Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks
Stories to Make You a Smarter Investor
1. Auflage September 2024
256 Seiten, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Develop a sound investment philosophy based on lessons from history
Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks: Stories to Make You a Smarter Investor is a highly entertaining and insightful look into key stories from history, teaching lessons about sound principles of investing, and controlling emotions and bias when managing your investment portfolio to help you become a stronger, more intelligent investor. Written by author and finance professor Stephen R. Foerster, this book spans from before the Middle Ages to the 2020s.
Some of the stories in this book include:
* Cristiano Ronaldo taking two bottles of Coke off a table at a press conference, and ostensibly causing Coca-Cola's stock value to plunge $4 billion
* Harry Markopolos trying to develop a strategy similar to Bernie Madoff's, realizing his strategy was bogus, and spending a decade proving his case
* A hostage crisis in twelfth century Venice involving trumped-up charges, conflict, deceit, a plague, and an angry mob, leading to the birth of government bonds
* A salad oil swindle almost destroying American Express, prompting Warren Buffett to make one of the best stock investments ever
For both experienced and novice investors, Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks: Stories to Make You a Smarter is a fun, accessible, and informative guide that through history shows, not tells, you how to develop an investment philosophy of guiding principles, and become a better investor.
Chapter 1 Did Ronaldo Move the Stock Market? 1
Chapter 2 Masterly Inactivity: the Art of Not Acting 13
Chapter 3 Opportunity Cost: Why Pay Bonilla Not to Play Baseball 23
Chapter 4 Madoff's Ponzi Scheme: Trust, but Verify Before Investing 35
Chapter 5 How Investor Fomo Cost Newton a Fortune 53
Chapter 6 Hetty Green, the Queen of Value Investing 67
Chapter 7 Greed and Fear: Buffett and the Great Salad Oil Swindle 91
Chapter 8 The Blank-check Company Scam 109
Chapter 9 A Tennis Book and the Index Revolution 123
Chapter 10 Why Swiss Bankers Bet on Young Lives 137
Chapter 11 Bre-x: All That Glitters Isn't Gold 153
Chapter 12 Autopilots Gone Wrong 173
Chapter 13 A Hostage Crisis and the Birth of Government Bonds 187
Chapter 14 A Revolutionary Innovation to Fight Inflation 203
Chapter 15 A Market Crash, Recovery, and Conspiracy Theories 219
Acknowledgments 235
About the Author 239
Index 241