Product Description

This authoritative and accessible investment classic promises rare insight into what it really takes to run money in a top-performing investment fund.

Anthony Bolton, the UK’s most successful stock market investor, tells the story of his contrarian approach to managing money. He provides invaluable lessons on the factors that really matter in picking a stock: the need to identify good managers, how to run a portfolio, the importance of value investing, reading charts and how to trade successfully.

It’s not easy to continually buy low and sell high. This book gives clear directions for doing well in the stock market, and doing well consistently. Investing Against the Tide shows you how to make the right decisions at the right time.

Anthony Bolton is considered the UK’s most successful stock market investor and fund manager. Over twenty five years he delivered a market-beating return of 20% in his Fidelity Special Situations Fund. How did he do it, and what can you learn from him?

In Investing Against the Tide, Anthony Bolton tells the story of his contrarian approach to managing money. He provides invaluable lessons on the factors that really matter when investing: how to pick a stock, the need to identify good managers, how to run a portfolio, the importance of value investing, reading charts and how to trade successfully.

In this account of financial accomplishment, Bolton reveals the secrets of his success. It’s not easy constantly to buy low and sell high and this book gives clear directions for doing well in the stock market, and doing well consistently. Chapter by chapter Investing Against the Tide shows you how to make the right decisions at the right time and featured key lessons show you how you really can learn from a life running money.

Investing Against the Tideis an authoritative guide for investment professionals, offering them a rare insight into what it really takes to run money in a top-performing fund, as well as providing amateur investors the chance to learn the stock-picking strategies from a leading money-manager.

About the author

Anthony Bolton left Cambridge University with a degree in engineering to begin a career in the City. He started as a graduate trainee working for Keyser Ullmann in 1971 before taking up a full time position as an assistant in their investment department. In 1976 he moved to Schlesingers where he became, for the first time, an investment manager. In 1979, aged 29, he was recruited by Fidelity, the international fund management group, as one of its first London-based investment managers, a move that proved to be the launch of a long and successful career. In surveys of professional investors, he is regularly voted the fund manager most respected by his peers. He retired from full-time investment management at the end of 2007, but continues to work at Fidelity as a mentor of the analysts and younger fund managers as well as being involved in overseeing Fidelity’s investment process. His hobby is composing classical music. Anthony Bolton is married with three children and lives in West Sussex.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10290 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Review

“Legendary…” – Daily Telegraph

“Legendary…” – Observer

“one of the most outstanding performers of recent years…” – Scotsman on Sunday

“the people's champion - and the professionals' choice…” – Daily Mail

“Britain’s most feted…..’ – Financial Times

“best professional investor in Britain over the past couple of decades…” – Guardian, July 2008

“…he turned £1,000 into a staggering £147,000 over 28 years” – Daily Telegraph 2008

“He has laid down a performance track record that will take some beating” - www.thedailyreckoning.com

“…has been the most consistently successful….. of the last 30 years…” – BBC News

“…he’s been the top of his trade since 1979…”  - Independent

From the Back Cover

Anthony Bolton is considered the UK’s most successful stock market investor and fund manager. Over twenty five years he delivered a market-beating return of 20% in his Fidelity Special Situations Fund. How did he do it, and what can you learn from him?

In Investing Against the Tide, Anthony Bolton tells the story of his contrarian approach to managing money. He provides invaluable lessons on the factors that really matter when investing: how to pick a stock, the need to identify good managers, how to run a portfolio, the importance of value investing, reading charts and how to trade successfully.

In this account of financial accomplishment, Bolton reveals the secrets of his success. It’s not easy constantly to buy low and sell high and this book gives clear directions for doing well in the stock market, and doing well consistently. Chapter by chapter Investing Against the Tide shows you how to make the right decisions at the right time and featured key lessons show you how you really can learn from a life running money.

About the Author

Anthony Bolton is Britain’s best-known and longest-serving fund manager. He is a Fidelity Investment award winner, feted newspaper columnist and instantly recognisable financial name.

Over twenty five years he delivered an exceptional annual return of 20% on his Special Situations Fund, compared with 7.7 % for the FTSE All-Share index.  His strategy, which blends analysis of a company’s books with quizzing the management and studying performance graphs, has an enviable track record.

Anthony is an experienced writer, with a monthly column in the FT money section that is widely read.

Customer Reviews

Neither particularly illuminating nor particularly useful for private investors (nor professional ones, most likely)
It is not quite clear who the target audience of his book is supposed to be, nor what its purpose is. I suspect neither private nor professional investors nor anyone else with rudimentary financial knowledge for that matter will find much of interest in this book in terms of investing advice. And those who are looking to find out more about Anthony Bolton the person will be disappointed as well. In short, probably anyone can give this book a miss.

"Lessons from a Life Running Money" reads the subtitle, but there are not really that many practical lessons to be found, and the few that are not covered by common-sense already are impossible for private investors to follow, and too vague for professional investors to find useful even if they have the resources described at their disposal.

Written in a rather tiresome, almost diary-like, prose the book is riddled with nuggets of wisdom such as "[On information sources, analyst research] Over time, I've found some commentators more useful than others and I will spend more time on their output. I've spent years accumulating knowledge about who is useful and who is not." - Oh really? Who'd have thought!

What the book lacks in practical advice or lucidity, it can't make up with amusing or insightful anecdotes either.

However, not all is bad: novice investors will find all the usual investment insights (hard to time the market, take a long-term view, be contrarian, knowing when to sell is as important as knowing when to buy, basic asset allocation principles etc.) covered, along with a bullet point summary at the end of book. Having said that, the author rarely tries to explain or reason, but mostly just states (pontificates, some might say) his views and insights as he sees them. This of course is to be expected given the format of the book, but not particularly helpful.

Common sense & insight from a gifted investor
Anthony Bolton is one of a handful of really outstanding UK fund managers to emerge in the last quarter of the 20th century. Some years ago he retired from running funds but remains with Fidelity, passing on his wealth of experience to younger fund managers and investment analysts there.

Having known Mr Bolton professionally for over 25 years, I can say with some certainty that his comments and insights are always worth careful study. He is not a pure "value" investor, in that he has always looked at a range of factors when deciding whether an investment is good or bad, but he certainly prefers to invest in things that he views as fundamentally undervalued or unappreciated by others. This trait, in turn, leads to him being a "contrarian" investor - in other words, he shares some characteristics with another great 20th century investor, Sir John Templeton: to paraphrase Sir John, "buy when others are too fearful to invest and prices are low; sell to others when greed rules and prices are high". Mr Bolton took "value investing" to a different level, however, by virtue of the range of parameters that he investigated when investing, rather than simply considering price. This volume will give you an insight into how - as well as why - he invests.

Mr Bolton's summary ought to be required reading for anyone coming into investment management. It should also be helpful to any serious private investor. The book is thoughtfully and logically laid out, well written, and the typeface and print quality are excellent too. Highly commended.

worth the read
Especially for professional investors very useful (to compare similarities / thoroughness in approach). For retail investors his advice on how to invest is not practically implementable to a large extent, as a retail investor does not have access to top management or access to very expensive databases containing every detail on the history of all listed companies.
The very least it shows is that Fidelity can do something for retail investors they can't do themselves. Conclusion: bring your money to Fidelity! (or another professional money management firm)