Company's 401(k) Plan.
01 July 2011
That's the headline of an article in The New York Times published the day after Thanksgiving last year. It summarizes the final inspirational mission and purpose of Gordon Murray's life.
Two months later, shortly before his 61st birthday, Gordon passed away. In his obituary, The New York Times called him "a former Wall Street executive who chose not to go quietly into the night, writing and publishing himself a popular paperback guide for ordinary investors while he was struggling with terminal cancer . . . days before his book was scheduled to come out in hardcover." The book is entitled The Investment Answer: Learn to Manage Your Money & Protect Your Financial Future.
Although I didn't know Gordon well, I did have the pleasure of meeting with him on a couple of occasions, once before he was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2008. He had a quick smile, loved to laugh and was on a mission.
Gordon had a very successful (and lucrative) career on Wall Street as a Managing Director at Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse First Boston, and he also spent time as a bond salesman at Goldman Sachs, where he worked with some of the most sophisticated institutional investors in the world. But after retiring, he discovered how little he actually knew about successful investing. With conviction he told me, "I learned more through Dan (Goldie, his co-author) and Dimensional in a year than I did in 25 years on Wall Street."
What was this newfound discovery that Gordon was passionate to share with the world? The prologue to his 85-page book (including the appendix and index) gives a strong hint:
"Wall Street brokers and active money managers use your relative lack of investment experience to their benefit . . . not yours."
“The financial press uses your inclination to be afraid during falling markets and confident during rising markets, to its benefit . . . not yours.”
You're probably thinking, "That's nothing new―that's what I hear from Smart Investor all the time, and come to think of it, I've noticed that myself."
Gordon wanted to explain in a few easy steps just how simple it was to have a successful investing experience, without all the conflicting "advice" from the talking heads on TV and other so-called "experts" who seem to disappear from public view after their assured analyses and predictions fail to come true. He often said, "One of the benefits of having a brain tumor is that everyone wants to hear what you have to say."
While he might have been right about that, Gordon's self-deprecating demeanor hid the fact that he was one of the highest ranking Wall Street veterans to look back and acknowledge that much of what they did was not in the best interests of their investing clients. And, as Gordon knew, that was the power of his message―it came from someone who had "been there and done that." He realized that he was wrong and his investors would have been better off following the systematic, academically research-based approach Smart Investor does daily for you.
The Investment Answer is a quick and easy read and I recommend it to anyone who wants to have a better understanding of the fundamentals of successful investing. You can order it on Amazon.com or give us a call and we'll get a copy to you.