Killing the Market: Legendary Investor Robert W. Wilson by Roemer McPhee

This book is about the life and 40 year career in the financial market of Robert W. Wilson.

Robert W. Wilson was an investor and philanthropist, a man driven to succeed. He made brave investments, followed his own council, and was filled with grit, and the determination. It is these qualities which have led him to be called the greatest investor of our time.

He starting out with $15,000 from his mother in 1958 and had the ethos that ‘[to be an investor], money has to be the most important thing in the world to you.’ Through clever investing and sheer hard work, using other people’s money, his fortune grew astronomically over the years, and just before his death in 2013 he had a net worth of $800 million.

This small book is packed with interesting information about the companies Robert W. Wilson was involved in, which include many of the giants such as Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Atari, Compaq Computer Corp, Burroughs, Pizza Time Theater, American Airlines and Federal Express.

I also touches sensitively in his personal life and passions, such as the opera, and his interest in nature, wildlife and conservation, all of which he supported fervently.

He handled his affairs with control and dignity, and this included his suicide in 2013. He left a note saying “I had a rewarding life. Thank you and goodbye to all my friends. Please make sure you cancel all my plans. Tell everyone what I did. I’m not ashamed of killing myself. Sell all my stuff,” the note read, according to law-enforcement sources.”

The author of this short book has treated the reader to an in-depth look at the life of this amazing man, and what made him tick, it is interesting, inspirational and I highly recommend it.

Reviewed by Susan Keefe

http://www.susan-keefe.com

https://youtu.be/0_OVgfBsJvs

About Roemer McPhee:

Roemer McPhee was born in Washington D.C. and resided there for several years while his father was special legal counsel to President Eisenhower. At age 17, he attended Princeton University, where he studied history, then turned to business school at Wharton, as he was always interested in money and investing. After working as a trader for Morgan Stanley for two years, he now works as a private investor and is very active in the futures market and cash markets. In his free time, McPhee likes to play squash and tennis, and enjoys cycling. He also loves to sail, and travel. Aside from his new book on Wilson, McPhee is the author of the book The Boomer's Guide to Story: A Search for Insight in Literature and Film. McPhee is married and has one son. He lives in New York City.

About the book: Robert W. Wilson is the greatest investor of all time, on the only criterion that counts: percentage return on capital. What you make with what you have, what you started out with. Wilson would be the first to point out that there are investors richer than himself; but on a percentage-return basis, he is unmatched, and untouched. He received $15,000 from his mother in 1958, and he ran this stake to the fabulous sum of $230 million, by 1986. With assistance he himself sought out, he then nearly quadrupled his net worth to $800 million, by the year 2000. This return, after taxes no less, is more than 50,000 to one. More than 5,000,000 percent. Wilson did it in about forty years, without partners. How? How, possibly? This book, "Killing the Market," tries to find, or at least get close to, an answer. 
Robert Wilson quit the investing business in 1986, because he had "lost his touch," as he said. The most productive of men, the hardest working of men, he started to move into philanthropy. Eventually he became just about the most important philanthropist in the United States. Of the $800 million he accumulated, he had given away fully $700 million of it at the time of his death, in 2013 (by his own hand). Movingly, Robert Wilson's gifts were never to things that entertained him, or to pet projects; they were always to charities trying very hard to make the world a better place for everybody.

Available from Amazon in Paperback  https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Market-Legendary-Investor-Robert/dp/...

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