Sometimes I dig up old investing books to avoid work pass the time. The latest was a copy of The Art of Investing by John Ferguson Hume. It has everything a 19th-century person needs to invest.

It works for 21st-century advice too.

Reading old books like this reaffirms two basic truths:

1. Successful investing can be boiled down to simple, common sense ideas.
2. The history of misbehavior goes back a very long time.

Common sense and good behavior are key to investing success. That’s what you get for timeless advice. It’s never new, just rewritten…and too often ignored.

Not much has changed in 130 years and counting.

We’re still our own worst enemy. Investors make the same mistakes today as they did then. The only difference is the investments — fewer street-car bonds, more ETFs.

So here’s some of that 19th-century advice for today’s investors. Continue Reading…

The “Illuminated” edition of The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks is filled with great commentary from other investors throughout the book.

Except, when you read it for the first time it can be a bit disruptive. It’s as if a random person is constantly adding their two cents while you’re in the middle of a conversation with the author.

Where the comments really become useful is when you go through the book a second time. Having the likes of Joel Greenblatt, Seth Klarman and others offer insights helps to tie things together.

And even Marks adds comments on his writing. Though, he tags his comments with themes.

The most important of those themes he labels “the riskiest things.” The not so obvious way to sum it up is the riskiest things turn out to be things that seem the least risky. Continue Reading…