Latticework: The New Investing by: Hagstrom, Robert G.
hardcover | 195 pages | ISBN:1-58799-000-8
Year Published:2000 – Texere | Tidewater Price: $39.95
In his latest book, Latticework, Robert Hagstrom, author of The Warren Buffet Way, The Warren Buffet Portfolio and The NASCAR Way, presents very compelling arguments for acquiring “worldly wisdom” to improve our understanding of the markets, to enable better investment decisions, and to provide diversified knowledge of the academic disciplines to help solve broad-scale problems facing society.
Using principal theories from physics, biology (evolution), the social sciences, psychology, philosophy (pragmatism), and literature to augment and even supplant economic theories, Hagstrom creates a “latticework” of mental models to explain the market and challenges investors to educate themselves beyond economics and finance. He also argues convincingly that solutions in one discipline can and indeed have often been found through knowledge in other areas. He encourages educators and students to ensure a broad-based education.
Latticework is an extremely insightful work that deserves great accolades. Hagstrom has given us an enlightened explanation of market behaviour and a means of making better investment decisions. For those laypersons that wish an understanding of the sciences and the scientific process, he has provided reading lists for each discipline addressed in his book. Latticework is not an education in itself, but more a jumping off point for further self-improvement. I read it in one sitting.