Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

by William Green

an investor surveying the world in, say, 1908–11, had every reason to feel confident about the future. The global economy had enjoyed a long period of unprecedented growth. Asset values seemed reasonable. And it was widely believed that inflation had been vanquished. Why worry? Then all hell broke loose. The unsinkable Titanic sank on its maiden voyage in 1912—a reminder that man cannot tame nature. An assassination by a Bosnian revolutionary triggered a chain reaction that precipitated the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The New York Stock Exchange closed for four months during the war, and every major European exchange shut down. The flu pandemic of 1918–19 killed as many as 50 million people. Hyperinflation gripped Germany in 1922, setting the stage for Hitler’s rise to power, which began in 1923. The Crash of 1929 was followed by the Great Depression. Then World War II struck from 1939 to 1945. Thus, a period of calm prosperity gave way to three decades of disaster. Whipsawed by world events, the stock market was ferociously volatile from 1926 to 1945, leaving a generation of investors with a lingering dread of risk.