Capital Returns

Investing Through the Capital Cycle: A Money Manager's Reports 2002-15
Marathon Asset Management Ltd
Edited by Edward Chancellor
£24.99 | $48 | Hardback | 9781137571649

‘I read Capital Returns in one sitting. I wish this book had been available when I started in the business. One of the best books on investment I've ever read.’ 
—Russell Napier, author of Anatomy of the Bear

‘Capital Returns shows how excess investment drives mean reversion in the stock market.  Investors who wish to understand bubbles should read this book.’
—Jeremy Grantham, Founder and Chief Investment Strategist, Grantham, Mayo, van Otterloo

‘Forget Warren Buffett. If you really want to know how markets work read this.’
—Merryn Somerset-Webb, Editor, MoneyWeek

We live in an age of serial asset bubbles and spectacular busts that have blindsided economists, policymakers and central bankers and lost investors trillions. Now Marathon Asset Management, a London-based investment firm managing over $50 billion of assets, has developed a deceptively simplistic method for identifying and avoiding bubbles: follow the money, or rather, follow the trail of investment.

Capital Returns, edited by award-winning financial journalist Edward Chancellor, brings together 60 of the most insightful reports written by Marathon portfolio managers between 2002 and 2014, forming a comprehensive and easily accessible introduction to the theory and practical implementation of the capital cycle. This book argues that too many analysts think linearly in a cyclical world and provides key insights into the capital cycle strategy, all supported with real-life examples – from global brewers to the semiconductor industry – showing how this approach can be usefully applied to different industry conditions and how, prior to 2008, it helped protect assets from financial catastrophe.

This book shows that investors must avoid investing in sectors where investment is unduly elevated and competition is fierce. Instead, money should be put to work where capital expenditure is depressed, competitive conditions are more favourable and prospective investment returns are higher. Capital Returns demonstrates how this approach helped protect assets from financial catastrophe in the past, and the book will be a welcome reference for serious investors looking to maximise portfolio returns in the long run.

-ENDS-

About the Author

Edward Chancellor is the author of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation, a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year.” He edited Marathon’s previous book, Capital Account: A Money Manager’s Reports on a Turbulent Decade. Chancellor is an award-winning financial journalist who has written for the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and many other publications. He is also a former member of the asset allocation team at GMO, a Boston-based investment firm.

For more information or to get in touch with the author please contact:
Rebecca Krahenbuhl, rebecca.krahenbuhl@palgrave.com, +44 0207 014 6634