More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places [Hardcover]

Michael J. Mauboussin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0231138709 | ISBN-13: 978-0231138703 | Publication Date: April 21, 2006

One of Wall Street's most creative and influential minds offers provocative new ways of thinking about the stock market, investing, and how we make decisions.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mauboussin is not your average Wall Street equity analyst, writing investment recommendations whose topical interest wanes a few days after the report is issued. His strategy reports begin with scientific findings from diverse fields, then show why an investor should care. This book is a collection of 30 short reports, revised and updated, covering animal behavior ("Guppy Love: The Role of Imitation in Markets"), psychology ("Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers"), philosophy of science ("The Janitor's Dream: Why Listening to Individuals Can be Hazardous to Your Wealth") and other fields. Each essay describes a fascinating scientific finding, then develops and applies it to personal investing. "Survival of the Fittest," for example, begins by discussing how Tiger Woods improved his golf swing, introduces the concept of fitness landscapes from evolutionary biology, then explains why investors in commodity-producing companies should like strong centralized management, while technology-stock buyers should prefer flexible organizations with lots of disruptive new ideas. The book is breezy and well written, but not dumbed down, and provides extensive references. It can be read for entertainment as popular science or to broaden your investment thinking. However, it suffers from a common problem among compiled essays: despite the revisions, some material is out of date and other material is repeated. (June)
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Review

"Mauboussin is not your average Wall Street equity analyst... It can be read for entertainment... or to broaden your investment thinking." -- Publisher's Weekly

"Michael Mauboussin has written the best book ever on how to think about investing...like a Ph.D. in investment wisdom." -- Bill Miller, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer, Legg Mason Capital Management

"Mauboussin has found great insights about the science of human behavior in unconventional places and has written superbly about it." -- Robert Sapolsky, Professor of neurobiology, Stanford University

"Michael Mauboussin's insights and examples speak volumes to the value of an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how choices are made." -- Geoffrey West, President and distinguished professor, Santa Fe Institute

"Few readers could come away from this book without being stimulated and intrigued." -- Philip Coggan, The Financial Times

"A refreshingly intelligent antidote... The book engagingly shows how a multidisciplinary perspective can deepen your sense of how financial markets work." -- Burton G. Malkiel, Wall Street Journal

"Written with the professional investor in mind but extends far beyond the world of economics and finances." -- Micromotives.com

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 268 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (April 21, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231138709
• ISBN-13: 978-0231138703
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #525,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael J. Mauboussin is chief investment strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management. He is also an adjunct professor of finance at Columbia Business School.

Learn more at www.michaelmauboussin.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Its Time to Amend the List, June 14, 2006

By 

Craig L. Howe "The Pointed Pundit" (Darien, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places (Hardcover)

Every once in a while, the Muses conspire to change the things you do.

For years, when asked for a recommendation of an investment book, I responded that "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" provided insights each time I read it.

The list is now longer. "More than You Know" by Michael J. Mauboussin has been added.

The author, in 50 insightful essays, draws from the latest in behavior economics and cognitive sciences to give the reader invaluable insights into the concepts of risk and choice.

His investment strategies are sound. They draw from creative thinkers as diverse as Warren Buffett and Steven Christ; they borrow from activities and fields as diverse as casino gambling and evolutionary biology.

Mauboussin believes a multidisciplinary approach based on process and psychology offers the best opportunity for long-term investment success. He breaks his book into four sections: Investment Philosophy, Psychology of Investing, Investment and Competitive Strategy and Science and Complexity Theory. Although his essays are insightful, he provides a thorough bibliography to guide future study.

Why the Muses moved to place this book in my hands last week, I do not know. But I am grateful they did. This book is a trove of knowledge and ideas. It is a must-read for anyone who takes their investing seriously.

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful new investment framework - buy this book, July 13, 2006

By 

Stephen Kawaja - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places (Hardcover)

It is rare to find a book that fundamentally changes how you think about investing, and beyond that, learning. This is such a book.

Mauboussin relies on a simple, but fundamentally non-consensus idea - that finding useful links between disparate fields, rather than focusing exclusively on one discipline, can make you a better investor. His sources range from Darwin to Dr. Seuss, his subjects from physics to ant colonies, but all of them are focused on generating conclusions and tips that will help you beat the market.

More Than You Know builds a comprehensive investment framework in four chapters:

1. "Investment Philosophy" tackles how you should make investment decisions. Focus on process not outcomes, understand that the magnitude of gains and losses trumps their frequency, understand the psychological hang-ups that can lead to bad decisions, and realize sometimes we see patterns where they don't exist.

2. "Psychology of Investing" helps investors identify the pitfalls that prevent us from remaining objective such as stress, circumstance, and bias.

3. "Innovation and Competitive Strategy" teaches investors how to think about industry structures and how they are changed by innovation. In a world of accelerating change, Mauboussin demonstrates the folly of using historical P/Es, how you can profit from mean reversion, and how perception gaps are generated at predictable stages in a company's evolution.

4. Why can a group of people get to the right answer when no individual person actually has the answer? Why do seemingly small scale inputs often lead to massive and disproportional outputs in the stock market? The book's final chapter, science and complexity, answer these questions and posits a new model that is a better predicator of market behavior than standard finance - one that is consistent with empirical findings and can help you understand market moves more clearly.

In 1998, Mauboussin wrote a report On the Shoulders of Giants, drawing its name from Isaac Newton's statement - "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." In this report, Mauboussin expounds Charlie Munger's view that investors must possess a variety of mental models drawn from the central tenets of many disciplines in order to be successful. Otherwise, you end up applying the wrong tool to solve a problem, or as Charlie Munger eloquently puts it - "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

This book gives you the tools to get to the right answer.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Differentiated Perspective, June 1, 2006

By 

Alix Pasquet - See all my reviews
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This review is from: More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places (Hardcover)

Before one attempts to review "More Than You Know", it is useful to understand the author's background and context. Michael Mauboussin is Chief Investment Strategist of Legg Mason Capital Management. He is on the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) and also teaches Security Analysis at Columbia Business School. Before Legg Mason, Michael was Chief U.S. Investment Strategist at Credit Suisse First Boston. During his career he has studied the objectives, resources and processes of successful investors; He has aggregated best practices of successful companies, competitive strategy, valuation and behavioral finance; He has studied the important principles of the major disciplines: Finance, Psychology, Mathematics, Physics, Philosophy, Biology, Evolution, History, Literature, Social Sciences. Michael has dedicated his career to one objective: The efficient and effective allocation of Financial and Intellectual Capital.

One of Michael's fundamental beliefs, also one of the main themes of "More Than You know", is that to succeed in accomplishing your investment and life objectives, you need to understand the most important principles of the major disciplines: Finance, Psychology, Mathematics, Physics, Philosophy, Biology, Evolution, History, Literature, Social Sciences. This belief is also a driving influence of Legg Mason's investment philosophy, SFI's culture and the Security Analysis class that Michael teaches at Columbia.

One of the barriers to learning the multi disciplinary approach to become a better investor and a better person is knowing how to properly filter the massive amounts of information (good and bad) that is out there. One of the ways to overcome these barriers is to find what I call filter/aggregators: someone with excellent judgment that has found the relevant knowledge, filtered it, and then aggregated the most important insights in one place for you. Examples of filter/aggregators in the investment world are: Bill Miller, Warren Buffett, Charles Munger and Michael Mauboussin. Michael's books (Expectations Investing, More Than You Know) and essays (Consilient Observer, Mauboussin on Strategy) are filled with investment insights, ideas from other disciplines that apply to investing and references to books, studies and essays by other authors.

The purpose of "More Than You Know" is to show how a multi-disciplinary approach to investing can improve investment skills by giving investors fresh perspectives. The book is divided in 4 Parts/Categories: Investment Philosophy, Psychology of Investing, Innovation and Competitive Strategy, Science and Complexity Theory. Each part is made up of about 7 essays that describe major ideas of each category. In the essays Michael uses examples from business, successful investors, other authors, and studies from other disciplines to derive investment insight. Michael gives an appropriate understanding of the insights. In the eventuality that the reader would like to dig deeper, the Notes section on the essays and the Reference section are filled with studies and books by Investors, Scientists, Physicists, Mathematicians, Biologist, ect...

The book is entertaining and provides knowledge that is very relevant to investors. It also makes you think since the perspectives it gives you are differentiated. One example: how studying fruit flies is relevant to the evolution of businesses within industries. Or how stock markets share many of the same features of social insect colonies such as ants.

It is important to observe how homogeneous the money management industry is. Mutual funds, brokers, individual investors, day traders all read the same newspapers, magazines, books; they have mostly two investment philosophies, value and growth; they read the same analyst reports; watch the same news channels. To accomplish your investment objectives and to gain an edge over the market it is necessary to have a differentiated point of view. "More Than You Know" gives you that differentiated perspective.