Biggs on Finance, Economics, and the Stock Market: Barton's Market Chronicles from the Morgan Stanley Years

This volume collects the market commentary Barton Biggs wrote as Morgan Stanley's global strategist, published after his death.

The reference has not verified the exact selection or date range. What the form establishes is contemporaneous market commentary written across a period covering the 1980s and 1990s and possibly beyond, in which Biggs assessed conditions, made calls and recorded his reasoning as events unfolded.

The value of such a collection is that it preserves what a well-informed observer thought at the time rather than what was later established. Biggs was known for the quality of his writing, for his willingness to state a view and for his candour about being wrong. He made several well-known calls, including a bearish position on Japan before the 1990 collapse and a bullish position on emerging markets, and also several that did not work.

Biggs's recurring themes across his writing included scepticism about forecasting including his own, attention to sentiment and positioning as indicators, the psychological difficulty of holding contrarian positions through periods of underperformance, and the observation that professional investors' decisions are heavily influenced by career and client considerations rather than by analysis alone.

A collection of dated market commentary has limited use as investment guidance, since the conditions described have passed. Its use is in seeing how a good strategist reasoned in real time, including in the periods when the reasoning turned out to be wrong. Biggs's Hedgehogging, also in this reference, covers the same sensibility in a more readable form.

Chief global strategist, Morgan Stanley 1973-2003; co-founder, Traxis Partners (1932-2012)

Thirty years of Morgan Stanley global strategy plus Hedgehogging, still the most candid insider account of how hedge fund managers actually behave.

Morgan Stanley, Traxis Partners