The Davis Discipline: Fifty Years of Successful Investing on Wall Street

by John Rothchild

Book Overview

Bestsellerautor John Rothchild erzählt hier die Geschichte dreier Generationen der legendären Davis Familie, die zu den erfolgreichsten Anlegern in der Geschichte der Wall Street zählt. Geistreich und mit viel Liebe zum Detail präsentiert Rothchild eine Chronik der Finanzeskapaden des exzentrischen und eigensinnigen Davis Clans und enthüllt die Strategien, mit denen sie mit unheimlichem Geschick den Markt ständig übertrafen. Die Saga beginnt mit dem...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471331783
• ISBN13: 9780471331780
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

How Marathon Men Invest

Planet earth to investors- Where are you ? Why am I the first to review this book ? This is excellent drama- a family saga spanning three generations - coupled with massively successful financial acumen. The forward by Peter Lynch ( prostrates myself upon the floor, muttering "St. Peter, I am not worthy" ) is brilliant enough reason to buy this book. Thereafter follows a rich tapestry of the Davis family dynasty, and a methodology of money management which led to astonishing riches. All good commonsense stuff. So get off your bottons, click some buttons, and get a copy. NOW!!!

really good biography

this is a really good biography on someone who is relatively unknown. It weaves a biography and important investing lessons. However, if you had to choose one, i would recommend Roger Lowenstein's American Capitalist, which portrays Warren Buffet

Great History

This book is listed as Elementary Reading for the [...] Hidden Gems Newsletter. It provides great historical reading about the Davis family. Before the reading the book I had no idea who the Davis family was. I did not even realize we have the Davis Fund as a choice in our 401k at work. The fund has proven returns and been around for years. This was a great book to read for any beginning investor.

Family history and market history in one

This is one of the better investment books on the history of post-WWII stock investing. While there are a number of absolute classic books on the 1920s and earlier periods (Lefevre's "Remininscenses of a Stock Operator", Galbraith's "The Great Crash", Brooks's "Once in Golconda", to name just a few), there aren't as many great books on recent history. This is one of them, however. The Davis family, starting with Shelby Collum, is used by the author as a vehicle to traverse the history of the stock market from WWII through the late 1990s. Followers of mutual fund investing in the past 25-30 years are probably more familiar with Shelby Davis the younger, than with his father Shelby Collum. But it was the elder Shelby that made the family fortune. His is one of the great fortunes ever created strictly through long term investment and is a story of buying extreme value and holding for very long time periods. It's also about venturing into uncharted waters -- like being one of the first to invest in Japan. This theme is carried forward to the story of his son, the well-known former portfolio manager of New York Venture Fund. Shelby the younger came of age in the go-go sixties and picked up some bad habits. The savage bear markets that followed chastened him and forced him to revert to a style of investing closer to his father's in the mid 1970s. The tensions between them created a sort of competition with the son posting a tremendous record with his mutual fund vehicle, New York Venture. The relationship between father and son would be best described as "semi-estrangement." It took Shelby's sons, Andrew and, particularly, Chris to reconcile their father and grandfather's differences. The human story is interesting, and the elder Shelby was quite a character. I found the chapter on Chris's "apprenticeship" with his grandfather fascinating -- perhaps the best part of the book. In short, Shelby the elder is getting old and wants to retire and turn his portfolio over to a younger generation for management, but because of the bad feelings he doesn't know how to approach his son. And it's clear that he greatly admires the record his son has build with NY Venture. So he talks grandson Chris Davis (now the co-manager of NY Venture and Selected American Shares) into inventorying his portfolio. Chris then brings his father into the picture and the two of them work long hours reading through the 5 decades of trades and holdings. The portfolio at that time was close to $1 billion. The story ends with the younger Shelby's semi-retirement and turning the reins over to sons Andrew and Chris, and Ken Feinberg, who continue with this style of investing. The mutual funds and separate accounts run by the Davises typically have portfolio turnover rates less than 20%, often less than 5%. This means they buy and hold, and hold, and hold. However, it's the price they pay for stocks that really juices their returns. The pigeonhole mentality

Highly Recommended!

John Rothchild has written a fascinating biography of one of Wall Street's most successful and least-known investors, Shelby Davis, who turned a $50,000 initial investment in 1947 into $900 million, almost exclusively by buying and selling insurance stocks. Part character study, part Wall Street history, Rothchild's book reads like a novel, with an accessible and witty narrative. Of special note is the concise summary of Davis' investment strategy, which rivals Buffettology in its simplicity and common sense. In Rothchild's hands, Davis' life becomes a fun read, no matter what your business interests, and we from (..)recommend this book to all curious readers.