John Joel A. Baeyens
I trade for a living — systematically, by rules written in calm hours so that no anxious hour can rewrite them. It is honest work and I am grateful for it. But if you take a single thought from this page, let it be one that has nothing to do with markets: the things that compound quietly — health, trust, soil, skill, friendship — are the only things that compound forever.
I have had two great teachers. The market, which punishes pride within minutes. And the horse, which forgives it — which is worse, because forgiveness teaches you nothing until you finally notice how much of it you've needed. Whatever is sound in how I work, I owe to those two teachers, and to the people patient enough to stand beside me while I learned.
With friends who share the conviction, I help look after working farms on four continents. I say look after deliberately: land like this outlives every name ever written on its title deed, and the honest word for what we do is stewardship. Each farm produces. Each keeps horses at the centre of its daily life. And each exists for a reason that has little to do with return on capital: they are places where children — ours, and one day perhaps yours — learn that food, animals, weather and consequence are real.
I won't name the places here; the horses don't care what the regions are called, and the neighbours value their quiet as much as we do. The map keeps the truth without the coordinates.
My working life is built on machine intelligence, so believe me when I say this without romance: the more capable our machines become, the more precious the things they cannot do. Patience that isn't waiting. Presence that isn't attention. The wordless trust between living beings. Horses have carried these lessons for five thousand years, and they will carry them for your children too, if you let them.
If there are young people in your life — and screens in theirs — find them a horse to know. Not to own; to know. A horse reads your heart rate before you've finished lying to yourself. No teacher on earth gives feedback that honest, that fast, and that free of malice. Children who grow up around horses learn responsibility, consequence, and gentleness in the same season — and I have never met an exception.
And yes — the land that keeps horses tends to hold its worth in ways markets can't reach. But that is not why we do it. It is simply the only asset I know that improves the people who hold it.
The foal pressing her head to mine is a Georgian Grande — out of Valley's Musical Bella, an American Saddlebred of real brilliance, by Marnus van Doorndraai, a purebred Friesian stallion. We call her Bonita — the pretty one — and she has never once argued with the name. I did not choose this breed with a spreadsheet. I chose it the way you choose the things you end up loving: slowly, and then completely.
From her mother comes fire — the proud, dancing carriage the Saddlebred has carried through two centuries of show rings. From her father, the old Friesian inheritance: deep bone, black-velvet patience, a heart bred long ago to carry knights and, in kinder times, children. Two old ideas, each complete on its own, that become something gentler and braver together. If my years with horses leave any mark at all, I hope it is a small one on this breed — not because the world needs another horse, but because it needs more of exactly this temperament.
She is two now, learning her manners before her power at Manna Hill Equestrian, in the good hands of Nicole Rhodes. I visit with no agenda. Some investments you monitor; this one you simply watch grow.
If you are ever weighing where to live — truly live, not merely reside — let me offer what this island has taught me. A good home is a place that is serious about work and unserious about status; where the infrastructure is first-world and the coffee still takes as long as it takes. Cyprus gave me that, and I try to repay it by doing everything I do from here.
The old harbour at first light, the sea always minutes away, a scale of life that lets you hear yourself think. Pafos does not perform. It simply lives — and lets you live.
Above Coral Bay, where the hills fall into the clearest water on the island. Neighbours who know your name, tavernas that know your table, and sunsets that make you forgive any day the markets sent you.
The world still pictures a beach town. Look closer: one of the densest gatherings of trading firms and engineering talent in Europe, growing faster than its reputation. Our operations are there, in good company.
Unhurried but never idle. Hospitable without calculation. Resilient the way only an island that has survived everything can be. Cypriots treat a stranger as a guest and a guest as family — and after a life on four continents, I know how rare that is.
I will grow old in Pafos.
That is not a plan — it is a promise.
