Philosophy of investing life

For a quantitative stock market, something so qualitative and deep like philosophy seems like such a farfetched thing. But if one looks at some of the greatest investors, they give all the credit to what they have achieved to their learning of philosophy.

George Soros was a follower of Austrian thinker, Karl Popper. Carl Ichan majored in philosophy from Princeton. And the latest is Bill Miller, an ace investor who beat the Standard and Poor’s 500 index for 15 years in a row. He was a graduate student for three years in Johns Hopkins University’s philosophy PhD program.

On 16th Jan, Miller donated a huge %75 million to John Hopkins philosophy branch. This will nearly double the size of its philosophy department, increasing the full-time faculty from 13 to 22 professors, and creating new courses and scholarships for graduate students. It’s the largest gift to any college’s philosophy department ever recorded.

Miller says that philosophy had made a huge difference, both to his life outside business, with respect to adding a great degree of richness and knowledge, and to the actual decisions he has made in investing. Miller says that the habits of analysis that philosophy teaches through rigorous analytical techniques are essential to investing.

And here we all thought it was all about an IIT and then an IIM which will earn you the moolah!

Wish more such ace investors of India too make such donations and give a boost to such departments in humanities, which in the pursuit of quick money, are dying a slow death.