Nate’s Notes 275: David Booth, Billionaire Investor and Philanthropist | A $15,000 Lesson in Compounding

When David found $15,000 in cash in his late parents’ safe-deposit box, he wondered what it might have become had they invested it in the public markets instead.

He calculated that if his father had invested the money after returning from World War II and simply earned the market return, it would have grown to more than $1 million over the next 40 years.

That’s the magic of compounding, and I love David’s bigger point that our lives compound as well, from the things we learn, to the decisions we make, and the relationships we build.

I also love David’s explanation for why he’s optimistic about markets: people want to make their lives better. When something goes wrong, people adapt. They solve problems. They invent things. Companies find new ways to serve customers. And over time, that human ingenuity gets reflected in the market.

And I also loved David’s story at the end. As a stressed-out PhD student at the University of Chicago, David visited his grandparents, who lived in a tiny home that didn’t even have indoor plumbing. Yet he looked around at his family laughing and enjoying themselves and thought: Maybe they’ve figured out something about life that I haven’t.

That realization helped him choose the career path that fit what he actually valued.

In summary, invest early, stay invested, and make sure you’re invested in the right things. All simple ideas. Please take them seriously.

David Booth Bio:

David Booth is the founder and chairman of Dimensional Fund Advisors, one of the most influential investment firms in the world, managing more than $1 trillion in assets. Earlier in his career, David helped develop one of the world’s first index funds and spent decades applying academic financial research—including ideas developed by his mentor, Nobel laureate Eugene Fama—to real-world investing.

David is also a proud University of Kansas alum, earning degrees in economics and business from KU before earning his MBA from the University of Chicago. And his philanthropy has been extraordinary: the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business bears his name, as does David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. In 2010, David and his wife Suzanne purchased James Naismith’s original rules of basketball for $4.3 million and brought them home to KU—the story featured in my favorite documentary of all time ESPN’s 30 for 30: There’s No Place Like Home.

In 2025, David made an additional $300 million gift to Kansas Athletics, continuing his remarkable support of KU. And most recently David wrote a book titled, Stay Calm: Learn to Embrace Uncertainty in Investing and Life.