Book: Margin of Safety Author: Seth Klarman Key takeaways: Klarman is called a classic value investor, a term that can be somewhat meaningless, as all investors are by definition seeking value. Nonetheless, he himself counts himself among this clan. In this book, he talks about his investment philosophy. This book is much like The Intelligent … Continue reading
Book: Fault Lines Author: Raghuram Rajan This is an easy book to love. Most of us have read several books on the 2008 financial crisis and why it came about (reasons abound from use of credit derivatives to lack of leadership). But, this book takes a slightly bigger sweep of history and talks about the underlying problems in the … Continue reading
Book: Moneyball Author: Michael Lewis Key takeaways: This is a story about Oakland A’s–an American baseball team, who performed immensely well in the late 90s and early 00s, despite having an incredibly small total paycheck. The story’s protagonist in Billy Beane, who brought a statistical approach to hiring and firing its players. I personally don’t … Continue reading
Book: In The Long Run We’re All Dead Author: Timothy Lewis The title uses a famous quote from (John Maynard) Keynes, who said- “The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us … Continue reading
Book: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator Author: Edwin Lefevre This is a book about exploits of Jesse Livermore, and is written by Edwin as if it were Livermore’s autobiography. Jesse Livermore was a trader in late 19th and early 20th century–he traded by watching the tape. One can be snooty about whether he was an … Continue reading
Book: Risk Author: John Adams “Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by incapacity.” – William Blake Our culture pulls no punches when talking about people who avoid risk. Risk-takers are adorned with adjectives such as swash-buckling and fearless, while those who seek to avoid risk are described in a tone that William Blake … Continue reading
Book: Fool’s Gold Author: Gillian Tett One of the key financial inventions of the past two decades has been credit derivatives. Some of these, namely CDOs got extremely popular in financial press in the aftermath of financial crisis. This book traces the root of creation of these derivatives and their route to popularity. It is … Continue reading
Book: The Most Important Thing Author: Howard Marks This past Thursday, I, and 25 or so other summer interns at UBS, had the fortune to meet Howard Marks. I read his book in preparation for this meeting. This post is a summary of that meeting and my takeaway of the book. First, an introduction to … Continue reading
Book: Made to Stick Author: Chip Heath, Dan Heath As you can probably guess, this is a semi-self-help book that talks about ways and frameworks you can use to convey your ideas better so that the recipient remembers it (or, to put in a different way, the idea sticks). What is interesting about this book … Continue reading
Book: Saving the sun Author: Gillian Tett I started reading this book to understand the reasons behind Japan’s “lost decade”, as the topic kept coming up in discussions about the ongoing recession in the United States. The answer that I take away is that the problems that US faces are different from what Japan faced, … Continue reading
