The Most Important Thing
Marks, co-founder of Oaktree Capital, distills decades of his famous memos into a philosophy of risk, contrarianism, and second-level thinking. First-level thinking says it's a good company, let's buy. Second-level thinking says everyone thinks it's great, so it's overpriced, let's sell. Buffett opens Marks's memos before anything else on his desk. That should tell you something.
Marks names a new 'most important thing' nearly every chapter, which tells you the title is a shell game. The memos these pages compress already repeated one another, and the compression keeps the repetition: risk, cycles, second-level thinking, stated and restated. Genuinely wise, and fully delivered by page eighty. He also never shows you how to price anything.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
