of course I wish I'd bought more before the price ran. Everyone always wishes that, about everything, after the fact.

That’s just life.

But underneath the hindsight bias there's something worth sitting with, because it's not the first time this shape has shown up. I know I run conservative. I've watched myself do the right analysis and undersize the conviction before (Micron is the standing example).

The instinct to hold back is a pattern, and patterns are worth taking seriously even when you can't fully untangle skill from luck in any one instance.

Here's the honest problem: I don't think the fix is "just be more aggressive next time." That advice is easy to give and dangerous to take.

More aggressive sizing on your highest-conviction ideas means more of your portfolio's return comes from the ideas you actually believe in, instead of getting diluted across everything else. That's the entire case for concentration, and it's real.

But it cuts both ways. It only takes one high-weight position that's wrong — not even wrong on the fundamentals, just wrong on timing, wrong on when the market agrees with you — to take years off your returns.

Being conservative has a cost. Being overconfident has a bigger one.

Both of those are true at the same time, and I don't think there's a clean formula that tells you where the line sits. If there were, someone would have found it and this wouldn't be a problem anyone still has.

I'd love to end this with a rule. A one-liner that resolves it so cleanly you could put it on a bumper sticker.

I don't have one.

What I have is: I'm still holding the reserve, I'm still waiting to see if something better shows up, and I'm still working out whether the conservative instinct that's kept me out of trouble is the same one that's cost me upside.

This isn’t a satisfying ending, but I think a capital allocator who claims to have this fully solved either hasn't been tested yet, or isn't being straight with you.

To be determined. I'll tell you when it is.