As today's preeminent doomsday investor Mark Spitznagel describes his Daoist and roundabout investment approach, “one gains by losing and loses by gaining.” This is Austrian Investing, an archetypal, counterintuitive, and proven approach, gleaned from the 150-year-old Austrian School of economics, that is both timeless and exceedingly timely.
In The Dao of Capital, hedge fund manager and tail-hedging pioneer Mark Spitznagel—with one of the top returns on capital of the financial crisis, as well as over a career—takes us on a gripping, circuitous journey from the Chicago trading pits, over the coniferous boreal forests and canonical strategists from Warring States China to Napoleonic Europe to burgeoning industrial America, to the great economic thinkers of late 19th century Austria. We arrive at his central investment methodology of Austrian Investing, where victory comes not from waging the immediate decisive battle, but rather from the roundabout approach of seeking the intermediate positional advantage (what he calls shi), of aiming at the indirect means rather than directly at the ends. The monumental challenge is in seeing time differently, in a whole new intertemporal dimension, one that is so contrary to our wiring.
Spitznagel is the first to condense the theories of Ludwig von Mises and his Austrian School of economics into a cohesive and—as Spitznagel has shown—highly effective investment methodology. From identifying the monetary distortions and non-randomness of stock market routs (Spitznagel's bread and butter) to scorned highly-productive assets, in Ron Paul's words from the foreword, Spitznagel “brings Austrian economics from the ivory tower to the investment portfolio.”
The Dao of Capital provides a rare and accessible look through the lens of one of today's great investors to discover a profound harmony with the market process—a harmony that is so essential today.
Table of Contents:
Foreword xvii
Introduction xxiii
Chapter One: The Daoist Sage
Klipp’s Paradox 1
The Old Master 3
The Soft and Weak Vanquish the Hard and Strong 6
Into the Pit 9
The Privileges of a Trader 12
Robinson Crusoe in the Bond Pit 15
Fishing in “McElligot’s Pool” 18
Enter the Austrians: A von Karajan Moment 18
A State of Rest 21
Guiding into Emptiness 23
Moving On 26
The Wisdom of the Sages 29
Chapter Two: The Forest in the Pinecone
The Roundabout and the Logic of Growth 33
The Forest and the Tree 36
The Slow Seedling 39
Wildfire and Resource Reallocation 41
The Conifer Effect 43
A Logic of Growth 49
Chapter Three: SHI
The Intertemporal Strategy 51
The Dao of Sun Wu 56
Shi and the Crossbow 58
Li—The Direct Path 59
Shi and Li at the Weiqi Board 60
A Common Thread, from East to West 64
An Attack of Misunderstanding 68
On War—An Indirect Strategy 70
Shi, Ziel, Mittel, und Zweck 74
Chapter Four: The Seen and the Foreseen
The Roots of the Austrian Tradition 75
That Which Must Be Foreseen 78
At the Viennese Crossroads Between East and West 85
The Teleology of Baer’s Butterfly 88
Menger Establishes the Austrian School 89
Tutor to the Prince 93
Methodenstreit 97
Österreichische Schule 101
Chapter Five: UMWEG
The Roundabout Path of the Unternehmer 103
Postulating the “Positive” 105
Produktionsumweg 108
Böhm-Bawerk, the Bourgeois Marx 113
Faustmann’s Forest Economy 116
Rings of Capital 122
Henry Ford: The Roundabout Unternehmer 125
The Roundabout of Life 134
Chapter Six: Time Preference
Overcoming That Humanness About Us 139
“Radical” Böhm-Bawerk and the Psychology of Time Preference 145
The Curious Case of Phineas Gage 149
The Shi and Li Brain 151
The Subjectivity of Time 153
The Trade-Off of an Addict 158
No Zeal for Ziel on Wall Street 161
Adapting to the Intertemporal 164
Chapter Seven: “The Market is a Process” 167
The Man Who Predicted the Great Depression 169
Fleeing the Nazis 173
Human Action 175
Unternehmer in the Land of the Nibelungen 179
Genuine Change Is Afoot in Nibelungenland—A Market-Induced Drop in Interest Rates 187
Distortion Comes to Nibelungenland—The Central Bank Lowers Rates 190
Time Inconsistency and the Term Structure 194
The Day of Reckoning Comes to Nibelungenland 198
The Austrian View 199
The Market Process Prevails 201
Chapter Eight: Homeostasis
Seeking Balance in the Midst of Distortion 203
The Teleology of the Market 205
The Yellowstone Effect 207
Lessons from the Distorted Forest 209
Market Cybernetics 213
How Things “Go Right” 216
Spontaneous Order 217
Distortion 219
The Sand Pile Effect 220
Distortion’s Message: “Do Nothing” 222
The Shi of Capital 223
Chapter Nine: Austrian Investing I: The Eagle And The Swan
Exploiting Distortion with Misesian Tools 227
Homeostasis en force 229
Witness to the Distortion 231
An Initial Misesian Investment Strategy 236
The Eagle and the Swan 240
Case Study: Prototypical Tail Hedging 244
The Ziel and the Zweck: Central Bank Hedging 248
The Roundabout Investor 251
Chapter Ten: Austrian Investing II: Siegfried
Exploiting the Böhm-Bawerkian Roundabout 253
Siegfried, the Dragon Slayer 255
Case Study: Buying the Siegfrieds 263
Value Investing: Austrian Investing’s Estranged Heir 269
A Zweck Finally Attained 275
Epilogue: The SISU Of The Boreal Forest 277
The World Learns Sisu from the Victorious Finns 278
Sisu—Of Character and Character-Building 284
Notes 293
Acknowledgments 309
About the Author 311
Index 313
About the Author :
Mark Spitznagel is the founder and President of Universa Investments, an investment advisor that specializes in equity tail-hedgingor profiting from extreme stock market losses as a means of enhancing investment returns. In addition to hedge fund investing, Spitznagel's twenty-year investment career has ranged from independent pit trader at the Chicago Board of Trade to proprietary trading head at Morgan Stanley. He also owns and operates Idyll Farms in northern Michigan.
Review :
"Spitznagel has written an essential new book. Indeed, might be one of the most important books of the year, or any year for that matter."
—Forbes
"The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing In A Distorted World by Mark Spitznagel (Wiley, 2013) is a beautifully crafted book, one I can recommend to readers of all political/economic persuasions… it is impossible not to be shaped by its carefully presented history and logic."
—Seeking Alpha
"There is no shortage of market bears who take a grim view of the stock market. But Mr. Spitznagel has gained credibility in the investment world by predicting two market routs in the past decade, first in 2000 and then in 2008. Still, Mr. Spitznagel's approach is unusual for a money manager."
—The New York Times
"A fascinating and radical break from the investment dogma of the past several decades"
—Fortune
"While The Dao of Capital makes for demanding reading, it repays the effort as a heady historical and intellectual feast."
—Barron's
"Spitznagel could simply have written that investors need patience and must avoid the temptation of the quick profit; that building a successful strategy, and life, involves a longer-term approach foregoing instant gratification; that establishing a solid foundation while appearing not to create progress puts you in position for much greater success later on. He did not do that. Instead, he takes you on a tour of history and nature that illuminates these long held truths. In the end his message is simple, but by providing the historical underpinnings he brings them to life in a much more vibrant way."
—Futures Magazine
Among the "12 Books That Every Investor Should Read... deeply informative and will leave an impact on you."
—Business Insider
"A memoir and free market manifesto... that bring(s) theoretical concepts down to the practical?level."
—Institutional Investor
"I applaud the book as a look into the thinking process of a great investor, especially one that has a clear and consistent understanding of the market process, the dangers of government intervention, and the benefits of Austrian economics."
—Ludwig von Mises Institute
