The Stock Picker (A financial history from the sharp end)

Paul Mumford is a noted stock-picker with over 50 years’ experience in the markets - first as a stock broker and then as a star fund manager. In The Stock Picker, Mumford takes a deeply personal look back at his time investing: exploring not only the secrets of his successful approach to the markets and how to find great shares but reminiscing about the changes that have taken place in the investing world since the early 1960s.

This book is not an investing how-to: instead it is a financial history straight from the horse’s mouth. While there is much for investors to learn from, it is an also evocative window into a vanished City of stock jobbers, messenger boys, luncheon vouchers and ledger-keepers - not to mention financial crises, booms and busts, and the life and death of companies great and small.

Mumford also covers how his own personal life has influenced his stock-picking approach: from running his own bookmaking business as a schoolboy to an ill-fated attempt at oil painting at night school (not to mention the vibrant music scene of the late 1950s).

The Stock Picker is a charming and readable autobiography that pulls no punches - ideal for any investor interested in what has made a leading fund manager tick, or who simply wants to spend some time nostalgically looking back at how the investing and wider world has changed over the years.