Confessions of a Permabear - by Jeremy Grantham (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From the legendary investor famous for his market innovations and predictions comes a brilliant insider account that is as much the tale of a storied career as it is a vivid, propulsive history of the last sixty years of the stock market itself

Raised in a Yorkshire coal-mining town, Jeremy Grantham once won seven games of Monopoly in a single evening--he figured out the most efficient properties on the board and went all in. So begins the story of one of the world's greatest investors and of an iconoclastic career launched into the stratosphere by a few simple ideas: buy cheap, watch for bubbles, and stick to your guns when you know you're right. Deep curiosity about the history of the market and investors' fundamental behavior keeps Grantham one step ahead. He creates one of the first index funds in the 1970s, pioneers quantitative funds in the 1980s, and his firm becomes the world's biggest investor in emerging markets. He earns a reputation for loudly and accurately predicting bubbles but also learns by painful experience why so few others will: "It is terrible business to blow the whistle on a major bull market." Grantham's firm skyrockets from $250 million to a peak of $155 billion in assets under management. But as his wealth grows, so do his fears about the deficiencies of capitalism and the unfolding environmental crisis. He decides--at the top of his game--to donate 95% of his wealth to address the threat of climate change.

With wit that's as cutting against himself as his critics, Grantham reveals how hunting for bargains requires understanding the deep inefficiencies of the market and the human foibles that drive it. As he demonstrates again and again--to stay the course when the market is wrong, you need to be willing to endure furious clients and a lot of money lost in the meantime. "The best ideas eventually come out on top," Grantham says, "but sadly there's no guarantee you won't go out of business waiting." That you might lose your job for being right is at the root of the short-termism that dominates so much of the investing landscape, and such thinking has had disastrous results in a world facing existential long-term problems. Ultimately, Grantham offers a deeply human, often heretical, and quietly profound lens on investing today.

Review Quotes

Praise for Jeremy Grantham:

"Grantham's quarterly letters, which command a cult following of readers within and beyond the financial industry, inspire even the most short-term profit-minded investors to do a little fate-of-the-world-scale thinking."--Carlo Rotella, New York Times Magazine

Praise for The Price of Time:

Winner of the 2023 Hayek Book Prize

Longlisted for the 2022 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award

"A fascinating work of history and analysis . . . [Chancellor] has seemingly read every pamphlet and treatise about interest ever written."--Adam Rowe, Wall Street Journal

"Is it possible to write a highly engaging history of the world going back to Hammurabi, unfolding along the way a bitingly comprehensive explanation for its problems today, all told through a single character? Apparently yes. Edward Chancellor has done it, an achievement all the more notable since his drama is built around a character so unheroic on its surface: his 'price of time' is interest rates. This is a timely, vitally important and hugely readable book."--Ruchir Sharma, Chairman, Rockefeller International and New York Times bestselling author

"Edward Chancellor has produced not just a brilliant explainer of the value of money and time but a hugely engaging history of the greatest problem confronting markets today. The Price of Time is a must read -- a copy should be on the desk of everyone who has anything to do with financial markets or wondered why things work as they do."--Merryn Somerset Webb, Editor-in-Chief, MoneyWeek

Praise for Edward Chancellor:

"Entertaining, useful, admirable . . . Chancellor seems to have read everything." --New York Times Book Review, on Devil Take the Hindmost

"[Edward Chancellor is] one of the great financial writers of our era."--Financial Analysts Journal, on Capital Account

About the Author

Jeremy Grantham is cofounder and long-term investment strategist of GMO and Founder of the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received the Carnegie Medal for Philanthropy in 2017. He lives in London.

Edward Chancellor is the author of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest, winner of the 2023 Hayek Book Prize. Chancellor has also edited two investment books, Capital Account and Capital Returns. An award-winning financial journalist, Chancellor is currently a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews, and has contributed to many other publications, including the Wall Street Journal, MoneyWeek, New York Review of Books, and Financial Times. He lives in London.