Investor profile at InvestingByTheBooks
The book The World’s 99 Greatest Investors: The Secret of Success provides a unique opportunity to learn form the most prominent investors globally. In the book they generously share their experiences, advice and insights and we are proud to present these excerpts. Magnus Angenfelt, previously a top ranked sell side analyst and hedge fund manager, will be presenting one investor per month. For those who cannot wait for the monthly columns, we strongly
INVESTMENT PHILOSOPHY Thorp is a quantitative trader who relies wholly on sophisticated mathematical techniques and computer models to identify arbitrage all over the market. In the beginning Thorp mainly focused on warrants, convertibles, or derivatives trading out of sync with the underlying stocks. Parallel with this, he worked for eight years to create a computer model to rank stocks from best to worse. All was based on statistical analyses and the strategies were always neutral. Thorp does not analyze specific stocks or read brokerage research. He has said that he ‘laughs at the idea that anyone could know enough about all the publicly traded stocks to suss out the ones with long-term appeal’. But he has also said ‘You can always do as well as the average player by picking stocks at random and holding them a long time’
More here book info below
“The secret to success in any field is to find what successful people do, think about and act on and do the same”. The above is a quote from motivational speaker and business consultant Anthony Robbins that the author of The Worlds 99 Greatest Investors, Magnus Angenfelt – a former hedge fund manager, sell side analyst and financial journalist – uses to set the stage for his book. The book is his answer to Mr. Robbin’s question. Angenfelt spent a lot of time to find out something that he in the beginning thought would be a simple task – who are the best investors in the world? Actually it turned out to be quite a difficult task, but in the end it resulted in a book with the world’s 99 greatest investors and their investment wisdom.
The main criteria the author set out was to find the best investors, persons with at least 25 years of documented track record. The author did a lot of manual screening, looking for the best investors in countries all across the world, judging thousands of investors and finally ending up with his selection of the best 99 globally. The detective work done is nothing but remarkable. By widening the search from the Anglo-Saxan World Angenfelt has found investors that most of us never heard of. And the caliber of their performance is staggering. On average these investors have beaten the market by 12 percent per year for 25 years and they manage on average 10 billion dollars, obviously quite an achievement.
What I miss most in the book would be even more details on why the top 99 were so successful, especially for those less known. Some of the portraits can be very short. Also, I would have liked a more strict interpretation of the rules set out, i.e. a documented long term track-record. Some of the top 99 have a so-so documented track record and why for example Vanguard’s Jack Bogle is among the chosen 99 is hard to understand.
The world´s 99 greatest investors is an entirely unique book – nothing like it has ever been published before.
In it the most successful investors in the world generously share their insights with the next generation of investors. Exclusively for readers, they reveal the experience they have gained from a quarter-century of successful investing. The conclusions are surprising.
For every investor there is a summary that describes his investment philosophy and style. And as well as excellent advice on what to think about before investing, there are insightful thoughts and ideas about life in general.
The book is written in an inspiring and accessible style that makes it profitable reading for both professional and amateur investors.
