The Ideal Investment Personality 49they were more than just good at their “own thing.” They exhib-
ited the quality of complexity or genius that Csikszentmihalyi wrote
about in his book on creative genius (see Chapter 3). The masters
can move to either extreme of the polarities, one minute thinking
in broad, big-picture concepts, the next minute picking nits in an
earnings report to see if the footnote explains an accounting change.
Eventually, I abandoned the notion that one personality style was
better for investing success than another.
All personality styles can be winners in the market, but they
must understand their own strengths and weaknesses and compen-
sate accordingly. This sort of self-knowledge leads to wisdom and
personal mastery. The five experts that I’ve chosen to discuss have
demonstrated abilities in all eight of the Myers-Briggs preferences:
sensing and intuiting, judging and perceiving, and so forth. Later
in this book, then, we will deal with the preference that seems most
difficult for all of us: creativity and intuition.
For now, though, let’s ask another question about personality
types: Which one is the most typical for investors?06 ware 49 1/19/01, 1:07 PM