Choke Points: Investing in the Origins of Wealth (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781394469611)

Identify strategic bottlenecks that concentrate wealth and learn to invest in them

Choke Points: Investing in the Origins of Wealth, by Barron's Hall of Fame advisor Dryden Pence, reveals how great fortunes arise from controlling strategic bottlenecks where economic activity must flow. Drawing on three decades managing institutional capital and a decorated military intelligence career, Col. Pence translates elite investment philosophy into a narrative-driven framework that teaches ordinary investors to recognize pricing power before it becomes obvious.

Built around the registered PENCE Choke Point framework, the book uses case studies spanning Rockefeller's railroad rebates, Apple's App Store, NVIDIA's AI infrastructure grip, and a four-company jet engine oligopoly to reveal how structural advantages create durable wealth. Readers learn to identify persistent margins, limited alternatives, controlled access, and unwavering demand, the characteristics that separate companies worth owning from the rest.

Readers will also find:

• A tested method for recognizing where money concentrates, drawn from institutional investment strategies rarely made accessible to individual investors

• Real-world stories showing how founders from Standard Oil to pharmaceutical dynasties identified and controlled strategic commercial bottlenecks

• A framework for distinguishing companies with durable pricing power from those lacking structural advantages in their markets

• Pattern recognition techniques adapted from military intelligence analysis, applied to reading the economic landscape for constraint and opportunity

• Guidance on participating in choke point economics through equity ownership without needing to build or manage businesses yourself

Choke Points is written for retail investors, high earners not yet rich, registered investment advisors, and financial advisors seeking a structural framework for wealth-building. It serves anyone who has followed conventional advice and wants a tested lens for identifying where real pricing power resides.