Synopses & Reviews
If you want to get rich, no matter how inexperienced you are in investment, this book can help you. Its message is that you must learn neither to avoid risk nor to court it foolhardily, but to manage it - and enjoy it too. The 12 major and 16 minor Zurich Axioms contained in this book are a set of principles providing a practical philosophy for the realistic management of risk, which can be followed successfully by anyone, not merely the 'experts'. Several of the Axioms fly right in the face of the traditional wisdom of the investment advice business - yet the enterprising Swiss speculators who devised them became rich, while many investors who follow the conventional path do not. Max Gunther, whose father was one of the original speculators who devised the Axioms, made his first capital gain on the stock market at the age of 13 and has never looked back. Now the rest of us can follow in his footsteps. Startlingly straightforward, the Axioms are explained in a book that is not only extremely entertaining but will prove invaluable to any investor, whether in stocks, commodities, art, antiques or real estate, who is willing to take risk on its own terms and chance a little to gain a lot.
Review
"If you have got the price of this book, stake it." -- Investors Chronicle "Investors Chronicle"
About the Author
Max Gunther was born in England and emigrated to the US when he was 11. He attended schools in New Jersey and received his B.A. from Princeton University in 1949. He served in the U.S. Army in 1950-51 and was a staff member of Business Week from 1951 to 1955. He then served as a contributing editor of Time for two years. His articles were published in several magazines and he wrote several books, including The Luck Factor, How to Get Lucky, The Very, Very Rich and How They Got That Way, Instant Millionaires and Wall Street and Witchcraft.
Table of Contents
Introduction: What the Axioms Are and How They Came to Be The First Major Axiom: On Risk The Second Major Axiom: On Greed The Third Major Axiom: On Hope The Fourth Major Axiom: On Forecasts The Fifth Major Axiom: On Patterns The Sixth Major Axiom: On Mobility The Seventh Major Axiom: On Intuition The Eighth Major Axiom: On Religion and the Occult The Ninth Major Axiom: On Optimism and Pessimism The Tenth Major Axiom: On Consensus The Eleventh Major Axiom: On Stubbornness The Twelfth Major Axiom: On Planning [The 16 Minor Axioms appear within each of the chapters on the Major Axioms]