Wealth, War and Wisdom: Forew. by David F. Swensen - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Barton Biggs spent thirty years at Morgan Stanley. In that time, he formed the firm’s number one- ranked research department, built up its investment management business, and served as chairman of the investment management firm. At various times during this period, he was ranked as the number-one U.S. investment strategist by the Institutional Investor magazine poll and then, from 1996 to 2003, as the number-one global strategist. He was also a member of the five-man executive committee that ran the firm until its merger with Dean Witter in 1996. In 2003, Biggs left Morgan Stanley and, with two other colleagues, formed Traxis Partners. Traxis now has well over a billion dollars under its management. Biggs’s previous book, Hedgehogging, was also published by Wiley and is an international success.

Barton Biggs ist eine Wall Street Legende. Er hält auf der ganzen Welt Vorträge zum Thema Börse. 2005 schrieb er den Bestseller Hegdehopping.

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"Barton Biggs’s Wealth, War & Wisdom entertains us with a creative juxtaposition of a war narrative and a security market history. He challenges us with a notion that stock markets exhibit incredible prescience. He teaches us that equity–oriented, stable allocations of passively managed assets provide superior investment results. As has been the case throughout his remarkable career, Barton Biggs adds to our store of knowledge with his elegant, wonderfully crafted prose." ―From the Foreword by David F. Swensen, Chief Investment Officer, Yale University

"Barton Biggs has brought his love of history together with half a century of investment experience and written a remarkably readable book about the destruction of wealth and the wisdom of markets during World War II. It is both scholarly and impressionistic and will likely become a mainstay in the libraries of serious financial people for generations."―Byron Wien, Chief Investment Strategist, Pequot Capital Management, Inc.

At least once in every century there has been an episode of massive wealth destruction when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse―Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death―have ridden. The apocalypse will come again, but probably in a very different form than in the past. How do you preserve wealth amidst chaos, and are there messages from what has happened in the past?In Wealth, War & Wisdom, renowned Wall Street investor Barton Biggs studies World War II. He notes the surprising and previously unrecognized wisdom of stock markets in discerning the major tipping points. He then examines the performance of different asset classes, and what happened to wealth before and during the war. There are lessons to be learned as to what steps should be taken to preserve and enhance wealth in times of the most extreme adversity.

Biggs discusses the performance of equities in both victorious and defeated countries and also relates what happened to other forms of wealth such as bonds, land, gold, jewelry, and property during those years―offering important insights about what a person should do to pass on wealth to future generations in an uncertain world. Filled with in–depth observations and practical advice, Wealth, War & Wisdom will help investors apply these original financial lessons directly, and beneficially, to today’s turbulent markets.

Aus dem Klappentext

World War II was a world war, and there was great uncertainty at the time whether Western Civilization would survive. But today, those dark years offer many relevant lessons―about life, politics, financial markets, wealth, and survival―that can help investors, both large and small, deal with adversity and difficult times. In Wealth, War & Wisdom, legendary Wall Street investor Barton Biggs reveals how the turning points of World War II intersected with market performance, and shows how these lessons can help the twenty–first century investor comprehend our own perilous times as well as choose the best strategies for the modern market economy. Biggs reveals how "the wisdom of the markets" prevails, even in the most turbulent of eras: the British stock market bottomed out just before the Battle of Britain; the U.S. market turned at the epic Battle of Midway; and the German market peaked at the high–water mark of Germany’s attack on Russia. Those events turned out to be the three great turning points of World War II―although at the time, no one and no instrument except the stock markets recognized them. Through these pages, Biggs skillfully discusses the performance of equities in both victorious and defeated countries, reveals how individuals preserved their wealth despite the ongoing battles, and explores whether or not public equities were able to increase in value and serve as a wealth preserver. Biggs also looks at how other assets, including real estate and gold, fared during this dynamic and devastating period, and offers valuable insights on preserving one’s wealth for future generations. Investors, unlike traders and speculators, must make long–term judgments about the course of events in economies and the world. Wealth, War & Wisdom provides a new and revealing context for such judgments. And its lively and lucid pages are completely relevant, indeed essential, to predicting the way modern financial markets and the economy will act during uncertain times that increasingly define this new century.