The Billion Dollar Mistake: Learning the Art of Investing Through the Missteps of Legendary Investors

By Stephen L Weiss

Important investment lessons gleaned from the mistakes of accomplished professional investors and billionaire businessmen

The Billion Dollar Mistake is an up-close account of the career-defining mistakes that some of the world's most brilliant billionaire investors have made, and a revealing look at what we can learn from them. Drawing on author Stephen Weiss' twenty-two years experience at some of Wall Street's most prestigious firms, the core of this book is based upon original research and interviews with these legendary investors, who discuss the most significant trade or investment that went against them, the magnitude of the loss, its effect on their businesses-and on their personal lives. To some, these fascinating accounts will read like a novel; to others, it will be a treasured and unique investment guide.

This intriguing book skillfully examines the causal relationship between the quirks of each investor's personality and the mistakes they have committed. Along the way, Weiss provides a series of compelling narrative accounts of the individuals' road to success, the particular mistakes they made, the character flaws that led to them, and the lessons learned. While some investors made errors of judgment, others made errors of perception. The Billion Dollar Mistake

• Uncovers important lessons learned from the failures of some of the most enduring and accomplished investors, including Kirk Kerkorian, Bill Ackman, Aubrey McClendon and Leon Cooperman
• Discusses how to incorporate these lessons into your investment discipline and avoid the same missteps
• Reveals common mistakes made by bigger investors that the average investor can relate-the only difference is in magnitude with more zeros attached to the loss
• Includes insights on improving your investment endeavors by refining your approach to today's markets

Learning from the missteps of the best in the investment business can help you succeed. With The Billion Dollar Mistake, you'll discover how.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Oct 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9780470572641

Reviews for The Billion Dollar Mistake

[buchowl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book surprised me. Normally this type of book wouldn't interest me as I have no celebrity type fascination with legendary investors. Nor do I have any illusions of becoming a Buffet or a Soros (neither of which is featured in this book) so why would I want to know about the mistakes these types of investors would make? But the book kept popping up to the point where I finally decided to give it a shot. Well..... turns out the mistakes the Big Boys make as the exact same mistakes that the humble of us make - the scale is just different. Author Weiss does an excellent job of describing each individual investor and the details what went into making their biggest financial error. While the author does a commendable job of writing the sketches he goes a step beyond with by putting a "Lessons Learned" section at the end of each chapter. This, to me, is the real value of the book. A beginning investor could do worse than learning the lessons of each chapter to avoid some of the pitfalls and cons out there. And the more experienced investor could use this book as a reality check to make sure he/she isn't falling into some bad habits. Personally I intend to use this book as a New Year's resolution type device - re-reading "Lessons Learned" every Jan. 1 as a checklist of optimal trading. Another aspect of the book that bears mentioning is the section on short trading (chap 9). Shorting has always been confusing to me but this author not only cleared up the confusion but suggested alternative methods to get some of the benefits of shorting without all of the risk (shorting carries unlimited risk but in certain instances it can be a very useful and profitable strategy). Outstanding. The book also contains a short but very nice glossary explaining general trading terms.The reason the book did not receive a full 5 star rating from me was due to the fact of there being no 'further reading' section. While the book is complete without it, there were topics that I would have liked to research more deeply and I would have enjoyed the author's suggestions.Great book and one I will reference time and again. What a very pleasant surprise!