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5 comments about Investment Gurus: A Road Map to Wealth from the World's Best Money Managers (Selection of Money Book Club).

1. A terrific book, full of conservative, sensible investment advice, on both growth and value investing on ordinary shares. The overall information provides the need for a complete review of many small investors speculative/gambling approach to investing, and replacement with a conservative yet successful trading plan.



2. Peter Tanous features interviews with 18 individuals he identifies as top, common stock investment consultants - or "gurus." His choices are based on his work as a consultant identifying investment advisers for corporations. The consultants he selected for this book represent the major stock investing approaches as growth, value or momentum investors. The interview format lets them speak for themselves. He briefly introduces the book with a primer on basic investment terms and principles, and a summary of major themes. We at getAbstract find the range of views shown very helpful, but note that the book suffers from overwriting and a lack of focus and editing. Some tightening would help highlight the main points in the long interviews. The introduction and conclusion are long and general, and a clearer, more detailed summary would be very welcome. Yet, the book offers a lot of information for the average serious investor, much of it straight from the mouths of some very important horses.



3. Most of the interviews in this book appear to have been conducted in 1996.

   I checked as many of the managers/funds as I could on Morningstar (some of managers have private equity funds, and therefore are not available on Morningstar), and it appears that most of the managers described here have underperformed the market since 1996. Some of the funds (e.g. Linder) have gone out of business or dramatically restructured due to poor performace. Since one of the major themes of the book is to pit the efficient market theory/passive manager (Fama/French/DFA) types against active managers, and the author seems to side with active managers over passive, this is very amusing. It seems that time has proven the contrary of the point the author chose to make.




4. Tanous's effort is far superior to the other collections of interviews with money managers. Most books of this sub-genre fall into two categories, depending on the author. The first type of author is usually a journalist who knows little about the disciplines of stock picking and running investment funds, and you are usually hard pressed to find any new insight in their books, because they don't know how to ask their subjects the really insightful questions. The second type, which I'll call the John Train style, has a sophisticated investor/fund consultant doing the interviews, and can often produce real insight from the interviewees. The problem with many of these books, and Train's in particular, is that the author is often not trying to interview the successful money managers. Instead, authors like Train are often trying to play gotcha! with their interviewees, subjecting them to asinine questions and frequently diverging from the topics that made you buy their book in the first place. The Money Masters by Train is so full of political tangents and Train's forcing his opinion on the likes of Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett that I've wanted to scream at him at some points.

   In contrast, Tanous knows how to ask questions that are of interest to professional and serious amateur investors, and he knows how to stay on topic. He does ask every interviewee about the efficient market hypothesis, but that's a theme of his book and can be excused. What you get from Tanous is an interviewer who knows how to ask really penetrating, really revealing questions of the world's best money managers, and the humility to realize that his readers don't want to know what he, Tanous, thinks, but what his interviewees think! What's more, he managed to get interviews with at least two money managers--Bruce Sherman of Private Capital Management and Scott Sterling Johnston of Sterling Johnston Asset Management--that have excellent track records but who speak very, very rarely to the press. There is real value to Tanous's book, and I'm a better investor for having read it. Serious investors should still read Train's books for their revealing interviews with Buffett, Templeton, Lynch and others, but in Tanous's book, you have all the strengths of the Train books without any of the that author's obvious, glaring shortcomings as a writer and interviewer.




5. provokes thinking about investment opportunities all around you

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2 comments about The Beardstown Ladies' Little Book of Investment Wisdom.

1. Irrelevant one-liners and drawings from a bunch of underperforming pseudoinvestors with a superiority complex, written in a condescending grandmotherly tone. It was hard to keep a straight face while reading it. Save the wear and tear on your nerves by not reading this book. I didn't buy it, neither should you.



2. Well, here is your polar oposite view of the other comment on this book. I found it wonderful! These are not Wall Street MBA's giving you advise. These are everyday people trying to figure out how to invest their money. Over time, the Ladies have done pretty well! If you find them a bit brash, okay! A small price to pay to get their wisdom. Buy the book!

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