Buy new:
-17% $24.99$24.99
FREE delivery August 21 - 26
Ships from: Philadelphia Book Company Sold by: Philadelphia Book Company
Save with Used - Good
$11.14$11.14
FREE delivery August 19 - 22
Ships from: BJ&K'S Books &More Sold by: BJ&K'S Books &More
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Keynes's Way to Wealth: Timeless Investment Lessons from The Great Economist Hardcover – November 18, 2013
Purchase options and add-ons
“Mr. Wasik’s distillation of how Keynes made--and then remade--his fortune is instructive. And the principles that Keynes followed have stood the test of time. As Mr. Wasik adds, 'The object of investing is to ensure prosperity, not to become obsessed with making money.'"
The New York Times
John Maynard Keynes indelibly made his mark on global economics...
Few people know, however, that he was also a daring,steel-nerved investor who built a multimilliondollarfortune in the stock market while providing financial counsel to the likes of Winston Churchill and FDR. Now, you can learn from--and imitate--Keynes's success by examining the story of his lifeand investment strategies, masterfully told by awardwinning author John F. Wasik.
As you follow Keynes from his early years with theBloomsbury Group, through two world wars and the Great Depression Keynes's theories and practices come to life by way of the historic and personal events that shaped them. Like today's investors, Keynes faced markets roiled by panic, inflation, deflation, widespread unemployment, and war--and he developed a core set of principles to prosper in every climate. With the individual investor in mind,this straightforward guide makes it easy for investorsat all levels to implement the action-oriented strategiespresented in each of the 10 chapters and start investing like Keynes today by:
- Buying and holding quality stocks
- Ignoring short-term news
- Building diversified portfolios
- Trading contrary to market momentum
- Getting the most out of dividend stocks
Using the eloquent insight of a seasoned investmentwriter, author John F. Wasik digs down into what investments Keynes owned, how he bought and sold them, how his theories guided his investments, and vice versa. He illustrates why Keynes's ideas, insights, and portfolio strategies have withstood the test of time, and how they will continue to produce financial gains for dedicated investors. In a nutshell, Wasik delivers a pragmatic guide to the style of portfolio management practiced by such Keynes followers as Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, andCharles Munger.
The smart money gets richer in all types of weather,and so can you by following Keynes's Way to Wealth.
PRAISE FOR KEYNES'S WAY TO WEALTH:
"Intelligent investing ultimately depends on having an intelligent theory of the economy. This story of Keynes's life as an investor illustrates this beautifully." -- Robert Shiller, professor of Economics, Yale University;New York Times columnist; and author of Finance and the Good Society
"The great economist John Maynard Keynes speculated and lost big-time. Out of the ashes, he evolved some great long-term investment strategies that will work for every prudent investor. While picking up tips, you'll also find that this book is a great read." -- Jane Bryant Quinn, author of Making the Most of Your Money NOW
"I'd always heard Keynes was a talented investor but never knew any of the details. John Wasik's excellent book uncovers that story and reveals Keynes's considerable investing skills. If you enjoy studying great investors, add this book to your list." -- Joe Mansueto, founder and CEO, Morningstar, Inc.
"With the possible exception of Mark Twain, no one surpasses John Maynard Keynes as a source of pithy financial wisdom and sayings. Keynes’s Way to Wealth mines the reasoning and investment experiences behind his quotability, a bounty that will simultaneously edify, entertain, and augment your bottom line." -- William J. Bernstein, author and principal, Efficient Frontier Advisors
- Print length240 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMcGraw Hill
- Publication dateNovember 18, 2013
- Dimensions9 x 1 x 9.3 inches
- ISBN-100071815473
- ISBN-13978-0071815475
Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought
Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
John F. Wasik is an award-winning columnist, editor, speaker, and author of 14 books. He has covered investor protection issues for more than 30 years and has won 18 awards for his writing.
About the Author
John F. Wasik is an award-winning columnist, editor, speaker, and author of 14 books. He has coveredinvestor protection issues for more than 30 years and has won 18 awards for his writing.
Product details
- Publisher : McGraw Hill; 1st edition (November 18, 2013)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0071815473
- ISBN-13 : 978-0071815475
- Item Weight : 1.08 pounds
- Dimensions : 9 x 1 x 9.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #966,251 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #956 in Leadership Training
- #2,027 in Economic History (Books)
- #2,297 in Introduction to Investing
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

I am the author of 19 books, including "Lincolnomics" and "Lightning Strikes: Timeless Lessons in Creativity from the Life and Work of Nikola Tesla." I've also contributed to The New York Times, Forbes, Real Clear Investigations, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg and several other international publications.
My latest book answers the question: "What would Abe Lincoln think about economic progress today?" I view his life through the lens of infrastructure, education, prosperity and equality. This unique new biography examines one of our greatest presidents in the time of COVID, BLM, climate change and a need for repairs and healing on every level.
As a professional speaker, I've addressed tens of thousands: I have spoken about creativity, technology, history, investing and innovation across North America.
See my piece on Tesla in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/technology/nikola-tesla.html?_r=0. Also see my piece in The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/lessons-from-tesla-the-man-not-the-car-1536950021
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
This means that there is a second variable in Keynes's formal decision making apparatus besides the expected probability.Animal spirits ,one's optimism,pessimism,or spontaneous urge to act,is an emotional response on the part of the financial decisionmaker to the amount of relevant knowledge he has versus the amount he could obtain if he were to wait for the future to arrive.There are thus careful distinctions that must be drawn between confidence,uncertainty,expectations,and animal spirits.
Keynes's approach to decision making is very different from that of Kaheman -Tversky(K-T),Shiller-Akerlof(S-A),and Thaler(T),who are all advocates of using Subjective Expected Utility (SEU ) Theory as the normative approach to decision making.Keynes completely rejects SEU theory as a normative goal except as a very special case.SEU is merely a more advanced version of Jeremy Bentham's approach explicitly rejected by G E Moore and Keynes by 1903.
The K-T,A-S ,and T approach regards issues of animal spirits,framing,framing effects,anchoring ,representativeness,overconficdence -overoptimism ,and many other behaviorist results as being biases and errors on the part of the decision maker that could be corrected if only the decision maker would become a good Bayesian Ramsey-De Finetti - Savage type statistician .He could then correctly solve problems like the Linda the bank teller problem or the Blue -Green taxi problem and avoid all of the erroneous mistakes that result.
Thus, Mr. De Cecco's claim on p.92 concerning the equivalence of the K-T and Keynes approach to decision making and Wasik's conclusion on pp.101-102 directly conflict with Keynes 's approach.
Keynes rejects the biases and errors approach for the exact same reasons that LJ Cohen did .The K-T approach assumes linear and additive probabilities and views the non linear and non additive decision weights as incorrect manifestations of decision makers ill-trained in probability and statistics applications .
In brief, Keynes moved from commodities and active trading to "buy and hold" of favorite stocks, rather in the style of Warren Buffet, though the book stops just short of the investing conclusion it seems to promise. A valuable contribution to understanding Keynes's thinking on economics. At a time when there are those who brand Keynesian theory as socialistic, this book reminds us that he was a very active capitalist, and that for him an enriched life was more important than being rich.
Keynes thought because of his positions in government that he had "superior" knowledge of the commodities markets, but I'm afraid, although the trades are voluminous and have not been totted up, he did not do very well. However, as a long term investor, his "special confidence" in companies with great management worked out very well indeed. And in this latter capacity as a long term investor he joins other long term investors like Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett.
He had an eye for value beyond commodities, stocks and bonds. He bought the supreme achievement in physics, the manuscript of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. He had a good eye for paintings also buying works by Pablo Picasso, Braque, Seurat, Degas, Ingres, Cezanne, and Matisse.
Unfortunately, there are few capitalists and conservatives who are as intent today on stewarding the entire economy towards the benefit of the many as John Maynard Keynes was during his time. And these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive (being a capitalist but wanting the whole economy to improve). In our time, a problem may have arisen with the disparity between those with great wealth and those without wealth, which is that the wealthy simply cannot spend enough, and the more lopsided our society becomes the more this will become self-evident. The enlightened among the wealthy seem to understand this, that if the consumer does not buy his company's products, his company will suffer, revenues and earnings will decrease, his stock price will decline, and with it his wealth.
Keynes was a pragmatic man, who was looking for pragmatic solutions during the Great Depression, and also, ultimately, in his investments. Let John Wasik give you a peek inside this other world of Keynes, which is, that Keynes was not just an ivory tower economist, he was also down. if not in the trenches, down in the trading pits - a man of the world.
Top reviews from other countries
The author had an unenviable task of filling 200 pages. The whole problem is Keynes has written a lot about his economic ideas but has written very little on his investing methods and insights. It is very sporadic and whatever he has written can be filled in 3-4 pages. A good crisp essay or white paper would neatly cover Keynes investment methodology. All this means Wasik has filled the pages with Keynes's economic ideas which were postulated by him in his various books. The book become more about economics than investing philosophy to large extent. I don't blame the author. He tries his best to talk more about Keynes's investing in many places but there is a limit on what one can unearth that happened almost 100 years ago.
Another negative about this book is at many places the author has postulated his own investing beliefs. The example is his promotion of index funds, his belief that ordinary investors should avoid investing directly into the stock market, the commodities ¤cy trading is sheer speculation and is best avoided by individual investors, investors should avoid leverage because it cuts the both ways. I am not saying some of his ideas have no merit. It is just that I don't understand what are they doing on Keynes's investing book. Because Keynes violated almost all of these rules. He indulged in commodities and currency trading, used leverage, invested in stocks etc. As an objective observer he should make a note that due to speculation and leverage he lost heavily ...and then move on. He should avoid playing personal finance adviser for the readers. We have not bought the book for his personal finance advice.
Wasik's attempt to project Ben Graham and Buffet being influenced by Keynes is ludicrous to say the least. It is possible that Keynes was influenced by Graham's 'Security Analysis' which came out in 1934 and influenced many people after that.
Having said that the book has few good points and takeaways...
1. You will know journey taken by Keynes from currency and commodities trader to long term value investor.
2. You will learn from Keynes's example..the pitfall of leverage and indulging in such trading. Keynes lost every thing twice in 10 years.
3. Perhaps a significant learning is finally Keynes attained his investing success (he left 33 Mil USD estate on his death at 2013 prices) by investing in solid companies making everyday products at cheap price and holding those stocks through all the turbulence in the market. in the final analysis after reading this I felt I got my money's worth. It is a reaffirmation of the universal value and validity of value investing principles. And if this wisdom is coming from a great like Keynes then who are we to argue with it.
4. Long term investing beats short term trading any day. In the end long term investors make the real money in the market.
5. Diversification, he calls it opposed risks, is critical for your long term sustenance as an investor.
6. Dividends are very important selection criterion. That too rising dividends.
7. Stocks beat bonds. Though you need both.
8. Be contrarian to earn superior returns. Don't go with the herd. Herd may be wrong though comforting.
9. Most importantly...life is more than accumulation of money. Money is of no use if it does not confer you a freedom and time to pursue your non economic interests. Keynes advises us to smell the roses, enjoy good art, books, travels & friends. Although he was an economist and investor he did find time for art, theater, rare books, farm, literature, bohemian friends and serving his country during the war. Perhaps this last part is the most inspiring for all the investors. At least it was for me.
I don't know if I should recommend this book as a must read book to all. May be you should buy this book if you already have scores of investing books in your library and you would like to add some account of Keynes's investing in 30s and 40s.








