Will I love Capital Ideas?

Peter Bernstein was one of the great investment writers.

This book is where I got my first taste into the great theorists whose works revolutionized Wall Street such as Harry Markowitz, Bill Sharpe, Myron Scholes, and Bob Merton, all of whom I later had the pleasure of getting to know. I had read about their theories, but hadn’t appreciated the impact they had on the investment industry. Bernstein showed how these luminaries changed the way we think about investments.

Peter Bernstein’s Against the Gods – a history of how humans used mathematics to tame risk – is arguably his best work, but Capital Ideas is the deep-cut that deserves much broader appreciation.

It vividly explores the intellectual underpinnings of modern finance formed by the work of the titans of financial economics: Louis Bachelier, Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Fischer Black, Myron Scholes, Robert Merton, Franco Modigliani, and Merton Miller.