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maxstone98 's review for:
I'm giving it 4 stars because I think that is probably objectively what it deserves, but really I was disappointed in this book, since I love Howard Marks' investment letters and had high expectations for a 5 star read.
This book is based on his investment memos. That's a good thing, since that is where he has collected his (very significant) investment wisdom over the years. And there are some good aspects of that, mostly that he can try to organize the many thoughtful things he has written into a single book representing what he thinks is most important, in a logical order, etc.
But ultimately I think the memos themselves are significantly better. You can see that somewhat in the book, which includes extensive quotes from the memos, and those quotes are the best part of the book. But another reason is that the memos place those thoughts in an important context, the time and investment environment in which they were written. And they tended to do a better job of linking his general concepts to specific examples (basically whatever was going on at the time, that prompted him to write on that topic at that moment). So even though reading all his memos would not be as organized, I think it would ultimately be time better spent. they are all available on Oaktree's website, I believe.
One additional comment on the "Illuminated" version, which includes interspersed comments from Marks as well as other luminaries including Seth Klarman and Joel Greenblatt. These make the book worse! For starters it is probably very hard to improve an existing text with interspersed comments. Second, they are not long enough to be interesting (if one of them wrote a few pages in response to some thought in the book, that would have been much more interesting I believe). Third, they interrupt the flow of the book (that could have been solved by making them footnotes instead of breaking up the text with them). And finally, many of the comments are essentially applause ("well said!" "this is a particularly important point!" "Marks really hits the nail on the head with this paragraph!" etc...). Not every commentator does that equally (Klarman and Greenblatt do less of it) but it really give the book a weird vibe, like it has a piped in applause track. I recommend the non-illuminated version.
All that said, I think Howard Marks is smart/wise/thoughtful/perceptive/learned and this book is worth reading. It just isn't as great as his 5-star memos.
This book is based on his investment memos. That's a good thing, since that is where he has collected his (very significant) investment wisdom over the years. And there are some good aspects of that, mostly that he can try to organize the many thoughtful things he has written into a single book representing what he thinks is most important, in a logical order, etc.
But ultimately I think the memos themselves are significantly better. You can see that somewhat in the book, which includes extensive quotes from the memos, and those quotes are the best part of the book. But another reason is that the memos place those thoughts in an important context, the time and investment environment in which they were written. And they tended to do a better job of linking his general concepts to specific examples (basically whatever was going on at the time, that prompted him to write on that topic at that moment). So even though reading all his memos would not be as organized, I think it would ultimately be time better spent. they are all available on Oaktree's website, I believe.
One additional comment on the "Illuminated" version, which includes interspersed comments from Marks as well as other luminaries including Seth Klarman and Joel Greenblatt. These make the book worse! For starters it is probably very hard to improve an existing text with interspersed comments. Second, they are not long enough to be interesting (if one of them wrote a few pages in response to some thought in the book, that would have been much more interesting I believe). Third, they interrupt the flow of the book (that could have been solved by making them footnotes instead of breaking up the text with them). And finally, many of the comments are essentially applause ("well said!" "this is a particularly important point!" "Marks really hits the nail on the head with this paragraph!" etc...). Not every commentator does that equally (Klarman and Greenblatt do less of it) but it really give the book a weird vibe, like it has a piped in applause track. I recommend the non-illuminated version.
All that said, I think Howard Marks is smart/wise/thoughtful/perceptive/learned and this book is worth reading. It just isn't as great as his 5-star memos.