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Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks. Stories to Make You a Smarter Investor. Edition No. 1

  • Book

  • 256 Pages
  • September 2024
  • John Wiley and Sons Ltd
  • ID: 5956573

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.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

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

Authors

Stephen R. Foerster University of Western Ontario, Canada.