Sun Tzu, a Top Investor? : Study of Sun Tzu's Art of War as Applied to Investing.

Are there relationships between Sun Tzu's Art of War and modern common investing strategy? How to use them if the relationships do exist? The thesis is going to identify the similarities and differences between Sun Tzu's Art of War and current common investing methods; pay special attention to the differences, because here is their value for future potential usages; classify the differences as beneficial, harmful or irrelevant to investing; use those beneficial differences to aid investing strategy and avoid those harmful differences. The researcher used a hybrid of quantitative, qualitative, case study and classical 'positivistic' design with which nine top investors were selected as micro cases and their correlation with eight Sun's useful differences from common investing practices (from literature review) were scored and analysed. From the study of t-test, pattern, trend and causation, the research proves that there are significant relationships between them and between some of the individual categories (ethics and self defence; human centeredness; reliable sources and materials). So we may use Sun's different strategy to aid our investing process just like what some of the top investors are partially doing and profiting from consciously or subconsciously. According to my findings, generally speaking Sun Tzu is more human centred and has deeper understanding of phenomena. Some of them are harmful to investing we should avoid while others are beneficial we should use. The researcher also found a few interesting anomalies during the research process