Synopsis
If you’ve heard of Moneyball, you probably know it as the hit movie from 2011 starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, General Manager of the 2002 Oakland Athletics baseball club. Because of the film’s power and Beane’s unlikely success, Moneyball has since become known for statistical analysis, risk management and profitability in professional sports.
Financially, Moneyball is for important decisions that require money. Economically, it respects the price mechanism of free markets. Politically, it rejects statism in favor of individual sovereignty. Practically, it is the integration of cash flow, investment strategy and uncertain market performance. Logically, it is goal-oriented action. Socially, it redefines the investor-advisor relationship. Emotionally, it helps satisfy material and spiritual aspirations. Psychologically, it demands introspection. Morally, it means becoming your own hero.
Whether it’s winning baseball or wealth management, strategy decisions should begin and end with the variables we know and control. For the objective investor, those are their aspirations, current and future financial resources, saving and spending habits, risk exposure, life expectancy and taxes and fees. As readers will discover, flexibility is a unique feature of The Moneyball Method. Another benefit is a higher degree of regulatory compliance with investor suitability standards.
The natural world is orderly - you can live in harmony with reality, or not, but the choice is yours. That is what it means to be objective. Because it deals with the root causes and fundamentals of orderly financial markets, Moneyball is radical. And to the extent that it dismisses and replaces the socioeconomic contradictions that dominate Western culture today, it is a manifesto for mass market investors.
In that spirit, The Moneyball Method is not primarily about investing, but about redefining success. It is not primarily about investing success, but about principled action. It is not primarily about achieving those goals, but about the emotional payoff from your newly perfected declaration of independence.