Book Worm

Trump’s win in 2016 U.S. presidential election came as jaw dropping surprise. Those who concluded that Trump was nothing but a lucky clown, missed one of the most important perceptual shifts of present times. If you’re curious and open to changing your world view to become a better decision maker, Scott Adams’ book is for you.

Trump’s win in 2016 U.S. presidential election came as a jaw-dropping surprise. If you concluded that Trump was nothing but a lucky clown, you missed one of the most important perceptual shifts of present times. If you’re curious and open to changing your worldview to become a better decision maker, Scott Adams’ book is for you.

[Read more…] about BookWorm: Win Bigly

The story of the undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century. Sam Walton rolled up his sleeves in 1946 and didn’t stop until 1992. What he ended up creating was world’s largest private employer and the biggest company by revenue. In his autobiography, he pours his heart out, chronicling his strategies, successes, and mistakes.

In January 2017, I decided to read more biographies. The year started with Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog and Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness. We covered both in Bookworm section of the earlier issues of Almanack. However, the most remarkable one which I read this year was Sam Walton’s autobiography – Made in America. For those who don’t know, Sam Walton was the founder of multinational discount retail chain — Wal-Mart.
[Read more…] about BookWorm: Made In America

There are few books that have the capacity to change your life, if you were to practice the lessons shared therein diligently. Ray Dalio’s Principles is one such book. This post contains some of the key life and investment principles and lessons Dalio writes about.

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” ~ Sir Francis Bacon, English author, courtier, & philosopher

There are few books that have the capacity to change your life, if you were to practice the lessons shared therein by the author. For me, Peter Kaufman’s Poor Charlie’s Almanack was one of them, and so was Peter Bevelin’s All I Want to Know. Ray Dalio’s Principles, , which I got my hands to recently, is another such book I believe, for reasons you will soon know.
[Read more…] about BookWorm: Principles

We, as a society, love the idea that runaway success stories are a simple function of individual merit. This is especially true when people try to explain the cases of extreme successes like billionaires and the world-class performers. Work ethic, talent, and attitude are only part of the success puzzle. The other pieces like circumstantial factors are either frowned upon or ignored.

“I started investing at the age of 11,” says Warren Buffett, “I was wasting my life until then.” With that kind of early start, today 87 years old Buffett has accumulated a whopping 76 years of investing experience. Who in the world can match that? No wonder Buffett has held the spot of second richest man in the world since last twenty-five years.

So, does it mean that anyone who, with Buffett’s level of intelligence, spends three-quarters of a century analyzing businesses and studying annual report can become as successful as Warren Buffett?

We like to think that most wildly successful people have earned their success only through talent and hard work. It’s quite rare to find a biography of a successful person which credits his or her success to pure dumb luck. Dig deeper into their stories, and you’d discover that many unseen factors influenced the outcome. Interestingly, most of those elements lie beyond an individual’s control.

[Read more…] about BookWorm: Outliers

The true story of how a hedge fund, run by a team of super smart Nobel laureates, tried to out think the market and failed. It’s a remarkably instructive tale of how intelligence, when corrupted by arrogance and hubris, eventually leads to disasters.

Success, they say, leaves clues. So does failure. Unfortunately, the world focuses too much on learning only from successes. Success alone leaves the learning equation incomplete.

Identifying patterns is the key to drawing useful lessons from the past. Success patterns are just one part. The patterns left by failure are the remaining part of the puzzle. To succeed, one has to study both. Learning ‘what to do’ from success patterns and learning ‘what to avoid’ from failure patterns.

A person trying to get ahead in the world, with no will to study the failures, is akin to the proverbial one-legged man who is trying to score points in an ass-kicking contest.

[Read more…] about BookWorm: When Genius Failed