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What do Warren Buffett and Friedrich Nietzsche have in common? Why does Baruch Spinoza’s understanding of irrational emotions help explain financial markets? How did Voltaire’s success in a bond lottery arbitrage shape his writing? Can David Hume teach an investor when to buck the consensus and when to heed it?
Exploring these questions and many others, Ethan A. Everett reveals the surprising lessons we can learn about investing from major philosophers. Demystifying ideas and texts that can often seem intimidating or irrelevant, he shows how philosophical concepts can be fruitfully applied to financial markets. Everett shares how philosophers’ insights have informed his development as an investor, and he considers how great investors have embodied philosophical wisdom in their own endeavors.
Inviting and engaging, The Investment Philosophers presents evergreen insights in language that is accessible to readers who are beginning their journeys in finance and philosophy. Ranging from the birth of modern securities markets in seventeenth-century Amsterdam to recent trends like meme stocks, this book shows why a philosophical perspective can prove invaluable to challenging common assumptions in finance.
— David Rubenstein, cofounder and cochairman, The Carlyle Group
This illuminating book digs into the work of thirteen modern philosophers and serves up an abundance of strategic insights on investing. Thinkers like Spinoza or Baudrillard are sometimes envisioned as disembodied minds constructing opaque, self-enclosed theoretical systems, but Everett elegantly concretizes their teachings, brings them to bear on our lived experience of the world, and shows how they can help us better appreciate the joys and vicissitudes of the market. What’s more, his intellectual architects emerge as flesh-and-blood human beings: Each chapter is chock-full of biographical detail, sometimes about the philosophers’ own formative financial experiences. Fascinating stuff! What a pleasant surprise for a slim volume to contain such a wealth of practical wisdom.
— Peter S. Groff, professor of philosophy, Bucknell University
Highly recommended for investors seeking to broaden their intellectual foundations. Everett has written a unique book that spans the lives and ideas of thirteen important philosophers and provides a path for finding the relevance of their thought for investors.
— Bennett W. Golub, founding partner and chief risk officer (ret.), BlackRock, Inc.
The prevailing image of modern finance is one of Greek symbols, complex equations, and very, very large numbers. Yet behind all the dollar signs, sophisticated math, and technical jargon is a long and rich history of people and ideas. In The Investment Philosophers, Everett shines a spotlight on these people and ideas and, ultimately, the reflexive relationship between philosophy and finance. It’s an insightful and entertaining read for both the philosophically oriented investor and the financially curious philosopher.
— Dan Awrey, Beth and Marc Goldberg Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Driving Forces of Markets and Morality
1. Going Short Irrational Emotions
2. Philosophy in Omaha
Part II. Profiting from Skepticism and Cynicism
3. Net-Net Skepticism
4. Lottery Arbitrage
5. Luck of the Draw
Part III. Market Abstraction and Investor Identity
6. The Limits of Abstraction
7. Beware of Carnival Mirrors
8. Grasping for Investor Identity
Part IV. Money Mindsets and Market Meaning
9. The Anxiety of Having Money
10. Avoiding Despair on Wall Street
11. The Sleeping Giant
Part V. Relation in the Face of Market Adaptation
12. Saying No to Madoff
13. Our Fight for Market Mastery
Epilogue/Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index