Customer Reviews

Money Masters of Our Time

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I have read Mr. Train's earlier books The Money Masters and The New Money Masters and found them informative and interesting, gaining insights from some of the worlds most sucessful investors. Mr. Train's research seemed to rely heavily on personal interviews of these Masters often providing the reader with unique investment philosophies not readily available elsewhere. I especially recommend Mr. Train's first book in this series The Money Masters because this book moved me away from the trading of stocks and futures as practiced by Robert Wilson the short seller and Stanly Kroll the great commodity speculator. The techniques they employed seemed too elusive and fraught with risk and if this was the basis of the trading game it was not the game for me. I was instead attracted to the similer philosophies of mentor and student Ben Grahman and Warren Buffett. Looking at a stock as a share of a business not a piece of paper with a number on it. This was the first time I had been exposed to the wisdom of these two investors and I am grateful to Mr. Train for revealing to the public their methods. The problem I have with the current rendition is that it really adds nothing new. In fact Mr. Train seems to have copied parts of the first Money Masters and spliced them into this version. I may be wrong but it doesn't seem that the effort or creativity that went into the original went into this work. Another sort of irritating quality in this instance thankfully not present in the first book is Mr. Train's need to psychoanalyze some of his subjects especially Mr. Buffett. This adds an edge to the book that is not worthy of Mr. Train.

The bookshelves are full of books containing descriptions of ways to invest based on historical data and models that have not been very fully tested in practice. However, in most areas of human endeavor, a great deal is learned by studying those who are and have been the best for a long time. Money manager John Train has been playing this role for some time with his outstanding books, The Money Masters and The New Money Masters. For about two years, I have been wondering what John Train thinks about the current financial markets. I was delighted to see that he had created an updated and revised sequel to his earlier works.

One of the strengths of John Train's work in this area is that he knows the people he writes about, and the chapters contain discussions he has had with them in most cases. So you get new information that you have not read before in the financial press. He also does a good job of picking a variety of styles and personality types, so you get A to Z with some letters skipped in between in these 17 profiles. These include (in order of presentation): T. Rowe Price; Warren Buffett; John Templeton; Richard Rainwater; Paul Cabot; Philip Fisher; Benjamin Graham; Mark Lightbown; John Neff; Julian Robertson; Jim Rogers; George Soros; Philip Carret; Michael Steinhardt; Ralph Wanger; Robert Wilson; and Peter Lynch. Amongst these men, you will find a variety of growth investors, value investors, those who look to undiscovered markets, intense analysts of trends and individual companies, hedge fund operators, shorts, small cap specialists, and those who focus on emerging foreign markets. It's quite a ride. Naturally, if any of them interest you, you can go further in other sources and learn more.

Warren Buffett, John Templeton, Paul Cabot, Benjamin Grapham, Jim Rogers, George Soros, Robert Wilson, and Peter Lynch have always been people I have learned from, and I was glad they were included. I did not know much about Mark Lightbown and was glad to learn more.

A major strength of the book is that Mr. Train goes on the sum up what it all seems to mean. He says these people validate four styles that work:

"1. Buy into well-managed companies that will grow . . . . When they slow down, sell them and buy new ones.

2. . . . buy stocks that are priced . . . at less than their underlying assets and sell them when they are reasonably priced.

3. Discover a new investment area or one that is . . . neglected . . . .

4. Identify a really good specialist to do the job for you . . . ."

He has a good list of common practices that almost each of the 17 do, that you should find very helpful, as well.

Finally, he talks about what you can expect for the future. He sees the reasonable returns from growth stocks to be 13-14 percent in the future (down from 20 percent in his last book). He still thinks that is a good way to go, but also counsels on when and how to use mutual funds (when they are cheap and give you access to a category you cannot buy efficiently on your own).

He constantly reminds the reader that most investors will earn less than the market average. Rather than sending you to index funds, as many authors do, he feels that by using the lessons here that he outlines, you can hope to do somewhere near or above the average. But you have to be very careful. His philosophy is a variation on the buy and hold growth stock advice that many advocate, but his reasoning and support for the conclusions are more sound.

It would be interesting to see what the stock portfolios do of those who read this book and follow its advice over the next 20 years.

Personally, I am not convinced that the average reader can take even this excellent book and outperform the market. But if you decide to do so, I sincerely hope you succeed.

In any event, you can certainly avoid many costly errors by paying attention to Mr. Train's list of things to avoid doing!

After you have read the book, ask yourself in what other areas of your life outstanding expert case histories could help you improve by overcoming bad habits and developing better ones. Then go find and apply those case histories!

The people who are looking to gain valuable insight as to the workings of the market from this book are sadly mistaken. This is a book, along the lines of James Grant's book, that gives a number of vignettes and minature biographies of the leading money makers of our times, such as T. Rowe Price, Buffet, Templeton, Rainwater, Cabot, Fisher, Graham, Lightbown, Neff, Robertson, Rogers, Soros, Carret, Steinhardt, Wanger, Wilson, Lynch. You will essentially find that there is no "one" style that is successful, which lends credence to the theory that the markets are quite efficient, and some of these guys are victims of luck as well as skill.

The fact that it was written in early 2000 is a plus, not a minus, as you can trace what happened to them after the crash.

GOod book, the author is a bit preachy, egotistical and gossips about his subjects, but that's OK.

Fantastic book - the sections on Jim Rogers, George Soros and Warren Buffett are particularly illuminating.

I am an avid Jim Rogers fan and believe this book is one of the greatest and most comprehensive texts on his legendary investment style.

Highly recommended!

I've read a lot on investing and the techniques of historic pros. X things struck me as remarkable about John Train's "Money Masters":

1. John Train has a talent for prose that is very uncommon. It makes for very entertaining and fluid reading.
2. Mr. Train spoke personally with many of the people talked about in the book. He offers insights into the character or investment style of the person based on the questions he asked during his meetings with them.
3. He sums up the history, investment style, and why that investment style worked, with amazing insightfulness. He also makes contrasts and comparisons between the characters talked about in the book that I was very impressed with.

Money Masters of our time by John Train

The book describes the way very succesful investors did their craft.
What one observes is the thorough way most of these people do their work.
They investigate for example the annual and quarterly reports, but also how honest and
stock holder oriented management is.
Another interesting point is that one can wait untill the best change of a succesful buy of stock
occurs. It is not a matter of doing the buy quickly.
"Wait untill a very good chance occurs, one can hear then almost the sound of the cashregister"!
I have learned a lot by reading and rereading the book.

yours faithfully,
Fredericus

The idea of this book was great but unfortunately it was disappointing. It does not go into enough detail into any of the managers' investment processes to be able to apply them. I would suggest reading instead The Intelligent Investor, John Neff on Investing, or The Warren Buffet Way.

This is a wonderful book. It is highly probable that you will learn a lot from the Money Masters. I bet that you will read it more than once. If you buy it and don't like it then I will buy it from you at my average cost.

like the Investment Gurus book in that it interviews great investors.

very good food for investment thinking. boring to read though took many times to open it to finish it