The Dao of Capital

Informationen zum Autor Mark Spitznagel is the founder and President of Universa Investments, an investment advisor that specializes in equity tail-hedging?or profiting from extreme stock market losses as a means of enhancing investment returns. In addition to hedge fund investing, Spitznagel's twenty-year investment career has ranged from independent pit trader at the Chicago Board of Trade to proprietary trading head at Morgan Stanley. He also owns and operates Idyll Farms in northern Michigan. Klappentext As today's preeminent doomsday investor Mark Spitznagel describes his Daoist and roundabout investment approach, "one gains by losing and loses by gaining." This is Austrian Investing, an archetypal, counterintuitive, and proven approach, gleaned from the 150-year-old Austrian School of economics, that is both timeless and exceedingly timely.In The Dao of Capital, hedge fund manager and tail-hedging pioneer Mark Spitznagel--with one of the top returns on capital of the financial crisis, as well as over a career--takes us on a gripping, circuitous journey from the Chicago trading pits, over the coniferous boreal forests and canonical strategists from Warring States China to Napoleonic Europe to burgeoning industrial America, to the great economic thinkers of late 19th century Austria. We arrive at his central investment methodology of Austrian Investing, where victory comes not from waging the immediate decisive battle, but rather from the roundabout approach of seeking the intermediate positional advantage (what he calls shi), of aiming at the indirect means rather than directly at the ends. The monumental challenge is in seeing time differently, in a whole new intertemporal dimension, one that is so contrary to our wiring.Spitznagel is the first to condense the theories of Ludwig von Mises and his Austrian School of economics into a cohesive and--as Spitznagel has shown--highly effective investment methodology. From identifying the monetary distortions and non-randomness of stock market routs (Spitznagel's bread and butter) to scorned highly-productive assets, in Ron Paul's words from the foreword, Spitznagel "brings Austrian economics from the ivory tower to the investment portfolio."The Dao of Capital provides a rare and accessible look through the lens of one of today's great investors to discover a profound harmony with the market process--a harmony that is so essential today. "The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing In A Distorted World by Mark Spitznagel (Wiley, 2013) is a beautifully crafted book, one I can recommend to readers of all political/economic persuasions... it is impossible not to be shaped by its carefully presented history and logic." Zusammenfassung As today's preeminent doomsday investor Mark Spitznagel describes his Daoist and roundabout investment approach, one gains by losing and loses by gaining. Inhaltsverzeichnis Foreword xvii Introduction xxiii Chapter One: The Daoist Sage Klipp's Paradox 1 The Old Master 3 The Soft and Weak Vanquish the Hard and Strong 6 Into the Pit 9 The Privileges of a Trader 12 Robinson Crusoe in the Bond Pit 15 Fishing in "McElligot's Pool" 18 Enter the Austrians: A von Karajan Moment 18 A State of Rest 21 Guiding into Emptiness 23 Moving On 26 The Wisdom of the Sages 29 Chapter Two: The Forest in the Pinecone The Roundabout and the Logic of Growth 33 The Forest and the Tree 36 The Slow Seedling 39 Wildfire and Resource Reallocation 41 The Conifer Effect 43 A Logic of Growth 49 Chapter Three: SHI The Intertemporal Strategy 51 The Dao of Sun Wu 56 Shi and the Crossbow 58 Li-The Direct Path 59 Shi and Li at the Weiqi Board 60 A Common Thread, from East to West 64 An Attack of Mis...

Autorentext

Mark Spitznagel is the founder and President of Universa Investments, an investment advisor that specializes in equity tail-hedging?or profiting from extreme stock market losses as a means of enhancing investment returns. In addition to hedge fund investing, Spitznagel's twenty-year investment career has ranged from independent pit trader at the Chicago Board of Trade to proprietary trading head at Morgan Stanley. He also owns and operates Idyll Farms in northern Michigan.

Klappentext

Praise for The Dao of Capital

"A timely, original, right-economic principles and history-based approach to investing. Drawing on impressive philosophical building blocks, The Dao of Capital illuminates the wellsprings of capital creation, innovation and economic progress. Dazzling!"
-Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, Forbes Media

"This is a magnificent, scintillating book that I will read over and over again. Every page is eye-opening, with numerous areas for testing and profits in every chapter. Here's an unqualified, total, heartfelt recommendation, which coming from me is a rarity, and possibly unique."
-Victor Niederhoffer, Author of The Education of a Speculator

"The Dao of Capital is an impressive work. Spitznagel's approach is refreshing-scholarly without being tedious. What a broad look at economic history it provides!"
-Byron Wien, Vice Chairman, Blackstone Advisory Partners LP

"Wall Street gamblers who believe the Fed has their back need to read this book. Mark Spitznagel provides a brilliant demonstration that the gang of money printers currently resident in the Eccles Building have not repealed the laws of sound money nor have they rescinded the historical lessons on which they are based."
-David Stockman, Former U.S. Congressman, Budget Director under Ronald Reagan, and Author of The Great Deformation

"Mark Spitznagel assembles the best insights in human nature and economics to bring order out of the chaos of our world. Economists, investors and lay persons alike will find abundant treasures in The Dao of Capital, one remarkably useful and exciting book!"
-Lawrence Reed, President, Foundation for Economic Education and President Emeritus, Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Zusammenfassung
As today's preeminent doomsday investor Mark Spitznagel describes his Daoist and roundabout investment approach, one gains by losing and loses by gaining.

Inhalt

Foreword xvii

Introduction xxiii

Chapter One: The Daoist Sage

Klipp's Paradox 1

The Old Master 3

The Soft and Weak Vanquish the Hard and Strong 6

Into the Pit 9

The Privileges of a Trader 12

Robinson Crusoe in the Bond Pit 15

Fishing in "McElligot's Pool" 18

Enter the Austrians: A von Karajan Moment 18

A State of Rest 21

Guiding into Emptiness 23

Moving On 26

The Wisdom of the Sages 29

Chapter Two: The Forest in the Pinecone

The Roundabout and the Logic of Growth 33

The Forest and the Tree 36

The Slow Seedling 39

Wildfire and Resource Reallocation 41

The Conifer Effect 43

A Logic of Growth 49

Chapter Three: SHI

The Intertemporal Strategy 51

The Dao of Sun Wu 56

Shi and the Crossbow 58

Li-The Direct Path 59

Shi and Li at the Weiqi Board 60

A Common Thread, from East to West 64

An Attack of Misunderstanding 68

On War-An Indirect Strategy 70

Shi, Ziel, Mittel, und Zweck 74

Chapter Four: The Seen and the Foreseen

The Roots of the Austrian Tradition 75

That Which Must Be Foreseen 78

At the Viennese Crossroads Between East and West 85

The Teleology of Baer's Butterfly 88

Menger Establishes the Austrian School 89

Tutor to the Prince 93

Methodenstreit 97

Österreichische Schule 101

Chapter Five: UMWEG

The Roundabout Path of the Unternehmer 103

Postulating the "Positive" 105

Produktionsumweg 108

Böhm-Bawerk, the Bourgeois Marx 113

Faustmann's Forest Economy 116

Rings of Capital 122

Henry Ford: The Roundabout Unternehmer 125

The Roundabout of Life 134

Chapter Six: Time Preference

Overcoming That Humanness About Us 139

"Radical" Böhm-Bawerk and the Psychology of Time Preference 145

The Curious Case of Phineas Gage 149

The Shi and Li…