Be different for a reason
A view can differ from the crowd and still be wrong; useful contrarian thinking needs both independence and sound reasoning.
Perimeter Books
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Perimeter Books / Investing
The Most Important Thing
Howard Marks
A collection of Marks’s ideas about risk, value, cycles, and investment judgment.
2011 · 200 pages · Hardcover
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Make it part of your reading
3–5 hoursEstimated reading time, at 40–60 pages an hour
Columbia University Press / Columbia Business School PublishingMay 2011 · selected edition
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Publisher-documented endorsements
Recommended by investors.
Columbia University Press lists these endorsements for the book. This is a documented selection, not a popularity ranking.
Inside the book
What you’ll find inside.
Howard Marks brings the thinking behind his investment memos into a compact guide to judgment under uncertainty. He explains why price, value, risk, cycles, and psychology have to be considered together, rather than reduced to one dependable formula. The title is deliberately plural in spirit: each chapter adds another consideration that becomes essential in a different situation. Marks emphasizes patient opportunity seeking, attention to downside, and the difficulty of departing intelligently from consensus. The book rewards readers who want to examine how they reason about investments, especially the difference between making a good decision and merely receiving a favorable result.
Who it’s for
Investors seeking a durable decision framework and readers interested in uncertainty, probability, and disciplined judgment.
Ideas to examine
Take these into your reading.
Keep price in the picture
What you pay matters as much as the quality of what you buy when assessing an investment’s attractiveness.
Plan for adverse outcomes
Risk assessment should examine adverse outcomes and your ability to endure them, not simply the possibility of a high return.
Separate process from luck
Judge a decision by the information and reasoning available when it was made, because luck can obscure the quality of the process.
Your research notebook
Questions worth keeping.
- What evidence would make a contrarian investment thesis more than a preference for disagreeing with other people?
- How could you evaluate the quality of an investment decision before knowing its eventual return?
Save this title to add your own notes and reading progress.
The ideas, in conversation
Hear from the author.
Conversations are produced by the linked publishers and may cover the author’s broader work.
Go back to the evidence
Connect the book to your research.
Compare an investment thesis with primary disclosures and economic data, then consider what expectations the price may already reflect.
Community
Value Investors Club
A community built around investment write-ups and discussion.
Economic charts and explanations from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
The SEC’s public filing search for company disclosures and offering documents.
A different way into the subject
Continue the conversation.
Investing
Capital Allocators
Interviews with institutional investment leaders · Capital Allocators
Discussions with investment practitioners about allocating and managing capital.
Go deeper
Investing
Invest Like the Best
Interviews with investors, founders, and experts · Colossus
Conversations with investors, founders, and specialists about their methods.
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