Ken Fisher, Bestselling Author, Forbes Columnist, Fisher Investments CEO
Ken Fisher is best known for his prestigious Portfolio Strategy column in Forbes, where his 25-year tenure of high-profile calls makes him one of the longest-running columnist in
Forbes' history.
Ken Fisher's stock market forecasts are among the most accurate as measured by independent 3rd party CXO Advisory Group.* The research firm's "Guru Grades" assesses the accuracy of publicly available forecasts of 50 experts regarding the future direction of the overall U.S. stock market.
Ken Fisher is the chairman and CEO of Fisher Investments, an independent money management firm serving large corporate and public pension plans, as well as endowments, foundations, and high net worth individuals. He founded Fisher Investments as a sole proprietorship in 1979.
Ken has written six books, including three New York Times bestsellers, 2006's The Only Three Questions That Count, 2008's The Ten Roads to Riches, and 2009's How to Smell a Rat. In 1984, his Super Stocks was that year's bestselling stock market book. Others include 1987's The Wall Street Waltz and 1993's 100 Minds That Made the Market, both re-released by John Wiley & Sons in 2007.
In addition to English, Ken’s books have been translated into Chinese, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Romanian, and Thai, reaching of 2/3 of global GDP.**
He has also been published, interviewed and/or been written about in numerous major American, British, and German finance and business periodicals. He writes a weekly column for Handelsblatt, Germany's leading daily. Ken's early theoretical work in the 1970s popularized a tool known as the Price to Sales Ratio, which is now part of core financial curriculum. His recent research focuses on the emerging field of behavioralism and has appeared in many professional and scholarly journals such as the Journal of Portfolio Management and Financial Analysts Journal.
Ken Fisher is the third and youngest son of Philip A. Fisher, legendary investor and author of classic investing book, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, which remains in print to this day. Phil Fisher is credited with influencing a wide array of later successful and famed investors both through his teachings and writings. Phil Fisher had his own investment management practice in San Francisco where Ken worked for him in the early 1970s before starting his own firm. Ken is the only industry professional his father ever trained.
Ken Fisher's hobbies include the history of Kings Mountain, California (at the northern end of the Santa Cruz Mountains in the redwoods) and 19th century redwood lumbering history as well as lumbering history in general and everything about trees. Ken endowed the Ken Fisher Chair in Redwood Forest Ecology at Humboldt State University in order to support the study of coastal redwood ecology. It is the world’s first endowed chair devoted to a single tree species. Ken and his wife Sherrilyn have also endowed The Ken and Sherrilyn Fisher Journalism Center in the San Mateo Library.
* Ranking as of 1/1/2010 and can be found at http://www.cxoadvisory.com/gurus. Fisher Investments has no affiliation with CXO Advisory Group. Market calls represent Ken Fisher's public descriptions of the overall market and don't represent the performance of Fisher Investments.
**Based on countries’ official languages and GDP reported by the IMF, as of 9/30/2009.
|
|
|
Q: Do you really manage money for your clients with the Three Questions?
A: Of course! I can’t say it enough—the only way to make money in the market is by knowing what others don't. My firm, Fisher Investments, manages billions for individuals and institutions—and I only make market bets when I’m pretty sure I know something unique. The Three Questions help me do that. Most professionals want you to think this is very hard, but it isn’t. You just need to think like a scientist. The Three Questions help you do that.
Q: How can I use the Three Questions to become a better stock picker?
A: The Three Questions can help you pick better stocks, but so what? You don’t need to pick the best stocks to make money in the market. In the book I show you why.
Q: Why Three Questions? Why not Two or Four? Or Eighteen?
A: The Three Questions are really just one question: What do you know that others don’t? But that one question doesn’t give you something to act on. The Three Questions gives you a process to get at what you can know that others don’t.
Q: What made you decide to write this book?
A: This book pays homage to the most holy of “isms”—Capitalism. If you are not already a healthy fan of Capitalism, I hope the book will convert you.
Q: It’s been 12 years since your last book. Why now?
A: It takes a lot of time to write a book. But I haven’t stopped writing. I’ve been writing the Portfolio Strategy column monthly in Forbes for the last 24 years. I’ve also been writing a monthly column in the UK for Bloomberg Money. And you may have seen my articles in Research, Financial Planning, Millionaire, a slew of other places as well as scholarly journals. But since my last book, I’ve been primarily focused on my firm, Fisher Investments. I provide a service that is in demand, and along the way employ a lot of people. How Capitalistic is that?
Why now? I am chairman and CEO of a well-run and highly delegated business which gives me time to finally put my strategy into writing.
Q: Why are you sharing your secrets with the public? Aren’t you giving away your market advantage?
A: First, the market truths I share are simply a demonstration of the Questions. Learning to use the Questions will help much more than reading about a few cute tricks I know. Learn to use the Questions, and you’ll be able to keep finding new truths on your own forever. There’s your advantage.
Second, no! The point of the Three Questions is constant innovation. If what I know is good and true, others will find out eventually, whether I clue them in or not. But I’ll already have moved on because I use the Three Questions to keep innovating. And you can do it too.
Q: What effect do you hope this book will have on the future?
A: I hope fewer investors will treat investing as a craft, and start approaching it as a science. If we all become scientists, who knows where we can go! It’ll be exciting to see. But knowing what I know about investors, I know that evolution will take a very long time. Which is good news, because those of us who think like scientists will have a distinct advantage over everyone else!
|
|
|
|
|