Taming the Lion
The book was written over two years by Richard without a ghost writer. It has since been published worldwide and earned more than 50 favourable industry reviews. For example, it was named by Motley Fool as one of the best ever books on investing.
Synopsis
When I started a career in an investment bank in Sydney in my early twenties, I did not believe that I could out-perform the markets. As a former economist and chess player, investment and trading seemed to be just gambling. I had no idea how the markets could offer any opportunities.
Gradually however I came to believe that market prices are predictable, and within a few years I was running a trading desk dealing in hundreds of millions of dollars.
Because I wanted a long and prosperous career I developed a repeatable methodology which was based on observation and reasoning, not just one-offs and luck.
I had many beliefs which were against conventional wisdom. Markets tent to under-react, not over-react. Big obvious ideas offer great opportunities. It is safe to invest with a consensus view. Contrarian trading is usually irrational. It is best to enter and exit the market at the right times instead of always staying invested. Price trends are well known but underutilised. Chartists are just astrologers. Investment and trading are the same.
Some things I just tried to do better than other investors. These were things like being sure that I was chasing a genuine opportunity, managing my risks and coping with my losses.
I also developed some trading systems, which were still being used years after I left the bank.
As my trading results started to attract some attention, I was frequently asked to give a presentation of my ideas to other professional traders. Question times often continued on to dinner and to the bar. I learnt a lot from these sessions. Like me, others were interested in an approach to investing which was based on first principals. I found that anecdotes were the best way to make a point. And by presenting the ideas as laws, it showed clearly how the methodology works, and it made a handy summary.
Years later, I am still using the same approach, and I have found that as well as the professionals, there are a lot of amateurs who are keen to find out how markets work and how to improve their investment performance. These are secrets that they want to discover.
In this book I will try to reveal those secrets and the thrills and pains I experienced in finding them. My ideas are presented as 100 different laws spread evenly over ten chapters.
Reviews
“If you want to get underneath the mindset of one of the most successful and prolific private equity investors in high technology start-ups, than you don’t have to ponder any more. Richard Farleigh’s long awaited book, ‘Taming the Lion, 100 Secret Strategies for Investing’, reveals the underlying principles that have guided his investment strategies.
Chapter by chapter, the book provides fundamental investment strategies that Farleigh has followed in an easy to understand language, without too much economic or financial jargon that would put off many non-financial readers. Many of these strategies are tested with real world examples, often revealing the negative consequences that can follow if the strategies are not adhered to properly. This makes Farleigh’s 100 secret strategies more credible and believable compared to other books on investment strategies, which tend to be more prescriptive and theoretical.
“Taming the Lion” is intertwined with Farleigh’s own reality show of private equity investments. With it is the personal touch and a cool headed logical, well argued and tested list of investment strategies, which makes this a very credible read.”
The Chilli
“The rags-to-riches theme is a well worn literary path but Richard Farleigh’s interesting and insightful book, Taming The Lion, through which I’ve been flicking this week, is well worth a read. It reveals the ‘100 secrets strategies for trading’ that have taken him from a hobo childhood in the Aussie outback to Monaco-based millionaire.
Many so-called experts tend to be better self-marketeers than actual investors but Farleigh’s unique understanding of market psychology has made him a bundle. Farleigh deals with many important issues – risk, small companies, market timing, to name a few – but particularly fascinating, he shows that all financial markets entrench themselves in trends, and explains why big picture themes will likely persist even though such strategies have become well-known and well-used now.
Stacked with many practical hints as well as plenty of useful and interesting financial market background.”
