Based on the success of the bestselling book, The Only Three Questions That Count, Fisher Investments and John Wiley & Sons announce Fisher Investments Press, a new publishing imprint focused on investing and wealth building.
"Our goal in partnering with Wiley to create Fisher Investments Press is to reach a wide and diverse investment audience. Wiley's broad and proven distribution networks, as well as our past positive experiences with the firm made the company an ideal partner for this initiative," said Ken Fisher. "Working together, we've developed an investment series that can offer insight to the full spectrum of investors, from novices to professionals."
2006's The Only Three Questions That Count from Fisher Investments Press illustrates how investors can achieve success by approaching investing as a science, not a craft. By using a simple framework, investors can identify unique information to ultimately make money in the market. This is based on the premise that widely-known information is priced into the market and one cannot be successful acting on the same information as everybody else. Ken Fisher's firm, Fisher Investments, calls this process "capital markets science."
The following is an excerpt from the preface of The Only Three Questions That Count from Fisher Investments Press:
Who Am I to Tell You Something That Counts?
Who am I to tell you anything, much less anything that counts? Or that there are only three questions that count and I know what they are? Why should you bother reading any of this? Why listen to me at all?
Well, for starters, I've been in the investment industry for more than a third of a century and seen lots of water spill over the dam-and I'm not exactly a fan of my industry. I was raised in this industry. My father was in it before me-starting in 1932. He made a pretty big name for himself. I learned lots from him and went on. I founded and am CEO of Fisher Investments running more than $30 billion with an audited long-term history beating the market in a multiplicity of investing styles. It serves more than 16,000 high net worth individuals and an impressive roster of institutions -major corporate and public pension plans and endowments and foundations-spanning America, Britain, and Canada. I've written Forbes' "Portfolio Strategy" column for 22 years making me the fifth longest running columnist in Forbes' 89-year history. I've done another column in Bloomberg Money in Britain for seven years-and have written three prior books and have been published in numerous scholarly and professional journals. I am, from decades back, the father of the Price-to-Sales Ratio, now a standard part of today's financial curriculum. Without meaning to sound too darned pompous I'm on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, a selfmade richie. I've done lots of things.
And I'm here to tell you the prime cumulative lesson of my long career is when it comes to investing there are only three questions that count. In the following pages, I'll share them with you and discuss how they translate into a way of thinking you can use over and over again as the basis for your investment decisions. That's what this book is about.
Okay, that's not exactly true. There really is only one question that counts. Or at least, only one question that really counts. But I don't know how to express that one question in a way you can easily use for everyday investing decisions. If broken down into three subparts I know how. Hence, the book title.
And what is that only question that counts? Finance theory is quite clear the only rational basis for placing a market bet is if you believe somehow, some way, you know something others don't know. Effectively, it's an unfair advantage; but if done correctly is fully legal, ethical, moral, and even nonfattening. The only question that counts is: What do you know that others don't?
Most people don't know anything others don't. Most folks don't think they're supposed to know something others don't. We'll see why. But saying you must know something others don't-it just isn't at all novel. Pretty much everyone who took a basic college investment class was told this, although most people conveniently forget this truism.
Without answering the question-what do you know that others don't- investing with an aim to do as well or better than the market is futile. I'll say that another way. Markets are pretty "efficient" at pricing all currently known information into today's prices. There is nothing new about that statement. It's an established pillar of finance theory and has been repeatedly verified over the decades. If you make market decisions based on the same information others have (or have access to) you will overall fail relative to what the markets would have rendered you on their own without any decision making on your part. Savvy? If you try to outguess where the market will go or what sectors will lead and lag or what stock to buy based on what you read in newspapers or chatter about with your friends and peers-it doesn't matter how smart or well-trained you are-you will sometimes be right or lucky or both, but more often wrong or unlucky or both, and overall do worse than if you didn't make such bets at all.
I bet you hate hearing that. But I already told you I didn't know how to express that truism as a single question in a way useful to you. What I can do is show you how to know things other people don't know.
Before taking you down the path to knowing things others don't, a path you can control yourself and explore in your own unique ways, let me take a little longer to express the pointlessness of not knowing something others don't. It'll be fun, I promise.
Ken Fisher Forbes Columnist, Bestselling Author, Fisher Investments CEO