Investing ─ The Last Liberal Art

Investing: The Last Liberal Art offers a unique picture of investing within the larger world. It explains how investment management works by borrowing the big ideas from other complex disciplines: biology, economics, mathematics, philosophy, physics, and psychology. In the biology chapter, Hagstrom analyzes the central nervous system and the immune system as complex adaptive systems and then draws parallels with the behavior of the economy and the stock market. In the physics chapter, he explores a mathematical distribution and considers the advantages of scale in relation to the "bigger is better" models that define the business strategies of Wal-Mart, McDonald's, and Home Depot. This interdisciplinary approach or model describes in which mechanisms the markets work and how to select and hold stocks. This is Robert Hagstrom's new major work. His first, The Warren Buffett Way, sold over 750,000 copies and spent 21 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. This book was published in hardcover under the title Latticework: The New Investing.

Author Biography: Robert G. Hagstrom is Senior Vice President and Director of Legg Mason Focus Capital. He has authored The New York Times bestsellers The Warren Buffett Way and The Warren Buffett Portfolio, as well as The NASCAR Way. He lives in Wayne, PA.

Robert G. Hagstrom is Chief Investment Strategist at Legg Mason Investment Counsel and the author of the New York Times best-selling The Warren Buffet Way. He is also the author of The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy; The Essential Warren Buffett: Timeless Principles for the New Economy; NASCAR Way: The Business That Drives the Sport, and The Detective and the Investor: Uncovering Investment Techniques from the Legendary Sleuths.