5 Lessons for Investors from Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse

Common Sense Investing Practices Could Have Prevented SVB’s Failure

Stephen Foerster
5 min readMar 13, 2023

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Silicon Valley Bank logo
Source: https://www.svb.com/SVB_Assets/images/SVB_SiliconValleyBank_Horizontal_logo.svg

In Ernest Hemingway’s classic 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, Bill Gorton asks Mike Campbell, “How did you go bankrupt?” Campbell replies, “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” That’s what happened recently with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), and its…

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Stephen Foerster

I’m a Finance prof, CFA, and author of In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio (with Andrew Lo). I write stories about investing. (I don’t give financial advice.)