Lesson #24: A Guide to Reading for Investors

―I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely happier
for it. The man who reads nothing at all is better informed than the man who reads nothing
but newspapers.‖ ~ Thomas Jefferson

I’ve not had a newspaper subscription at my home for the past six years now, and neither do I
consume news via electronic media.

Now, one big reason I do not read newspapers is because I have a big problem with the fact
that they decide for us what we should pay attention to and what we should ignore. It isn’t
just the text of a news story that can mislead us; it’s also the choice of which stories get
covered at all, and where they’re placed in the paper.

I know a lot of people who really believe that if a story isn’t covered in the first three pages
of a paper, it isn’t worth knowing about it. To see how silly an approach this is, you need to
only read, say The Times of India or Economic Times (two most popular English newspapers
in India) from, say, ten or twenty years ago and ask yourself whether the events that
ultimately proved to be important in the long run were consistently receiving prominent
coverage at that time.

Were there front-page articles in 1995 or 2005 on build-up of subsequent economic and
financial crises, air pollution, weather changes, oil, rise/fall of industries, or the rise of the
consumerist Indian middle class? Occasionally perhaps, but for the most part the coverage
focused on stories of more momentary interest, just as it does today.

I am not blaming the newspapers here. That’s their job to inform us about the day-to-day
events, to entertain us, to reflect the public moods and sentiments of the moment, to print
stories that will interest us today, and that we will want to read.

But that’s exactly what creates problems for readers of news, who are often fooled
by recency and availability biases that newspapers help create.

Nassim Taleb wrote in The Black Swan –

―Public information can be useless, particularly to a businessman, since prices can already
―include‖ all such information, and news shared with millions gives you no real advantage.
Odds are that one or more of the hundreds of millions of other readers of such information
will already have bought the security, thus pushing up the price. I then completely gave up
reading newspapers and watching television, which freed up a considerable amount of time
(say one hour or more per day, enough time to read more than a hundred additional books
per year, which, after a couple of decades, starts mounting).

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Then, Taleb wrote in Fooled by Randomness that minimal exposure to the media should be
a guiding principle for someone involved in decision making under uncertainty — including
all participants in financial markets.

His key argument is that what is reported in the media is noise rather than information, but
most people do not realize that the media is paid to get your attention –

―The problem with information is not that it is diverting and generally useless, but that it is
toxic…If there is anything better than noise in the mass of ―urgent‖ news pounding us, it
would be like a needle in a haystack. People do not realize that the media is paid to get your
attention. For a journalist, silence rarely surpassed any word.

It takes a huge investment in introspection to learn that the thirty or more hours spent
―studying‖ the news last month neither had any predictive ability during your activities of
that month nor did it impact your current knowledge of the world. This problem is similar to
the weaknesses in our ability to correct for past errors: like a health club membership taken
out to satisfy a New Year‘s resolution, people often think that it will surely be the next match
of news that will really make a difference to their understanding of things.

You see, newspapers are like soap operas – you can go without seeing them for a few days
and months and come right back in without missing a beat.

Just as fantasy typically substitutes for reality, news typically substitutes for insight – in both
cases by diverting attention.

Another problem with news is that you don’t have any clue about the credibility and
competence of the person who has created the news. The only thing you can be sure about the
news is that every attempt has been made to appeal to your emotions and target your lizard
brain.

So, What to Read?

I have lost count of how many investors have told me over the years that they never read
anything apart from newspapers. They’re too busy to read books or even long articles, they
say. In fact, most people I’ve encountered read very little (despite the fact that, as per
a study, an average Indian reads the most in the world, at around 90 minutes per day, as
compared to 68 minutes of an average Chinese and 48 minutes of an average American).

Now, the art of investing is not about figuring out what has already happened (that
newspapers write about), but about anticipating the future that others will read about in the
newspapers. And anticipating what lies ahead, writes Joshua Rogers in Forbes –

―…requires a mixture of certain habits of mind. You need to foster imagination, thoroughly
understand the origins of past ideas, learn from others‘ mistakes, talk to lots of people about
ideas and test your hypotheses against people both alive and dead.

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Creativity doesn‘t come from glancing quickly at your Twitter feed. It comes from deep
thought. It comes from voraciously reading books – long books that require focused
attention.

Reading books is a way for you to communicate with and learn from the best thinkers that are
writing today and that have ever lived. Reading is a time machine that allows you to acquire
wisdom from the past and to analyze and imagine another person‘s vision of the future. This
is the fuel for the creativity engine. It helps a great investor anticipate, analyze and avoid
missteps.

Anyways, when people ask me what they should read to improve their investment thinking
and/or to stay informed on the stock market, businesses, etc., the first thing I ask them to do is
to avoid reading newspapers (the law of inversion, you see, of what not do).

Then, if they are still interested, I tell them if they care less about signalling intelligence and
connectedness, and more about understanding, then they should consider reading more and
more things moving towards the Enduringside of my reading spectrum, instead of spending
precious time on what’s Ephemeral –

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Here, I am reminded of what Sherlock Holmes told his accomplice Watson in A Study in
Scarlet –
―I consider that a man‘s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it
with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes
across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is
jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Holmes added…

―Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. he
will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a
large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little
room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time
when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the
highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
If you’ve been putting off reading books until after you’re wealthy and you have plenty of
time, I think you’re getting it exactly wrong. Take the time you’ve been spending on
newspapers, reality television and the Internet and dedicate that to reading a book. Expand
your mind. You may find that snappy investment idea you’ve been dreaming of buried in its
pages.

By the way, I posted a question to Prof. Sanjay Bakshi on what he reads and recommends.
While you can see his book recommendations here, this is how he replied to my question.

Safal Niveshak: Prof. Bakshi, can you please outline what you read in terms of newspapers,
magazines, blogs, books etc. and also what you recommend other investors to read to
improve their investment thinking?
Prof. Sanjay Bakshi: I rank news beneath books. News stories often relate to things that are
temporary and relatively unimportant whereas good books teach you about things that are
long-term and important.

When some industry veteran writes a book on his industry and what he learnt by being a part
of it for 50 years, he is unlikely to write about quarterly results.

So, nothing beats a good book on learning about the evolution of an industry. I have read and
learnt from books on the history of denim, cotton, oil, organised retail, containers, banking,
real estate, travel, the software industry, the airline industry, the steel industry and many
others. (See the list of books at the end of this post)

One of the best sources for my learning is reading biographies and autobiographies of
national leaders, scientists, entrepreneurs, and even germs. Yes, there’s a book for that!

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Three books on Lee Kuan Yew I have read taught me more about management than perhaps
any other book. (See the list of books at the end of this post)

As a student of Charlie Munger who advises developing a multi-disciplinary mind, I also love
reading up books on subjects other than finance and business. Here’s one I am reading now.
It’s a book on architecture and is titled ―Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down.‖
The author writes –

―A structure has been defined as ‗any assemblage of materials which is intended to sustain
loads‘, and the study of structures is one of the traditional branches of science. If an
engineering structure breaks, people are likely to get killed, and so engineers do well to
investigate the behaviour of structures with circumspection.

When we talk about structures we shall have to ask, not only why buildings and bridges fall
down and why machinery and aeroplanes sometimes break, but also how worms came to be
the shape they are and why a bat can fly into a rose-bush without tearing its wings.

Can engineers learn from natural structures? What can doctors and biologists and artists
and archaeologists learn from engineers?
As I read these passages, questions come to mind. Questions like – ―What can I learn about
the business world from natural structures?‖ – and – ―Is the connection between a strong
architectural structure and a strong business model?‖ And as I think about these questions, I
recall Warren Buffett’s words from his Columbia Talk ―The Superinvestors of Graham-
and-Doddsville‖ –

―You also have to have the knowledge to enable you to make a very general estimate about
the value of the underlying business. But you do not cut it close. That is what Ben Graham
meant by having a margin of safety. You don‘t try and buy businesses worth $83 million for
$80 million. You leave yourself an enormous margin. When you build a bridge, you insist it
can carry 30,000 pounds, but you only drive 10,000-pound trucks across it. And that same
principle works in investing.

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Aha! So there is a close connection between the idea of ―margin of safety‖ in value investing
and that idea in architecture. Even, the image above came from Buffett’s speech transcript.

And then I start thinking about what kinds of business models have inherent strength and I
am immediately reminded of ―strong capital structures.‖ That’s another aha moment.

It’s a lot of fun to do this — to find connections between seemingly unconnected ideas in
different disciplines. I have found amazing connections relevant for understanding the world
of business by reading up great books on other subjects. I cannot overemphasise the
importance of this. I have learnt a lot about the world of business and investing by reading
books on biology (especially evolutionary biology), psychology, physics (especially quantum
physics), history, creativity, and even literary fiction.

Literary fiction?

Here’s a great book by a Harvard Business School professor who uses examples from literary
fiction in his class. It’s called ―Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of
Leadership Through Literature.‖ He writes –

―How does serious fiction help us understand leadership? The answer is simple but
extraordinarily powerful: serious fiction gives us a unique, inside view of leadership. In real
life, most people see the leaders of their organisations only occasionally and get only fleeting
glimpses of what these leaders are thinking and feeling. Even interviews with executives have
their limits. Executives say only so much, even when they want to be candid: sensitivities
have to be observed, memory fades and sometimes distorts, and successes crowd out failures.

In contrast, serious literature offers a view from the inside. It opens doors to world rarely
seen — except, on occasion, by leaders‘ spouses and closest friends. It lets us watch leaders
as they think, work, hope, hesitate, commit, exult, regret, and reflect. We see their characters
tested, reshaped, strengthened, or weakened.
I think the author is quite correct on this point.

If you want to learn to empathise with an entrepreneur, read literary fiction. Most investors
don’t do that and I think they miss something important. They form opinions about people
who are out there creating wealth, sometimes in very difficult environment. They have no
clue what it takes to get there. Reading literary fiction has helped me empathise with the
people who run businesses. It has helped me understand that no one is perfect. People make
mistakes and entrepreneurs are human beings and not machines programmed to ―maximise
shareholder value‖ for you all the time.

I also learnt to appreciate the wisdom of Ben Franklin’s advice on how to have a happy
marriage –

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―Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.‖
Following that advice has helped me in dealing with situations where something is obviously
wrong about a person but it’s not a big deal if you look at the overall situation. Indeed, some
of my best performing investments have been made because the investment community took
one little adverse thing about an entrepreneur and over-emphasised it. That created an
opportunity for those who understand that no one is perfect and you should not look for
perfection in business models and human beings who run them.

Here is another trick I accidentally discovered. It’s inspired by a Charlie Munger quote –

―I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most
diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they
were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead
of you.
So Charlie prescribes that you should go to bed a little wiser than you were when you got up
that morning. That’s good advice. But what if you could go a step further? Can you become
wiser between the time you sleep at night and wake up the next morning?

I found out that the answer is yes and the discovery is to do with the science of sleep. I found
that if I read some random passage from a ―super text‖ (e.g. some page from Poor Charlie’s
Almanack, or some passage from the letters of Warren Buffett or Common Stocks and
Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher) just before I sleep, then while I slept what I had
read does thingsinside my brain. When I wake up, I get fresh insights which I can use.

There is plenty of evidence which shows that sleep makes memories and associations
stronger. And learning is about making the right associations. And we sleep roughly one-third
of our lives. So why not use the time to become a bit wiser while we sleep?

So, books are my primary source of reading and learning from. But when it comes to news, I
like to focus on corporate news not economic ones. I get that from multiple sources like
Economic Times, Business Standard, Financial Express, Business Line etc. I never read the
stock market pages or opinions on where a stock or the market is headed.

One source from where I don’t get my news is the TV. I don’t have one in my home or my
office. I am so biased against TV that I agree with Andrew Ross who said that ―the smallest
bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of
television.‖

There are ways to create your own news. Investors should understand that the best news will
almost certainly not be handed over to you on a platter. You are not likely to see headlines
like ―Prem Watsa Buys Into Thomas Cook India and Will Transform it Into a Value Creating
Acquisition Machine.‖ Those type of news, or, rather insights come from reading stuff like
transcripts of annual meetings, stock exchange announcements, annual reports and
connecting the dots.

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The idea of connecting the dots is, of course, a very powerful idea and is identical to Charlie
Munger’s idea of maintaining a checklist of mental models. One of Charlie’s favourite
authors is Herb Simon who gave him the idea of mental models. Simon wrote –

―One can train a man so that he has at his disposal a list or repertoire of the possible actions
that could be taken under the circumstances…A person who is new at the game does not have
immediately at his disposal a set of possible actions to consider, but has to construct them on
the spot – a time- consuming and difficult mental task.

The decision maker of experience has at his disposal a checklist of things to watch out for
before finally accepting a decision. A large part of the difference between the experienced
decision maker and the novice in these situations is not any particular intangible like
―judgment‖ or ―intuition.‖ If one could open the lid, so to speak, and see what was in the
head of the experienced decision-maker, one would find that he had at his disposal
repertoires of possible actions; that he had checklists of things to think about before he
acted; and that he had mechanisms in his mind to evoke these, and bring these to his
conscious attention when the situations for decisions arose.

Most of what we do is to get people ready to act in situations of encounter consists of drilling
in these lists into them sufficiently deeply so that they will be evoked quickly at the time of the
decision.
Simon is very right on that. Over time, I think one can train oneself to connect the dots, to
recognize patterns that matter. The process is a lot like what you wrote in your recent
excellent blog post on Sherlock Holmes using Peter Bevelin’s wonderful book as your guide.
Bevelin writes –

“When an event differs from what Holmes expect, it draws his attention — What is out of
the ordinary or atypical?

The absence of something we expect to see or happen is information and a clue in itself.

―Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?‖

―To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.‖

―The dog did nothing in the night-time.‖

―That was the curious incident,‖ remarked Sherlock Holmes.

How can we use this example? Let me tell you how. Imagine that there is
a commodity industry whose profitability is highly volatile because the price of the raw
material it consumes is quite volatile. When the raw material price rises, the profitability of
the industry falls dramatically because the industry has little pricing power. But then you
notice that there is this one business in that very industry who is like Sherlock’s dog who

#24: A Guide to Reading for Investors 8

doesn’t bark – it’s profitability is not impacted at all. Now, isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that
worth investigating? I think it is.

So you put on your detective hat and ask why is this business different? And if you keep
doing this, once in a while you’ll find a pattern that’s different for one or more very good
reasons which you understand and which you think are sustainable.

This is how you stumble upon treasures. You are, in a way, like a treasure hunter or a
detective who is really looking for unusual patterns that kind of stand out and that would
make someone like Sherlock Holmes stop and think. And in world of stock picking, there are
all kinds of unusual patternsthat are worth investigating but trust me, you are not likely to
find them reported to you in a newspaper. You have to do your own digging and thinking and
that’s why I think Peter Bevelin’s book is a must read for investors.

Instead of reading newspapers a lot, I create Google Alerts on businesses I track so a lot of
the stuff comes automatically. I glance through the links and open them only if I think they
might contain some useful information relating to long term prospects of the business.

I love reading interviews of entrepreneurs and CEOs about their businesses and their own
journeys. The more detailed the better. For example take a look at the quality of management
interviews Donald is publishing on ValuePickr. They are astonishingly detailed and
excellent in my view. Sometimes, there are business magazines like Forbes India, Business
India, Outlook Business which also contain excellent interviews.

Amongst international publications I subscribe to Financial Times, Economist, Wall Street

Journal but I have to confess I don’t get to read them every day. There is too much content in
them and if books have to take priority, then one has to make compromises.

Another form of ―news‖ comes from reading annual reports of portfolio and non-portfolio
companies. Just reading through the letters of the CEO and the Management Discussion and
Analysis section of the annual report and then relating what is being said in those sections to
the underlying fundamental performance of the business tells me a lot more than newspaper
stories typically do. This is an incredible source of knowledge.

My friend Ravi Purohit not only reads up the reports of portfolio companies but if they
happen to be subsidiaries of a MNC, he would read up the parent company reports too and
even get on analyst conference calls with senior management of the parent and ask questions
about their India plans.

I illustrate this as an example to tell your readers that no one is going to hand the really
important ―news‖ to you on a platter. You have to go out and get it on your own, ethically
and there are many ways to do that and I just cited one. Another one is to use government
databases such as ones maintained by Ministry of Corporate Affairs. You can learn a lot
about the economics of a business by downloading the filings made by competitors even if
they are privately owned corporations.

#24: A Guide to Reading for Investors 9

My ex-student and colleague Ankur Jain is one helluva detective who has filed RTI
applications to get valuable information to help him think about a business. Anyone can do
that. But most people don’t.
I also read a lot of blogs on high quality businesses including blogs on businesses which are
outside India like Andy Berger’s Punch Card Investing, Rohit Chauhan’s blog, and Amit
Arora’s blog called Long Term Equities. This gives me exposure to business models which
don’t exist in India or in some cases are behind India (for example Amit often writes about
businesses in frontier markets). I also love the Farnam Street blog for developing wisdom. I
think everyone should read that blog.

I also get mails and comments from my blog followers, followers on twitters, fans, ex-
students and peers in the value investing world. Sometimes I get a mail or a comment that
offers a very different perspective than my own with sources quotes so I go and read up those
too. It’s very important to read views that oppose your own views and have been well argued.
When I find someone who disagrees with me and presents good arguments, I want to connect
with him or her and take the dialogue forward in a respectful manner.

Twitter followers also sometimes send links to stuff I would never have gotten access to and
which give me new perspectives.

Safal Niveshak: Wonderful, Prof. Bakshi! Thanks for your recommendations on what to
read.

Prof. Sanjay Bakshi: My pleasure, Vishal!

Anyways, here is what Prof. Bakshi shared with me – a note from Rolf Dobelli on why you
must avoid news.
―News is to the mind what sugar is to the body,‖ Dobelli writes.

I have nothing to add.

Recommended Books on Understanding Specific Industries:

 The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

 Work in the New Economy: Flexible Labor Markets in Silicon Valley
 Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
 The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World
Economy Bigger
 Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism
 Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber
 American Steel: Hot Metal Men and the Resurrection of the Rust Belt

#24: A Guide to Reading for Investors 10

Books on Lee Kuan Yew:

 From Third World to First: The Singapore Story – 1965-2000

 Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew Citizen Singapore: How to Build a Nation
 One Man’s View of the World

Book Recommendations from Legendary Investors

Disclosure: I participate in the Amazon Associates Program, which simply means
that if you purchase a book on Amazon from a link on this page, I receive a small
commission. The book does not cost you any extra. I give away 100% of the
commission for the betterment of the under-privileged.

―Nothing can do what a book can do. Lifts you out of your life… to a whole new
world, whole new perspective. A book is like a dream you‘re borrowing from a
friend.‖ ~ Dave Kellett

Reading the ideas and experiences of others is a great way of improving our own
lives. And investing is no different.

Those who know about the lives and investing experiences of investors and
teachers like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and Prof. Sanjay Bakshi, also know
that they read a lot. And reading is one of the key reasons they have been so
successful in their investing endeavours.

Here are some of the recommended books from these legends, which I have
compiled based on my reading of them over the years. But before that, here are my
choice of the supertexts or must-read books related to investing and related
subjects…

Supertexts
The Intelligent Investor ~ Benjamin Graham
Security Analysis ~ Benjamin Graham
One Up On Wall Street ~ Peter Lynch
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings ~ Philip A. Fisher
Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein
Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger ~ Peter
D. Kaufman
All I Want To Know Is Where I’m Going To Die So I’ll Never Go There ~
Peter Bevelin

#24: A Guide to Reading for Investors 11

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion ~ Robert Cialdini
Warren Buffett’s Letters to Shareholders
Memos of Howard Marks
The Most Important Thing ~ Howard Marks
A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes ~ Peter Bevelin
Thinking Fast and Slow ~ Daniel Kahneman
Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger ~ Peter Bevelin
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable ~ Nassim Nicholas
Taleb
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the
Markets ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Warren Buffett Way ~ Robert Hagstrom
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk ~ Peter L. Bernstein
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds ~ Charles
Mackay

Warren Buffett
The Intelligent Investor ~
Benjamin Graham
The Essays of Warren Buffett:
Lessons for Investors and
Managers ~ Lawrence A.
Cunningham
Common Stocks and
Uncommon Profits and Other
Writings ~ Philip A. Fisher
Of Permanent Value: The
Story of Warren Buffett ~
Andrew Kilpatrick
Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein
John Bogle on Investing: The First 50 Years ~ John C. Bogle
Do Business with People You Can Trust: Balancing Profits and Principles ~ L.
J. Rittenhouse
The Money Masters ~ John Train
Bull!: A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982-2004 ~ Maggie Mahar
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money ~ John Maynard
Keynes
Essays in Persuasion ~ John Maynard Keynes
Benjamin Graham on Value Investing: Lessons from the Dean of Wall
Street ~ Janet Lowe
In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington ~
Robert Edward Rubin
Personal History ~ Katharine Graham
Jack: Straight from the Gut ~ Jack Welch
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A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class ~ Joseph
Nocera
Sam Walton: Made In America ~ Sam Walton
The Expanded Quotable Einstein ~ Albert Einstein
Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of
Enron ~ Bethany McLean
The Outsiders ~ William Thorndike Jr.
The Clash of Cultures: Investment vs Speculation ~ Jack Bogle
Investing Between the Lines: How to Make Smarter Decisions By Decoding
CEO Communications ~ Laura Rittenhouse

Charlie Munger
Poor Charlie’s Almanack:
The Wit and Wisdom of
Charles T. Munger ~ Peter D.
Kaufman
Deep Simplicity: Bringing
Order to Chaos and
Complexity ~ John Gribbin
Ice Age: How a Change of
Climate Made Us Human ~
John Gribbin
Models of My Life ~ Herbert
Simon
Fiasco: The Inside Story of a
Wall Street Trader ~ Frank Partnoy
How the Scots Invented the Modern World ~ Arthur Herman
A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals about the Past and Future
of Our Species, Planet, and Universe ~ Gino Segre
Andrew Carnegie ~ Joseph Frazier Wall
Guns, Germs And Steel ~ Jared Diamond
The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal ~
Jared Diamond\
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion ~ Robert Cialdini
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin ~ Benjamin Franklin
Living within Limits: Ecology, Economics and Population Taboos ~ Garrett
Hardin
The Selfish Gene ~ Richard Dawkins
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. ~ Ron Chernow
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So
Poor ~ David S. Landes
The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment
Strategy ~ Robert G. Hagstrom
Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters ~ Matt Ridley
#24: A Guide to Reading for Investors 13
Getting to Yes: Negotiating an Agreement Without Giving In ~ Roger Fisher
Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of
Information ~ Robert Wright
Only the Paranoid Survive ~ Andrew S. Grove

Prof. Sanjay Bakshi

Prof. Sanjay Bakshi
recommends all books on
the lists of Warren Buffett
and Charlie Munger (see
above), plus the
following…

Business and Investing

(incl. Moats)
Warren Buffett’s Letters
to Shareholders
The Little Book That
Builds Wealth ~ Pat
Dorsey
Understanding Michael Porter: Essential Guide to Competition and
Strategy ~ Joan Magretta
A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers ~ Peter Bevelin
The Most Important Thing ~ Howard Marks
Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries ~ Peter
Sims
Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd ~ Yongme Moon
Tap Dancing to Work ~ Carol Loomis
A Bank for the Buck: The Story of HDFC Bank ~ Tamal Bandyopadhyay
The Box – How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the
World Economy Bigger ~ Marc Levinson
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products ~ Nir Eyal
Iconoclast ~ Gregory Berns
Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers,
and Challengers ~ Alexander Osterwalder
The Investment Checklist ~ Michael Shearn

Accounting and Valuation

Accounting for Value ~ Stephen Penman
It’s Earnings That Count ~ Hewitt Heiserman
Financial Statement Analysis: A Practitioner’s Guide ~ Martin S. Fridson

#24: A Guide to Reading for Investors 14

Financial Shenanigans: How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks & Fraud in
Financial Reports ~ Howard M. Schilit
Creative Cash Flow Reporting: Uncovering Sustainable Financial
Performance ~ Charles W. Mulford
Financial Warnings: Detecting Earning Surprises, Avoiding Business
Troubles, Implementing Corrective Strategies ~ Charles W. Mulford
The Interpretation of Financial Statements: The Classic 1937 Edition ~
Benjamin Graham

Mental Models – Thinking, Decision Making, Creativity, Psychology

A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes ~ Peter Bevelin
The Tipping Point ~ Malcolm Gladwell
Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think ~ Peter Diamandis
The Brain That Changes Itself ~ Norman Diodge
One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way ~ Robert Maurer
Thinking Fast and Slow ~ Daniel Kahneman
Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do ~ Tom Vanderbilt
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Seven Patterns of Innovation ~ Steven
Johnson
Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights ~ Gary
Klein
Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger ~ Peter Bevelin
Think Like a Freak: How to Think Smarter about Almost Everything ~
Steven D. Levitt
The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your
Life ~ Philip Zimbardo
Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them ~
Gary Belsky
Why I Failed: Lessons from Leaders ~ Shweta Punj
Addiction by Design – Machine Gambling in Las Vegas ~ Natasha Dow Schull
Brilliant Blunders ~ Mario Livio
Justice ~ Michael J. Sandel

Economics
Reinventing the Bazaar – A Natural History of Markets ~ John Mcmillan
The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We
Will Never Run Out of Energy ~ Peter Huber
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything~
Steven D. Levitt
Super Freakonomics ~ Steven D. Levitt

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Neuroscience, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Biology, Mathematics,
Probability, and Science
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the
Frontiers of Brain Science ~ Norman Doidge
The Tell-Tale Brain ~ V. S. Ramachandran
The Future of the Mind ~ Michio Kaku
The Selfish Gene ~ Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker ~ Richard Dawkins
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology ~ Ray Kurzweil
Taking the Quantum Leap ~ Fred Wolf
Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness ~ Bruce Rosenblum
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences ~ John Allen
Paulos
Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think ~ Peter H. Diamandis
The Little Book of Talent ~ Daniel Coyle
No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality ~ Judith Rich Harris
How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business ~
Douglas W. Hubbard
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable ~ Nassim Nicholas
Taleb
Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don’t Understand ~ Nassim Nicholas
Taleb
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the
Markets ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality ~
Dalai Lama

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#24: A Guide to Reading for Investors 16