Where Are the Customers' Yachts?
Fred Schwed's 1940 comedy about Wall Street, still accurate about fees and forecasts
Fred Schwed Jr.'s short 1940 book takes its title from a visitor to New York who is shown the bankers' and brokers' yachts and asks where the customers' are. What follows is a funny, unhurried tour of the ways the investment business separates people from their money: forecasts nobody can make, fees for activity that adds nothing, and the human habit of believing both. Almost none of it has dated. It is often the first book handed to someone about to start dealing with brokers or fund managers, because it makes the wariness stick without a single formula.
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Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Warren BuffettRecommends
Investor · Berkshire Hathaway chairman
The funniest book ever written about investing, he wrote in the 2006 letter, and one that lightly delivers many truly important messages on the subject. It went on the discounted book table at that year's annual meeting alongside Poor Charlie's Almanack.
Source: Berkshire Hathaway: 2006 Chairman's Letter
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Book entry · notes paraphrased from cited sources, quoted excerpts copied from the transcript they link to. Not medical advice. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by anyone listed. How this works.