Category: Books

I finished reading The Big Secret for the Small Investor: A New Route to Long-Term Investment Success which is written by Joel Greenblatt last Sunday.

Before this I’ve read Greenblatt’s The Little Book That Beats The Market, and liked it quite a bit.

However, this book was very disappointing, and I wouldn’t recommend it to most people. The book is very short, some 150 pages or so, and even those are small pages, yet it feels like you’re just dragging along while reading most of it.

I felt that most of the book was just a very very long lead towards the central idea in it that comes at Chapter 8 (there are a total of 9 chapters).

The idea itself is not all that new, and it’s not very clear to me how a small investor can even go about implementing it.

I say the idea is not all that new because I feel it deeply draws from the concepts of value investing, and diversification, and the author doesn’t do much to build on those ideas for you to feel that you’ve discovered something new.

However, if you ask me if I’ve ever heard of it in the exact form as he describes, then no, I haven’t heard it in exactly that form.

This reminds me of a conversation that I had with someone a few years ago. We were discussing what a “new car” was.

If you buy a used car then is that a new car? It’s new for you, but it’s not really a new car. But surely, if you drove a car right out of a showroom – it’s brand new – isn’t it?

Well, yes and no. It’s definitely a new car if you’re looking at it from the perspective of a customer.

But, if you’re looking at it from the perspective of an Operations head in a factory (which I think is close to what the he was) it’s not a new car. It’s just coming from the existing line – and there is nothing new about it.

You don’t have to make new dyes, find new suppliers, establish quality parameters or do anything of the sort if just one more car is coming out. If you had to come up with a new model then you would have to do all this and that’s what his definition of a new car was.

You can go back and forth on this for hours together and I only take this example to say that I realize how someone could treat Greenblatt’s idea as new and find value in it, but I’m not that someone.

The Good Parts

I did read the whole book, and maybe I was disappointed because of the content in the earlier book and the high expectation it set for me.

There is nothing in the book that I disagree with, or find misleading. It’s a good, quick and simple read and if you’re just starting out your career in investing and lean towards value investing then this can prove to be a very useful resource.

However, if you have read a few books on investing, and valuing companies then you can give this a skip, and you won’t be losing out on much.

Disclosure: Link is affiliate.

I’ve just finished reading Ogilvy on Advertising and even though I’ve never held an advertising job, and don’t intend to pursue that career – I absolutely loved it.

The book itself feels great in your hand – terrific look and feel, and is filled with pearls of wisdom about advertising on a range of subjects from how to make TV commercials that sell to competing with P&G.

I’m not quite sure how I ended up picking up this book, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from it, but I breezed through it, and felt annoyed the few times I had to put it down to get to the real world.

I’ve learned a few things that I hope to use for OneMint and some of my other  work, and ultimately if you think about it – advertising is selling, and a lot of us have to do it at some point or the other in our careers.

The book is divided into chapters with each chapter tackling a specific issue and providing answer to a specific problem. These few titles will tell you what I’m talking about:

• Jobs in advertising – and how to get them?
• How to advertise foreign travel?
• Advertising for good causes

The book is filled with actionable and practical tips for advertisers and there are many many tips and guidelines on how to do certain things.

For instance, Mr. Ogilvy asks everyone that they advertise with black words on white background and not the other way round since that makes it harder to read. In another instance he talks about having the caption of an image below it and not above it to be read by more people.

Another example that I liked came from the chapter on direct mail, in which he writes a small section on television for persuading people to buy directly by mail or phone he writes the following:

The better the program on which your commercials appear, the fewer sales you make. When viewers are bored by an old movie, they are more likely to pick up the telephone and order your product than when they are riveted by an episode of Dallas.

There are many many rules like that, and there are a lot of interesting stories as well – like one where he says that while advertising for Cessna Citation business jets they sent out live carrier pigeons with an invitation to take a free ride in the jet!

He says that some recipients actually ate the pigeon but many returned alive and they sold at least one jet for $600,000!

There are many ad copies in the book as well, and I found myself flipping through them at leisure and looking at all the great stuff there.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and am now looking forward to reading his first book as well. I don’t however feel that everyone will like it as much as I did.

In my opinion, you should at least have some interest in advertising, or must be required to sell in some capacity to truly enjoy and appreciate the book, and a lot of people simply don’t have these type of job functions.

But in case you are interested in the book you can find Ogilvy on Advertising on Amazon.

Disclosure: Both book links are Amazon affiliate links.

I read The Little Book That Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt last Sunday, and liked it quite a bit. The book promises you a magic formula that will give you above average stock market returns over the long run, and quite honestly I do believe that if followed – this formula has the potential to give above average returns in the long run.

Will I be using this formula? – No.

Personally, I have no way of gathering the information on Indian stocks that this formula needs, and even if I had, I still wouldn’t use it because the work involved is a lot for someone like me. The other reason is that I use something similar, it is of course not magical or anything, and I have not made pots of money, but as far as the approach and thought process go – it is similar.

That said, this book is still a great read for anyone who is interested in value investing, and looks at stocks as instruments for long term investments, and not daily trading or punting.

Joel Greenblatt has done a great job of explaining how one should look at stocks, and this little book is very good to shape a foundation on how you should approach investing, and your thought process about it. If you are like me, you would be really skeptical of a book that promises magical formulas and beating the markets, but the content will surprise you. In fact, at one point the author goes to say that some people should not invest directly in stocks at all – how is that coming from a book which teaches you to beat the market?

The writing is clear, easy to read, funny and makes sense. The formula itself is not so difficult to follow and is in fact quite doable. But let me reiterate, if you are buying the book to follow the formula – don’t, because it is unlikely that you will follow it.

You should only buy The Little Book That Beats the Market thinking that it will give you an idea on how to think about stock, value and long term investing, and no magic bullet.

Disclosure: Links are affiliate.

I started reading The Big Short last weekend, and it is a great read. One would imagine that a book about stuff such as CDOs, MBS and fixed income securities would be dry, but this is quite the opposite.

There are several interesting characters in the book, and there are some great stories, and I plan to review this book in detail later.

For today, I am just going to present this excerpt where Steve Eisman talks about the rating agencies:

They’re underpaid,” said Eisman. “The smartest ones leave for Wall Street firms so they can help manipulate the companies they used to work for. There should be no greater thing you can do as an analyst than to be the Moody’s analyst. It should be, “I can’t go higher as an analyst.’ Instead it’s the bottom! No one gives a f*** if Goldman likes General Electric paper. If Moody’s downgrades GE paper, it is a big deal. So why does the guy at Moody’s want to work at Goldman Sachs? The guy who is the bank analyst at Goldman Sachs should want to go to Moody’s. It should be that elite.”

This concept was not new for me, and I guess there are a lot of others who think in this manner as well, but when I read it in the book, I felt that this was very nicely put, and cuts to the heart of the matter in a few words.

Links to Amazon are affiliate.

My sister recently started a blog, and I wanted to gift her a book on writing – Elements of Style. I have read this myself, and find it to be an excellent resource for anyone interested in improving their writing skills. I wondered how I could buy books in India online because I have never done this earlier, and this post is a summary of results I found.

There are several websites that sells books online in India, and the point of this post is to tell you where you can buy books online in India, and I will list down the options I came across.

First, Amazon sells this book for $7.95, which is ~Rs.350, so that is the reference price as I start my hunt. Let’s see if I get something close to that price or not.

1. Rediff Books: The first site I discovered was Rediff Books. I was able to find this book easily on this site, and there were three different options of these. The top result was the hardcover, which was priced at Rs.2,831, which is clearly way outside the range I am looking at. They have paperback editions as well, some of which are imported, and priced at a very reasonable Rs. 191 too; only problem – they will take 45 business days to ship! No, I did not make a typo – it really says 45 business days to ship!

Since this is a family blog – I will not get into what I feel about 45 business days to ship, and move to the third option. The third option was also a paperback edition, priced at Rs. 499, but it will ship at a more reasonable 4 business days. So far, this is the most reasonable option I see. But, I am not entirely satisfied, so I will try and hunt some more sites.

2. NBC India: Next, I went to the site of NBC India, and found the book there too. They had a list price on the paperback edition of Rs.366, and the picture of the book was exactly like the one I have. The price and picture pleased me quite a bit, but the results page didn’t show me the shipping days. I added it to the cart and went as far as payment options, but it didn’t show me how long it will take to ship, which is quite ridiculous. So, I dropped this option, and went off in search of another website.

3. India Plaza: India Plaza was the next website I saw, and this book was listed at Rs.149 there. That particular edition was Trade Paper, which sounded like a slightly inferior version of a Paperback. This one shipped in 16 business days, and that didn’t fit the bill for me. They had paperback editions listed for Rs. 582, but that also shipped in 16 business days. There was an illustrated version for Rs. 718 that shipped in 3 days.

So far, Rediff Books is looking like the best option.

4. Flip Kart: I have heard of Flip Kart before, but never actually used it. They had this book listed at Rs. 175, and they say it will ship in 4 – 6 business days. This is a paperback edition that was printed in 2006, and this option looks quite promising.

5. Penguin Books: Penguin Books also have a website that looked promising to me, but it turned out to be hopeless. I tried searching the book in their Search box, but it told me that I had to use a category first. Then I chose the category as “Title”, and it told me that it couldn’t find a result. They have a long way to go in terms of selling books online, and I’d be surprised if they are currently doing well in this space.

6. eBay India: eBay India also has this book listed for Rs. 653 in the buy now option. This is clearly higher than the two good options I already have, so I am not going to explore this any further.

7. A1 Books: I found this book in another lesser known website – A1 Books, which has this priced for Rs. 449, and ships it within 4 days. This looks like a decent option, but I clearly have better options at this point in time.

8. Amazon.com: I just realized that I didn’t mention that Amazon.com also ships books to India. They charge $4.99 to ship, and say that it can take anywhere from 18 to 31 business days.

After going through all these options, I felt that the Flip Kart option is the best one, and went ahead and ordered the book. I hope it reaches within the stated time, and is in good condition. If something is amiss, then I will update this post with that info as well.

Doing this kind of side by side comparison helped me quite a bit, and I know that in future I will only have to look at two or three websites to find out the best option. I hope you find this research useful too, and I’d be happy to hear your thoughts about buying books in India online. Has anyone done this before, and what has your experience been?

Image by ShironekoEuro

I went to the book fair when I was in Delhi, and picked up “The Difficulty of being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma” By Gurcharan Das.

Gurcharan Das is also the writer of India Unbound, which I read a few years ago, and liked a lot. I used to be a regular reader of his column in the Times of India as well. I loved India Unbound, and although I don’t read a lot pertaining to Dharma or things of that nature, I thought I should give this book a try.

I really liked the book, and read the whole thing in just three or four sittings.

It is about characters from Mahabharata, their stories, actions and moral implications of those. Each chapter focuses on a different character, and examines an episode from the Mahabharata about the character and looks at the morality of the situation. To give you an idea of what I am talking about, here are the names of some chapters:

• Duryodhana’s envy
• Draupadi’s courage
• Yudhistara’s duty
• Arjuna’s despair
• Bhishma’s selflessness

I really love the stories from Mahabharata, and found several ones in the book, which I didn’t know of before. For example, I didn’t know that Krishna dies an ordinary death when a hunter shoots him, or that Arjuna lost his powers sometime after the great battle.

The book looks at the moral dilemmas that various characters faced throughout Mahabharata, and analyzes them from different perspectives.

For example: When Draupadi is first told that Yudhishthira has lost her in the game of dice, she asks:

Whom did you lose first, yourself or me?

The book takes you to the answer of Bhishma who tells Draupadi that it is true that Yudhisthira lost himself first, and so he is not competent to wager Draupadi. A person who has lost himself is no longer free to wager that which doesn’t belong to him.  On the other hand, a wife does belong to her husband, and even if he is not free, she is legally his, and he is allowed to stake her. Bhishma concludes that this is a complex matter and he cannot solve Draupadi’s dilemma.

He states:

As dharma is subtle, my dear, I fail

To resolve your question in the proper way

The book is filled with such questions, and their probable moral implications, and to me, that’s what makes it great.

After going through this book, I realize how much I want to read the Mahabharata. Most of my knowledge of it comes from the TV serial, and an abridged version that I borrowed from a friend many years ago. But there is certainly a lot more to Mahabharata than what I have gathered so far. The book quotes extensively from the Mahabharata, and although the subject itself is not light, the writing makes it clear and easy to read.

I loved The Difficulty of being Good, but I will not recommend it to everyone. You should only buy this book, if you like the Mahabharata, and are also interested in questions of morality, and sometimes ponder about the questions of right and wrong. Without such interest, I think you will find the book difficult to read and not interesting at all.

Disclaimer: The links to Amazon in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click them, and buy something from Amazon, I will net a commission.

I just finished reading – The Greatest Trade Ever, a book that tells the story of John Paulson’s bets against subprime mortgages, and how he made billions in just about a couple of years or so. It is written by Greg Zuckerman, and has created quite a buzz already.

Overall, it is a good book and is not only about Paulson, but a few other investors scattered across America who made these types of bets, and bagged millions, while the rest of the world was teetering on financial collapse.

It started out slow, with details about subprime mortgages, which have already been reported gazillion times, and I think anyone interested enough to buy the book will know all of that already.

But it gets more interesting as you read through, as it starts narrating the tale of Paulson, and others who bet against subprime.

I liked the fact that the book was not focused on John Paulson alone, and had stories of other people as well. There were snippets about how Pimco’s Bill Gross reworked Pimco’s portfolio to contain safe short term Treasury bonds because he wanted to protect his assets, but at the same time didn’t dabble a lot in derivatives, as many of his clients were not allowed to.

It also touches very briefly on Peter Schiff who had been warning people about subprime for years, but couldn’t really profit from it even though his predictions got right. Peter Schiff moved into foreign currencies, commodities, and emerging markets, but all of these were big losers in 2008.

So, there were people who saw it coming but couldn’t profit from it.

The book places a lot of emphasis on Paolo Pellegrini who was the main architect of the trades that eventually led to Paulson making so much money. Paolo Pellegrini was doing badly in the investment industry and was on the brink, when he joined John Paulson as a research analyst on his team. He did a lot of the research that was required to make these trades happen, and eventually made a lot of money in bonuses through them too.

In fact, there is a nice little story in the book, where Pellegrini’s wife goes to withdraw money from the ATM, and sees that the machine shows a balance of $45 million! That money was from his bonus, which was deposited to their joint account.

This book gives you a window to a few people who made spectacular gains last year, but at the same time doesn’t put them on any sort of pedestal. If anything, it brings up the self-doubts of Paulson and others on several occasions. There were several times when they get worried, and think whether they are making the right trade or not. It shows how difficult it is to go against the tide, and how hard it was for them to remain focused on it.

In fact, another striking thing about all this is that most of these people were average by Wall Street standards, and hadn’t done anything nearly as dramatic ever in their life. After reading the book, I really didn’t think about Paulson and others as hedge fund rock-stars or anything, because their frailties are discussed quite often in the book, and that probably makes it easier for regular people to relate with their stories.

My only complaint with the book is that it starts out slow, and a few pages in the beginning sounded repetitive and had stuff that was covered quite a few times in the mainstream media already. Other than that, — The Greatest Trade Ever is a good read, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Disclosure: The two links to Amazon are affiliate links, which means if you buy this book by clicking them, it will net me a small amount.

I’ve just finished reading: Too Big to Fail by Andress Ross Sorkin, and I really enjoyed it. It reads like a novel and takes you through the events, people and stories around the financial panic last year. It starts off with JP Morgan agreeing to buy Bear Sterns and ends after the government decides to inject billions of dollars in the top financial institutions last October.

The book is entertaining, and I found it hard to keep it down once I started reading it. It is easy to read and focuses on the people, their stories and emotions, rather than delve deep on the technical matters related to the crisis. It is written for everyone, and is not just for people interested in Wall Street or finances in general.

Andrew Ross Sorkin has recreated a lot of conversations, and that makes the book really great. It makes you feel you are going through the events yourself, and adds real flavor to the whole thing.

Continue reading “Too Big to Fail by Andress Ross Sorkin: Book Review”

I had pre-ordered this book and was looking forward to the release quite eagerly. I love reading biographies and especially those of businesspersons. I have read each and every letter that Mr. Buffet has written to his shareholders and so I thought I would love this book.

I had anticipated a lot from this book and I am deeply disappointed. I will not recommend this book to anyone and after struggling with it for quite some time now I have given up hope of completing it.

The book is excruciatingly long and at times I felt it was written like an encyclopedia on Mr. Buffet. The book has got so many details on so many relatives that there lacks a theme or even a certain sense of drama in the story of the world’s greatest investor.

When you think of great biographies like “Dare to Dream” – Mr. Oberoi, “Every Street is Paved with Gold” Mr. Kim, “Made in America” Mr. Sam Walton, “Made in Japan”, Mr. Akio Morita ,”It’s Not About the Bike” — Mr. Lance Armstrong, and numerous others, you feel the drama that these great people have lived through, and as you turn the pages, your mind draws vivid pictures, which make you feel that you are close to the characters in a way that you can empathize with them and feel their sorrow and joy.

The Snowball painfully lacks such a voice and at best is a narrative, which attempts to record the events that happened to Mr. Buffet.

The best parts of the book are quotes from Mr. Buffet and things that he says himself, and quite honestly apart from that there is really nothing that can be described as “riveting”.

I think Mr. Buffet should really write an autobiography.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone but if your expectations are not high then I think the 20 bucks or so that you spend on this book will not be wasted. I read a lot of reviews on Amazon and quite a few people seemed to enjoy it too and from the looks of it, people who were looking for details and wanted to “study Buffet” formed this majority.