The Tao Jones Averages: A Guide to Whole-Brained Investing

Rating:
Summary: The Tao-Jones Averages: A Guide to Whole-Brained Investing
Review: As a 25 year veteran professional I have read exhaustively on the topic of investing. This simple little book is perhaps the best book I have ever read about the mindset required to succeed as an investor. I keep coming back to it over the years and it is at the top of my recommendation list to customers if they can get hold of it. I am not surprised I can't find any other books by Bennet Goodspeed, he's probably too wealthy to bother.

Rating:
Summary: misleading
Review: As someone who has been a floor trader on Wall Street and has also studied zen for close to 20 years, including a stint living in a zen monastery, I found the book to be very misleading. Although the author starts out drawing comparisons between Eastern mysticism and investing, and makes a couple of valuable insights, he then succumbs to the critical error of equating the mystical experience to right-brain functioning as understood by Western brain hemisphere research. I can personally attest to the fact that the profound universal mystical experience that can only be achieved through great practice and discipline has nothing to do with "right-brain" functioning.

After making this flawed connection, the author then digresses by focusing solely on split-brain functioning in regard to investing for the remainder of the book. Consequently, the book ultimately becomes an example of Western scientific arrogance attempting to explain a profound system of knowledge that is thousands of years old and completely inexplicable to the "rational" world view.

Rating:
Summary: A Fine Introduction to This Vast Subject Area
Review: I picked up and reread Goodspeed's introduction to a subject greatly overlooked in our 'western culture'.It was the first time since I purchased and read it in the early 1980s. At the time I was a floor trader at an options exchange.The message within its pages has relevance and remains useful so many years later.The engaging manner he employs to help a reader weigh the merits of two vastly different areas of thought could easily have bogged down and thus lost meaning with Goodspeed's select readership.