Book Review: The Alpha Masters
This book has just been released. I got an early copy. The book is interesting enough that I would like to do a Q&A with the author, and I have contacted the PR flack to do so. To the review: Would you like to understand the mindsets of a variety of successful hedge fund...
Book Review: The Little Book of Emerging Markets
This book is written by one of the foremost stock investors in emerging markets, Mark Mobius. This is a short book that has little to no math in it, and few graphs. It can be read in 2-3 hours. The edge that this book will give you is understanding the limitations of emerging market investing. ...
Book Review: The Little Book of Bull’s Eye Investing
Before I start this evening, if you like my reviews generally, please go to Amazon and tell them that my reviews are helpful. From this link, it does not take long to do so. Thanks. This was one of those books that grew on me. The author, the well-known John Mauldin, strings together a bunch...
Book Review: Abnormal Returns
I consider Tadas Viskanta to be a friend of mine. I write my eclectic blog, and Tadas occasionally features me on his daily curation of the economics/finance/investment blogosphere. But it is not friendship that leads me to write the following: this is a really good book. Why? Every day, Tadas curates the best thoughts in...
Book Review: The Golden Revolution
This book is highly optimistic that we will restore a gold standard to our world. Much as I would like it, because it restrains the power of governments that increasingly behave like thugs, I don’t think a gold standard is likely to replace the status quo. The book has many good areas to commend it,...
Book Review: The Facebook IPO Primer
There is more money to be lost than made in most controversial IPOs, on average. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good book, and the author knows what she is talking about, but whether one should buy Facebook in its IPO next month is a huge open question, and I would encourage you to...
Rolling the dice by hitting Publish
Overconfidence is not limited to investors, it also affects bloggers as well. Every time I hit the Publish button on WordPress I think I’ve written [...]
Book Review: Then There Were None
The topic of resources running out is perennial. Go back to the ‘60s and ‘70s, you have the Club of Rome and other doom-mongers. There are also the bets placed by Julian Simon on commodity prices in the ‘80s and ‘90s, betting the commodity prices would fall, and they did. Much of the effect stemmed...
Book Review: The Most Important Thing Illuminated
I previously reviewed The Most Important Thing. Great book, but can a great book be made better? Yes, but only by a little bit. The illumination of this book comes from comments from Christopher Davis, Joel Greenblatt, Paul Johnson and Seth Klarman, an estimable bunch of investors and investment thinkers. Howard Marks offers a few...
Book Review: Strategic Intuition
We all know how to be logical; at least most of us do. But logic only takes us so far. Real progress comes through those who are willing to take old ideas, combine them, and use them to solve an unrelated existing problem. Breakthroughs do not come from ordinary activity, but from those that are...
On Book Reviewing
Piles of books. Many piles of books. If you begin to do a lot of book reviews, you get a lot of books. Let me describe the piles: One foot to the left of me is a pile of 13 unread books. After I finish reading a book, and put it into the “Write about,”...
Book Review: Currency Wars
I sometimes call it “the race to the bottom.” During a time where most nations are feeling economically weak, some decide to weaken their currency, so that their exporters can do better, which supposedly preserves jobs in export industries. Producers have concentrated interests, and lobby well. The interests of consumers are diffuse, and don’t...
