Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks: Stories to Make You a Smarter Investor

Develop a sound investment philosophy based on lessons from history

Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks: Stories to Make You a Smarter Investor is a highly entertaining and insightful look into key stories from history, teaching lessons about sound principles of investing, and controlling emotions and bias when managing your investment portfolio to help you become a stronger, more intelligent investor. Written by author and finance professor Stephen R. Foerster, this book spans from before the Middle Ages to the 2020s.

Some of the stories in this book include:

• Cristiano Ronaldo taking two bottles of Coke off a table at a press conference, and ostensibly causing Coca-Cola’s stock value to plunge ＄4 billion
• Harry Markopolos trying to develop a strategy similar to Bernie Madoff’s, realizing his strategy was bogus, and spending a decade proving his case
• A hostage crisis in twelfth century Venice involving trumped-up charges, conflict, deceit, a plague, and an angry mob, leading to the birth of government bonds
• A salad oil swindle almost destroying American Express, prompting Warren Buffett to make one of the best stock investments ever

For both experienced and novice investors, Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks: Stories to Make You a Smarter is a fun, accessible, and informative guide that through history shows, not tells, you how to develop an investment philosophy of guiding principles, and become a better investor.

STEPHEN R. FOERSTER is an author and finance professor at the Ivey Business School at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. He has a PhD from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a Chartered Financial Analyst designation. His previous books include Financial Management: A Primer; Financial Management: Concepts and Applications; and In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio: The Stories, Voices, and Key Insights of the Pioneers who Shaped the Way We Invest (with Andrew W. Lo), which won the Axiom Personal Finance category silver medal. His next project: writing the authorized biography of William Sharpe, 1990 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics.