My Book Reviews

This book, a sequel John Train's earlier book, carries interviews with various investing masters, including: Jim Rogers, Michael Steinhardt, Philip Carret, George Soros, George Michaelis, John Neff, Ralph Wanger, and Peter Lynch.

Overall, there isn't anything really special about this book. But it is definitely better than his previous book because it is more recent - the investors profiled are more contemporary and dynamic. The previous Money Masters book contained profiles of classic investors and contained little more more than overused clichés and outdated techniques. Here are some interesting quotes and ideas from the book:

• Philip Carret's labeling of "the money mind".
• George Michaelis' observations about the risk of CMOs, where "in a market collapse you would have chaos and horribleness pricing... If there were ever a real market collapse they [investment banks] couldn't handle it."
• Ralph Wanger's observations about how some whole industries (railroads for example) haven't made money, ever.
• Jim Rogers: "Donald Trump is bust although he does not know it yet."
• Jim Rogers: "Go short some beans and you'll learn more in just one trade than you would in two years of 'B-school'."
• George Michaelis: "You must invest with the one hundred year storm in mind."
• George Michaelis: "There is nothing like owning a stock for giving you a feeling for it."
• George Soros: "The more the theory of efficient markets is believed, the less efficient the markets become."
• Peter Lynch: "I spend about 15 minutes a year on economic analysis."
• Peter Lynch: "Nobody called me to tell me about the recession in 1980 and 1981."
• Ralph Wanger: "In a rapidly changing world, twenty or thirty years of solid corporate growth could even be a warning sign: Chances are, things have changed enough so that whatever the hell made you a success thirty years ago doesn't work anymore."