The Making Of A Permabear (as Seen On Steven Bartlett's The Diary Of A Ceo)

By (author) Grantham, Jeremy; By (author) Chancellor Edward
Short description/annotation:
A brilliant account of a storied investor as well as a vivid history of the stock market over the last sixty years.
Description:

As seen on Steven Bartlett''s The Diary of a CEO

''[A] fine and essential work'' Wall Street Journal
''Fascinating from beginning to end'' Bloomberg
''Insightful and droll'' Financial Times

When Jeremy Grantham entered the investment business in the 1960s, he brought the thrifty Yorkshire values he had been raised with. While other money managers focused on blue chip stocks, he studied stock market history and constructed the first indices for small-cap and value stocks. Charting their ebb and flow, he saw the powerful force that would become central to his investment philosophy: mean reversion, ''the heartbreaking principle that good times always revert back to more boring, more ordinary times.''

In the early 1970s Grantham launched one of the first S&P 500 index strategies. Soon after, he cofounded GMO, which became the first firm to use a computer for investment analysis.

In the late 1990s he acquired notoriety as a ''permabear'' for refusing to buy into dotcom mania. Clients left in droves, but he was vindicated when the bubble burst in 2000. Yet while his wealth grew, so did his alarm at the disastrous consequences of short-term thinking for both investors and for the planet, and he has directed nearly all his wealth to environmental protection.

Written with the bestselling financial historian Edward Chancellor, The Making of a Permabear is replete with investment insights and provides a candid insider''s tour of the booms and busts of the past half century.

Table of contents:
1: Gasbag 2: The Zero-Sum Game 3: Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo 4: The Sausage Factory 5: Markets Can Remain Irrational Longer than You Can Remain Solvent 6: Vindication 7: The Greatest Sucker Rally in History 8: Lessons Not Learned 9: Spaceship Earth 10: The Race of Our Lives 11: Waiting for the Last Dance Epilogue: And You Thought the Stock Market Was Important!
Review quote:
Buy low, sell high, get rich. Jeremy Grantham''s Wall Street career exactly conforms to this charmed sequence, but with what troubles along the way. The reader, at least, will be glad for them...[a] fine and essential work
Review quote:
Often insightful and droll about markets, and climate change, his memoir offers fans plenty to enjoy...For all the back-patting, his humility comes through
Review quote:
Fascinating from beginning to end
Review quote:
Grantham''s quarterly letters, which command a cult following of readers within and beyond the financial industry, inspire even the most short-term profit-minded investors to do a little fate-of-the-world-scale thinking
Review quote:
[Grantham] occupies a legendary place in the world of finance for predicting all the major stock market bubbles of recent decades (and doing very well in the process)
Review quote:
[Grantham] is famous for predicting doom. And he''s famous for being right, with a remarkable record of spotting investment bubbles before they pop
Review quote:
More than the head of asset-management giant GMO, this man should be recognized as the world''s greatest environmentalist
Review quote:
[Edward Chancellor is] one of the great financial writers of our era
Biographical note:

Jeremy Grantham is cofounder and long-term investment strategist of GMO, a Boston-based investment management firm with offices around the world, and founder of the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment. He is a member of the American Academy of