Price: $22.95 - $12.50
(as of Aug 12, 2025 08:45:12 UTC – Details)
Legendary investor Howard Marks is chairman and co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, which has $100 billion under management. He is sought out by the world’s leading value investors, and his client memos brim with insightful commentary and a time-tested, fundamental philosophy. Now for the first time, readers can benefit from Marks’s wisdom, concentrated into a single volume that speaks to both the amateur and seasoned investor. Informed by a lifetime of experience and study, The Most Important Thing explains the keys to successful investment and the pitfalls that can destroy capital or ruin a career. Utilizing passages from his memos to illustrate his ideas, Marks teaches by example, detailing the development of an investment philosophy that fully acknowledges the complexities of investing and the perils of the financial world. Brilliantly applying insight to today’s volatile markets, Marks offers a volume that is part memoir, part creed, with a number of broad takeaways.
Publisher : Harper Collins India
Publication date : August 25, 2018
Language : English
Print length : 194 pages
ISBN-10 : 9353022797
ISBN-13 : 978-9353022792
Item Weight : 7.7 ounces
Dimensions : 9.33 x 6.26 x 0.79 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #16,967 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #7 in Financial Risk Management (Books) #31 in Business Decision Making #39 in Introduction to Investing
Customer Reviews: 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 3,616 ratings var dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction; P.when(‘A’, ‘ready’).execute(function(A) { if (dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction !== true) { dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction = true; A.declarative( ‘acrLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault”: true }, function (event) { if (window.ue) { ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } } ); } }); P.when(‘A’, ‘cf’).execute(function(A) { A.declarative(‘acrStarsLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault” : true }, function(event){ if(window.ue) { ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } }); });
Customers say
Customers find the book encapsulates the essence of what is important in investing and serves as a wonderful guide on how to combine value investing. Moreover, the book is easy to read, particularly for beginners, and customers appreciate its concise and simple language. However, customers note that the book is extremely repetitive.
Lauchlan Mackinnon, Ph.D. –
A thoughtful investing philosophy
This was an excellent book on core principles and ideas underlying investing. It is not a book on any particular investing strategy, but rather a book on his philosophy of investing, learned over the years from experience, from books, from experts he knows, and through supporting clients.It is structured as 18 chapters, each reflecting on a different aspect of investing … each of which is the next “most important thing.” Because, he says, ALL the “things” in the book are important.It covers topics such as what risk really is (his notion of risk a much more perceptive and useful idea than the unhelpful nonsense from finance theory, where risk is defined as market volatility), or how to identify value.The book is targeted more towards active investors who want to deliver superior performance than market indexes (i.e. significantly beat market averages), which is of course is hard to do. To achieve this, he says, investors need to have uncommon insight or “second level thinking,” and to form a clear understanding of value (so that one can understand the relationship of price to value in the context of any risks).If you don’t want to pursue above average performances, he points out, you’d be better off investing in an index fund (or, nowadays, its ETF equivalent) – which out-performs around 90% of active fund managers anyway.Outperforming the market index is a “big freaking deal,” which few investors do successfully or consistently. He offers a philosophy for key things to understand and reflect on if you want to go down that path … or if you want to be a better investor in general.I recommend the book.
customer a –
Great book.
A great book about risk control. A must read for all investors.
Bill S. –
good advice
This book gives a well thought our and documented argument for value investing.There are references to historical market events and the experience of the writer.The arguments arent new but presented in a more believable and unbiased form thanmany similar books.He disarms to some degree the other major approaches to investing, though admistting they can succeedin certain situations.ANyone starting to invest especially should read this book.
Richard M. Rockwood –
An investment classic
Mr. Marks states that when he was attending client meetings over the years he noticed a pattern. He would say in one meeting that that such and such was the most important thing about investing and in later meetings he found himself referencing other items that he titled the most important thing to understand. Upon reflection about this pattern he decided to write a memo in July of 2003 that covered all these critical areas in his investing philosophy.This new book expands upon the ideas he covered in that original memo. Topics that are covered include: market efficiency, value, risk, investment cycles, contrarianism, finding bargains, patient opportunism, circle of competence, luck, avoiding pitfalls, etc… In short all the topics that a focus investor needs to understand and be able to place, and use, in their own mental models.What does Mr. Marks want his readers to gain from his book? Here are his own words from the introduction of the book:”I didn’t set out to write a manual for investing. Rather, this book is a statement of my own investment philosophy. I consider it my creed, and in the course of my investment career it has served like a religion. These are the things I believe in, the guideposts that keep me on track. The messages I deliver are the ones I consider the most lasting. I’m confident their relevance will extend beyond today.You won’t find a how-to book here. There’s no surefire recipe for investment success. No step-by-step instructions. No valuation formulas containing mathematical constants or fixed ratios – in fact, very few numbers. Just a way to think that might help you make good decisions and, perhaps more important, avoid the pitfalls that ensnare so many.It’s not my goal to simplify investing. In fact, the thing I most want to make clear is just how complex it is. Those who try to simplify investing do their audience a great disservice. I’m going to stick to general thoughts on return, risk and process…”Mr. Marks has succeeded in his goals in a brilliant manner. There is, quite simply, an incredible amount of wisdom between the covers of his book and an investor is doing them a disservice if they don’t read, and re-read, this book. I will be placing it on my shelf right next to the great investments classics of Security Analysis, The Intelligent Investor, the Berkshire Hathaway annual reports, and Margin of Safety. Quite simply I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Amazon Customer –
A must read for anyone who wish to be an advanced investor
I was getting really bored reading investing books because they were all saying more or less the same thing. I wanted to read an investing book that advance my investing knowledge beyond the basic stuff. This book did it. The amount of knowledge packed in it is worth gold. It really showed me just how wrong was I and many I know are in our investing strategy. Reading about the market cycles was an eye opener.
Sandro0808 –
es liest sich nicht so flüssig wie ein Roman. Kann man auch nicht erwarten. Dennoch sehr schön strukturiert, man muss vorher kein Experte sein, nachher ist man’s. Bestimmt. Die Kernaussagen werden noch mal prägnant zusammengefasst. Ich werde dieses Buch immer wieder in die Hand nehmen. Je nach Bedarf.
Robert ‘Bob’ Macespera –
This is a superb, and short, book that, to this eyes, is the best book on stocks investing since the canonical “The Intelligent Investor” was published three-quarters of a century ago (in 1948). I will defy those who may think this is an exaggeration, to name a book on stock trades so accurate, so simple, so easy to read and so practical like this one. Based heavily (and quoting often) Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders, Howard Marks explains his experience, and success, through the main points on investment. However, the author stays blissfully away from platitudes and hollow comments: no shortcut-to-get-rich here, no false promises. Far from it, Mr Marks lists constantly what’s needed to succeed in the stock markets: loads of common sense, patience, discipline and a sound investment strategy based on the investor’s ultimate goals. Only Warren Buffett managed to say it shorter: “buy good stocks cheap”.And at only 177 pages this “Most Important Thing” is an example that consistent messages (possibly must) be delivered in a short fashion – 95% of what’s written about the stocks markets nowadays is a copy-and-paste or a bromide; most is showy and inflated with formulas only a few can understand. Mr Marks effortlessly makes all that literature futile by getting down to the point in every chapter and by not bloating the book with not even one mathematical formula. Those starting in the mysteries of buying and selling shares do have here a wonderful introduction and sound advice at a rate of, at least, one per page. Those out there with investment experience, will still learn something new, without a doubt.As a coda, I’ll recommend three other books that, after Graham’s Intelligent Investor and Marks’Most Important Thing, do supply with priceless lessons on shares investment (this is just a short comment, I’ve reviewed these books individually too):Peter Lynch: “One up on Wall Street”. A lont-time successful fund manager, Mr Lynch is perhaps the most enthusiastic of writers on shares, and manages to transmit this enthusiasm without losing a bit of accuracy. This book is a bit dated. Published in 1989 the “big” companies were then General Elecric, Ford and the big tobacco and these firms are used for the many examples the book contains, but its lessons are as good and useful for the third second half of the XX century as they are now.John Bogle: “The little book of Common Sense investing”. Very short, but packed with sound advice. Also a very successful fund manager, Mr Bogle wrote a pamphlet on staying away from fashions and “trends” – his theory is that following a stock index for decades may sound dull, but it is a guarantee of profit. With very good entries on dividends too.Philip Fisher: “Common stocks and Uncommon Profits”. Even older than the previous two, this minor classic was published in 1960 (one of Mr Fisher’s favorite stocks was Motorola, then a transistors maker). It is written in the elegantly sober style of the mid-century and it is full of investment wisdom. As with the previous other two books, it offers no miracle and it states often that investment is a long-term activity.
jackson –
Brilliant book, easy to reed simple yet complex way of thinking about financial markets
Mog。 –
原書でどうしても確認したい部分があり、購入しました。この本を呼んで儲かるかどうかはわかりませんが、投資する人間にとってとても有用な言葉が詰まっています。
alexander –
Ho comprato questo libro e devo dire che è fatto molto bene e ti elargisce dei consigli importanti per saper come investire e sopratutto quando investire. Alcune volte risulta ripetitivo ma credo che sia per il semplice fatto che vuole farti inculcare alcune idee fondamentali. Great Book!!! Leggetelo se non volete essere fregati dal mercato. 😉