Amazon.ca:Customer reviews: The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor (Columbia Business School Publishing)

Top positive review

An excellent common sense investing book a lot of information on how to get better

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 21, 2023

This is a very underrated book. There is excellent advice on almost every page. The author Howard Marks has also received annotations by other great investors throughout the book that emphasize the points and give different perspectives. The content of the book can be applied to any kind of investment not just stocks, bonds, but anything to do with investing our funds for the future. Truly wish I had read this book years ago. I will definitely read it a second time.

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Louis-David D.

Book

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 31, 2022

Book arrived in very bad shape. I bought a new book and this book was definitely used.

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152 total ratings, 18 with reviews

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From Canada

Rob Mills

*common wisdom for thoughtful investors

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 23, 2014

Verified Purchase

This book is full of generally common sentiments shared among investors. It's reasonable commentary and certainly won't hurt anybody. I read it in short order and then gave it to my friend's father that likes to ask me for investment advice.

Helpful

Dark Ink

Good but not excellent

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 10, 2013

Verified Purchase

The book was okay, as far as the information I was looking for in finance advice but didn't have all the goodies that I wanted. I did purchase and read the book.

One person found this helpful

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From other countries

Djilly L.

Didn't grow my wealth yet

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 29, 2019

Verified Purchase

This book is not so much about fancy academic financial calculations. Nor does it provide a single trick that guarantees astronomical profits. However it does go back to the basics and stresses several key principles for survival in financial markets. As such, there is not a single important thing in investing, to which I do agree. I was less pleased with the endless references to Wharton, and the books from Taleb and Warren Buffet that most people with interest in the subject will have read.

The book addresses topics like market psychology (go against the crowd at extreme ends of investor psychology), the asymmetrical relationship between gains vs losses (you need a 100% gain to recover from a 50% loss), estimates, economical cycles, behaviour, risk management. And the differences between loser's game and winner's game, or the difference between offense and defence.

The book is more a collection of market comments and thoughts from his frequent letters and a memoir of his career. Each chapter is fairly brief and informative, although my thoughts drifted away with a certain frequency in the first half of the book. All in all it is a decent recap but not overly revealing. If you fail to realise you need to take risk, be contrarian and that you need come up with unique ideas to generate excess performance as an investor you would have been ramping up losses or been out of business soon.

As an style-agnostic active equity fund manager of a fairly sizeable pool of AuM I didn’t always agree with the author’s arguments as a value investor. But it was helpful to see some basic principles phrased. And I developed more sympathy towards the end of the book, but more so because it's there that the author alludes more to core principles that I and my team have stuck to for the past few decades. But there wasn't anything new or that we haven't brought in practice. As such it's more an instruction for new or retail investors about how successful asset mangers think, act and operate. But then you wonder what they would do with the concept of ‘alpha’ or where they would get their unique insight or ‘second level of understanding’ to make proper investment decisions.. Also all these concepts are helpful and meaningful but don't expect to learn 'how' to invest i.e. there is nothing about the what the author calls the 'micro approach' the selection and actual analysis of assets and investments, while he repeatedly tresses that such fundamental research and analysis is key to successful investment returns.

14 people found this helpful

Nick

Good book, but depends on why you’re reading it

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on February 15, 2023

Verified Purchase

Interesting book and definitely focuses in on some interesting concepts. If you’re an investor, I fear it would be quite basic. You might not find quite as much meat on the bone as you would in other investing books. Still worth a read!

Marcelo Bahia

Good primer for starters, but frustrating to seasoned investors

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 3, 2013

Verified Purchase

Although not a totally useless book, it's a disappointing read. Disappointing due to my high expectations given Howard Marks' track record and his very interesting memos to Oaktree clients. To be honest, depending on your case, this can be a 2-star or a 5-star book - I'm rating it a "3" to try to be fair on the whole universe of people reading this.

If you're a beginner in the investing camp and still doesn't have much knowledge on the subject, this is a 5-star primer on how a good experienced investor actually thinks. The fact that it's short and written in simple English is a bonus for starters as well.

But if you're either a professional or an amateur who has already some investing experience and reading background, you will be, like me, frustrated. There's nothing in here that you haven't seen before in the classics of Graham, Buffett and Klarman or in books by Taleb, Montier and Mauboussin. What you actually get is a summary of all of them rewritten in the clear and witty "Howard Marks writing style" - if you're familiar with his memos, you already know that, like Buffett, he has the incredible ability of expressing complex things in a perfectly understandable manner. This may add value to you, if his intelligent and simple way of saying things help you to reinforce the important concepts in investing.

Still, a relevant negative is that the text is VERY repetitive. Both within and among chapters. I had the sense that some chapters could be easily reduced to 25% of their actual size without compromising the message (but of course the smaller size would compromise the book as a whole commercially speaking!). And clearly the book could be reduced even more if the author did not repeat the most important concepts all over again in more than half a dozen chapters throughout the book.

So my recommendation to you is clear: if you're a seasoned investor who's looking for the next useful and money-making read, skip this book without regret. But if you see value in a recap of the "best of the best" or you're just starting on investing, give it a quick read.

8 people found this helpful

Senthil

Good read, could be a even smaller book

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on March 15, 2022

Verified Purchase

Gives very good insights in value investing aspect. I prefer every beginner reads this book before jumping into market attracted by noise. Lots of repetitive points though they are important.

Jonah Jones

A most important read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 10, 2012

Verified Purchase

As the author of[...] I know a thing or two about financial info-products such as what makes them good, bad, worth buying and reading or just skipping past. This one is well worth the read.

Marks prescribes to value-investing, which I do as well, and has distilled his approach and experience into a concise, focused text that offers seasoned investment wisdom to those looking for a way forward in today's financial markets.
This is a compilation of Memos spread around at his firm, Oaktree, containing exceptional chapters on risk management, contrarian thinking and market psychology, as well as a cogent analysis of value investing. Legendary investors Jack Bogle, Jeremy Grantham, Joel Greenblatt, Seth Klarman, and Warren Buffett all rate the book highly, they all couldn't be wrong.

An excellent read for beginners, but not for the absolutely brand new to the investing world. Marks uses a lot of industry jargon and seldom breaks it down into layman's terms. Also, while his philosophy is not exclusive to paper assets, it seems that's largely the subject matter, which isn't very sexy or exciting things to read about. Also somewhat repetitive.

Nonetheless, this is truly the best book written about inefficient markets. Marks does a terrific job of calling into question the commonly accepted academic assumption: market prices ALWAYS equal intrinsic valuation. The academic community must relax this erroneous assumption.

Less Jargony: No

Specific and Detailed: Yes

Motivational: No

Easy to Read: No

Will you learn something new: Yes

2 people found this helpful

Amin

A must read for a value investor

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 30, 2022

Verified Purchase

Nice book but the whole content could have been written in much fewer chapters. I found too many points being repeated over and over and over again! (see, annoying! :) )

A must if you don't follow Howard Marks; just a nice to have if you do

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 10, 2011

Verified Purchase

I have read Howard's memos for years so was excited to see a book come out under his authorship.

I highly recommend buying this book if you are unfamiliar with Howard. His views on investing are invaluable.

If you are like me, however, you may find this book to be a bit of a let down as it relies heavily on his old memos (all of which are free on the Oaktree website). The book literally rewrites important segments of his memos and then adds a bit of color here and there. I find it convenient to have the most important points of his memos in one place and nicely summarized, but that's about it.

51 people found this helpful

Sanjay A. Paul

Nothing new here if you've read other books on finance

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 23, 2011

Verified Purchase

If you've read any of the investment classics like Graham's "Intelligent Investor" or Klarman's "Margin of Safety," then this book is a waste of time and paper. I was expecting more from Mr. Marks, but it falls short by repeatedly preaching the same notions that have been written about before. It also did not need to be this long of a book. If you are new to investing literature, you will gain the basic insights into investing that most people claim to follow. If you've tackled a few books on the subject however, there is nothing to be gained.

4 people found this helpful

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