Thomas Barnard approaches stock investment through a risk management approach, which he formulated through his firm, Business Risk Management, Inc., primarily for insurance risks, but taking those principles, he has mapped a strategy for avoiding risk in the stock market.

Jeff Hawkins, in his book On Intelligence, suggests that the brain is principally a forward-looking instrument. Along those lines, one method of reducing risk is by figuring out where a business stands within the major trends of its industry.

Thomas Barnard, as a writer, was mentored and published by Nobel Laureate, Saul Bellow.