Sir Isaac Newton: Scientific Genius, Investing Fool

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw04660/Sir-Isaac-Newton?LinkID=mp03286&role=sit&rNo=1

In a column in November, “Isaac Newton Learned About Financial Gravity the Hard Way,” I looked at a new study of the investing career of the great physicist.

The great scientist was a hapless investor, careful research by scholar Andrew Odlyzko found. Now, in an updated version of his study, Prof. Odlyzko documents that Newton fell even harder than previously thought for one of the worst speculative bubbles of all time….

Read the rest of the column

This article was originally published on The Wall Street Journal.


Further reading

Andrew Odlyzko’s research papers, http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/bubbles.html

Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor

John Carswell, The South Sea Bubble

South Sea Bubble Collection at the Baker Library, Harvard University, https://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/ssb/collection.html

Isaac Newton Learned About Financial Gravity the Hard Way, http://jasonzweig.com/isaac-newton-learned-about-financial-gravity-the-hard-way/

Escaping the Magnetic Pull of a Bubble, http://jasonzweig.com/escaping-the-magnetic-pull-of-a-bubble/

The Extraordinary Popular Delusion of Bubble-Spotting, http://jasonzweig.com/the-extraordinary-popular-delusion-of-bubble-spotting/

The Extraordinary Popular Delusion of Believing What You Read, http://jasonzweig.com/the-extraordinary-popular-delusion-of-believing-what-you-read/

The Museum of Art and Finance Gallery 1: Tulipmania, http://jasonzweig.com/the-museum-of-art-and-finance-gallery-1-tulipmania/