"The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations." Isaac D'Israeli

"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." Winston Churchill

"I decided also early on that I would file away any good quotes I came across in my reading and share them with my investor family at appropriate moments." Ralph Wanger

“One of my hobbies is collecting quotations. Socrates said employ your time in reading great people’s lives so you can learn in a very simple way what it took them all their life to do. The best way I found to do that is in a quote. Sometimes in a quote you can capture what a person took a whole life to learn, incredible wisdom through that. I have about 5,000 quotes on my computer and I log them by subject so whenever I am studying a subject I have the chance to read what all the great people thought about that.” Arnold Van Den Berg
 

Welcome to the Investment Masters Class.

I started this site with a simple idea. If my children one day wanted to become investors, I wanted somewhere I could point them to the lessons I had accumulated from studying the world’s greatest investors, CEOs and businesses.

That idea has grown over the years.

I’ve now spent more than 30 years in the investment industry, including over two decades advising hedge funds and institutional investors while working as a Managing Director for a global investment bank, and more recently managing investment portfolios. Along the way I’ve lived through the Asian Financial Crisis, the Tech Bubble, the Global Financial Crisis and Covid.

My father was a stockbroker and my grandfather a proprietary trader. I love this business.

Over the years I’ve read more than 300 business biographies and company histories, many of which have found their way into the blog. The stories range from National Cash Register and Standard Oil to McDonald’s, Walmart, Costco, Berkshire Hathaway and countless lesser-known businesses that contain equally valuable lessons.

I’ve also had the good fortune to spend time with many of the investors, CEOs and business leaders I have long admired. Those conversations have reinforced something I’ve come to believe more strongly with every passing year: the most important investing lessons rarely come from a spreadsheet alone.

They come from studying people, incentives, culture, psychology, history, capital allocation, competitive advantage and the way great businesses are actually built.

That is what differentiates the Investment Masters Class from most traditional finance courses.

It has always amazed me that so few finance programs seriously study Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and other great investors, or devote much time to human psychology, financial history and exceptional businesses.

“I think almost anybody can draw [on the] lessons from Warren’s achievement at Berkshire. The interesting thing is you could go to the top business schools and none are studying and teaching what Warren has done.” — Charlie Munger

The tutorials bring together the philosophies, mental models, investment processes and accumulated wisdom of many of the world’s most successful investors. Wherever possible, the lessons come directly from them — from decades of fund letters, books, interviews, speeches and conversations.

The blog extends that learning into the study of great businesses and the people who built them.

You’ll find the Investment Masters Class is more qualitative than quantitative; more liberal arts, history and psychology than academic finance. That is deliberate.

Whether you are just beginning your investing journey or have been managing money for decades, I hope you find something here that improves the way you think about businesses, people and investing.

It’s time to apprentice yourself to the world’s best.

Let’s keep learning.

You can contact me here at john@mastersinvest.com