Keynes and the Market: How the World’s Greatest Economist Overturned Conventional Wisdom and Made a Fortune on the Stock Market

John Maynard Keynes was a many-sided figure—world-changing economist, architect of the post-War international monetary system, bestselling author, a Baron in the House of Lords, and key member of the Bloomsbury group.

One of his lesser-known talents was the ability to make vast sums of money on the stock market. At the time of his death, Keynes’ net worth—almost entirely built through successful stock investments—amounted to the present-day equivalent of more than $30 million, and the college endowment fund he managed had massively outperformed the broader market over a two-decade period. Keynes was a member of that rare breed—an economist who flourished not only in the rarefied heights of ivory tower academia, but also amidst the bustle and hubbub of the financial markets.

But can an analysis of this particular incarnation of Keynes—the shrewd stock picker and star fund manager—be of any benefit to the modern investor? The answer, author Justyn Walsh demonstrates, is a resounding yes. In this era of day traders, delta ratios, and dot-coms, Keynes’ observations on stock market behavior, in fact, are more relevant than ever.

The author reveals how, after twice being brought to the precipice of financial ruin as a result of financial speculation, Keynes developed the investment principles that would win him singular stock market success. He completely inverted his investment philosophy, switching from short-term speculator to a long-term investor—one who seeks to profit from pendulum swings in the market rather than participating in them. By effecting this transformation, Keynes became one of the world’s first value investors, the forefather of a long line of venerable and highly successful stock market practitioners such as Warren Buffett and Sir John Templeton.

Keynes and the Market is an entertaining guide to John Maynard Keynes’ amazing stock market success, weaving the economist’s value investing tenets around key events in his richly lived life. Accessible and informative, it identifies what modern masters of the market have taken from Keynes and used in their own investing styles—and what you too can learn from one of the greatest economic thinkers of the twentieth century.