Figuring It Out: Sixty Years Of Answering Investors’ Most Important Questions

One of the great joys of a professional life, as physicist Richard Feynman once explained, is the joy of "figuring it out." Of course, figuring out investing questions is not as important and certainly not as enduring as figuring out the basic laws of physics, but it certainly is, has been, and likely will be as fascinating--and more fun for readers concerned about our investments. (Hint: that means all of us).

Readers leafing through Charley Ellis' masterworks will enjoy being reminded of some of the great controversies that animated the world of professional investing over the past sixty years from a keen observer in the investment profession. In short, Ellis lived through those controversies and played his part in figuring them out, observing the remarkable minds that solve the most vexing questions in investments.

When Ellis left Harvard Business School with an MBA and headed to Wall Street and a happy career in investing, HBS offered no courses in investing, there were no CFAs, and almost nobody was interested in the stock or bond markets. At that time, worldwide employment in the securities and investment fields was less than 5,000. Half a century later, employment was well over 500,000 and likely one million and HBS offered three dozen courses on all sorts of investing, and almost everyone seemed interested in the securities markets. At least as important, the average talent of the men and women in engaged in all aspects of investing had steadily increased to make the field known today for having many of the most talented, best informed, hardest working, and best paid people in the world.

Belief in bonds as the way to damp down changes in the stock market continues among investors and their advisers. This will likely continue. The "opportunity cost" of owning bonds vs. owning stocks is hard to compare to the "anxiety cost" of being exposed to stock market fluctuations. Canards like "Invest your age in bonds" are easy to remember and somehow sound like experience-based wisdom But Ellis encourages investors to view their securities portfolios correctly as only one component of their Total Financial Portfolio which, for most of us, has large stable value components like our homes, the net present value of our future incomes or savings and our Social Security benefits. Figuring It Out, like eyewitness reports from the field, tell Ellis' unique story of learning about important aspects of investing. Learning as you invest is exactly what make an investor even more savvy and disciplined.