My favorite finance novel of the past few years is being released Tuesday. The central character of “The Counting House,” who’s identified throughout the novel as “the CIO,” is in a personal and career crisis as the manager of a university endowment. Once upon a time, the CIO — chief investment officer — managed to beat the market for a few years. In addition to securing a comfortable pay package, he got a hagiographic New York Times write-up as his reward.
Taylor: Banks and bonds and what’s troubling a Texas financial institution I met “The Counting House” author Gary Sernovitz a few years ago when he visited San Antonio to make a presentation on the oil and gas industry. In his day job, he is a managing director of Houston-based private equity firm Lime Rock Partners. I read an advance copy of his novel this summer.
Taylor: Is working in the gig economy worth it? What I learned after two weeks of driving for Lyft. When you lose in this game, you feel like a failure. You question whether you have any skill at all. Was past success just an illusion? Were your assumptions made about skill mere self-deception? Investors are generally not naive. Being naive or self-deceived is the worst character flaw for an investor to admit to.
The Complete Story of the Shale Revolution, The Fight Over Fracking, and the Energy Revolution He also clearly enjoys these contradictions. Can you be an investor but acknowledge the absurdity of it all? Can you be a capitalist but acknowledge an inhumane lizard-brain as the clearest expression of the philosophy? Can you find something worthy in a lifetime’s effort but constantly critique it? These are questions possibly better addressed through fiction than philosophy.