Customer Reviews

The Tao Jones Averages: A Guide to Whole-Brained Investing

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a 25 year veteran professional I have read exhaustively on the topic of investing. This simple little book is perhaps the best book I have ever read about the mindset required to succeed as an investor. I keep coming back to it over the years and it is at the top of my recommendation list to customers if they can get hold of it. I am not surprised I can't find any other books by Bennet Goodspeed, he's probably too wealthy to bother.

This book was a great little read about how to invest with both your left logical brain and your right intuitive brain.It explained how destructive thinking with only half of our brain capacity is. Logically we just follow the herd and miss major trends developing below the surface.When we are to intuitive we simply invest in what we "like" with little consideration for value and current market conditions. This book shows how to use intuition and logic in a balanced manner for great investing results. I recommend this book because it could be a major missing piece to some investors success.(I also enjoyed the first 100 pages about Taoism, it is a wonderful philosophy about balance).

As someone who has been a floor trader on Wall Street and has also studied zen for close to 20 years, including a stint living in a zen monastery, I found the book to be very misleading. Although the author starts out drawing comparisons between Eastern mysticism and investing, and makes a couple of valuable insights, he then succumbs to the critical error of equating the mystical experience to right-brain functioning as understood by Western brain hemisphere research. I can personally attest to the fact that the profound universal mystical experience that can only be achieved through great practice and discipline has nothing to do with "right-brain" functioning.

After making this flawed connection, the author then digresses by focusing solely on split-brain functioning in regard to investing for the remainder of the book. Consequently, the book ultimately becomes an example of Western scientific arrogance attempting to explain a profound system of knowledge that is thousands of years old and completely inexplicable to the "rational" world view.

I picked up and reread Goodspeed's introduction to a subject greatly overlooked in our 'western culture'.It was the first time since I purchased and read it in the early 1980s. At the time I was a floor trader at an options exchange.The message within its pages has relevance and remains useful so many years later.The engaging manner he employs to help a reader weigh the merits of two vastly different areas of thought could easily have bogged down and thus lost meaning with Goodspeed's select readership.

I found this book incidentally and immediately got intrigued. The riddles Goodspeed describes really got me thinking...why are we thinking mostly with the left side of the brain?

Highly recommended, enjoyable and funny

Dror Guzman

A good overview of herd investing mentality that lead to the crisis of today, from back in the 70's. Well thought out and a precursor to the larger picture investing that needs to come if markets are to truly succeed, not just for the wealthy, but for the average population.