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Over the past century, if the wealthiest families had spent a reasonable fraction of their wealth, paid taxes, invested in the stock market, and passed their wealth down to the next generation, there would be tens of thousands of billionaire heirs to generations-old fortunes today. The puzzle of The Missing Billionaires is why you cannot find one such billionaire on any current rich list. There are a number of explanations, but this book is focused on one mistake which is of profound importance to all investors: poor risk decisions, both in investing and spending. Many of these families didn’t choose bad investments– they sized them incorrectly– and allowed their spending decisions to amplify this mistake.
The Missing Billionaires book offers a simple yet powerful framework for making important lifetime financial decisions in a systematic and rational way. It's for readers with a baseline level of financial literacy, but doesn’t require a PhD. It fills the gap between personal finance books and the academic literature, bringing the valuable insights of academic finance to non-specialists.
Part One builds the theory of optimal investment sizing from first principles, starting with betting on biased coins. Part Two covers lifetime financial decision-making, with emphasis on the integration of investment, saving and spending decisions. Part Three covers practical implementation details, including how to calibrate your personal level of risk-aversion, and how to estimate the expected return and risk on a broad spectrum of investments.
The book is packed with case studies and anecdotes, including one about Victor’s investment with LTCM as a partner, and a bonus chapter on Liar’s Poker. The authors draw extensively on their own experiences as principals of Elm Wealth, a multi-billion-dollar wealth management practice, and prior to that on their years as arbitrage traders– Victor at Salomon Brothers and LTCM, and James at Nationsbank/CRT and Citadel.
Whether you are young and building wealth, an entrepreneur invested heavily in your own business, or at a stage where your primary focus is investing and spending, The Missing Billionaires: A Guide to Better Financial Decisions is your must-have resource for thoughtful financial decision-making.
Table of Contents
Foreword xiii
Preface xvii
About the Authors xxi
Acknowledgments xxiii
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Puzzle of the Missing Billionaires 1
Section I: Investment Sizing 13
Chapter 2: Befuddled Betting on a Biased Coin 15
Chapter 3: Size Matters When It’s for Real 27
Chapter 4: A Taste of the Merton Share 41
Chapter 5: How Much to Invest in the Stock Market? 49
Chapter 6: The Mechanics of Choice 67
Chapter 7: Criticisms of Expected Utility Decision- making 103
Chapter 8: Reminiscences of a Hedge Fund Operator 117
Section II: Lifetime Spending and Investing 127
Chapter 9: Spending and Investing in Retirement 129
Chapter 10: Spending Like You’ll Live Forever 149
Chapter 11: Spending Like You Won’t Live Forever 165
Section III: Where the Rubber Meets the Road 173
Chapter 12: Measuring the Fabric of Felicity 175
Chapter 13: Human Capital 193
Chapter 14: Into the Weeds: Characteristics of Major Asset Classes 201
Chapter 15: No Place to Hide: Investing in a World with No Safe Asset 235
Chapter 16: What About Options? 245
Chapter 17: Tax Matters 265
Chapter 18: Risk Versus Uncertainty 275
Section IV: Puzzles 285
Chapter 19: How Can a Great Lottery Be a Bad Bet? 287
Chapter 20: The Equity Risk Premium Puzzle 291
Chapter 21: The Perpetuity Paradox and Negative Interest Rates 297
Chapter 22: When Less Is More 303
Chapter 23: The Costanza Trade 309
Chapter 24: Conclusion: U and Your Wealth 319
Bonus Chapter: Liar’s Poker and Learning to Bet Smart 327
Cheat Sheet 335
A Few Rules of Thumb 340
Endnotes 343
Suggested Reading 357
References 359
Index 373
