William Green - Investing and Life Lessons From the World's Greatest Investors
William Green is the author of Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in the Markets and Life (April 20, 2021; Scribner). The book is the culmination of his journalistic work, which led him to conversations with many of the world’s greatest investors, from Sir John Templeton to Charlie Munger, Jack Bogle to Ed Thorp, Will Danoff to Mohnish Pabrai, Joel Greenblatt to Howard Marks.
Green has written for many leading publications in the US and Europe, including The New Yorker, Time, Fortune, Forbes, Barron’s, Fast Company, Money, Worth, Bloomberg Markets, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, The New York Observer, The (London) Spectator, The (London) Independent Magazine, and The Economist. He has reported in places as diverse as China, India, Japan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the US, Mexico, England, France, Monaco, Poland, Italy, and Russia. He has interviewed presidents and prime ministers, inventors, criminals, prize-winning authors, the CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies, and countless billionaires.
Green has collaborated on several books as a ghostwriter, co-author, or editor. One of them became a #1 New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller in 2017. He also worked closely with a renowned hedge fund manager, Guy Spier, helping him to write his much-praised 2014 memoir, The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment. Green also wrote and edited The Great Minds of Investing, which features short profiles of 33 renowned investors, along with stunning portraits created by Michael O’Brien, one of America’s preeminent photographers.
Introduction:
[01:45] – Introducing author William Green
[05:00] – Tasting - Widow Jane – 10 Year Aged Bourbon Whiskey
[07:23] – Simplicity – “Intelligent people are easily seduced by complexity while underestimating simple ideas that carry tremendous weight.” “There are no extra points for difficulty.”
[16:30] – Worldly Wisdom - “The ability just to make vast sums of money is not something that honorable or noble…it’s a great party trick”.
“Why worship people just because they were good at this one game of making money?”
[24:30] – High-Performance Habits – “when people try to be optimal, they tend to screw up because that’s not sustainable…if I just pick some directionally correct habits and just keep plugging away for decades, it’s going to work out in the long run.”
[27:50] – Being Directionally Correct & Radically Moderate – “the aggregation of marginal gains…there are all of these habits that give you a marginal advantage…none of these things seem that big of a deal on the day…when you combine them, they become very powerful.”
[35:20] – "In a world that's increasingly geared toward short-termism and instant gratification, a tremendous advantage can be gained by those who consistently move in the opposite direction. This applies not only to business, but to our relationships, health, careers, and everything else that matters."
[54:50] – Arnold Van Den Berg – “Part of what’s so striking about Arnold was he was dealt the worst possible hand…born into a Jewish family during the Holocaust in Amsterdam on the same street as Ann Frank…and managed to transform himself over the years to this incredibly kind, loving, decent bloke”.
[1:14:15] – We’re all flawed and experience turmoil
[1:23:15] – William on Wealth “for me it’s really important to have the freedom work together with people I like and admire on something that’s valuable and worthwhile and is interesting and serves other people in some way…that freedom and independence is a critical part of wealth.”
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