BOOKS - What are ASF members reading?

tech/a said:

Crisis of Crowding

Can oz youd like this one Im sure.

http://www.educatedinvestor.com.au/...-Thanks_for_Joining4_20_2012&utm_medium=email

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Looks interesting...on the list too!

CanOz said:

Thanks mate, that just went on my list...

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No worries. It's a cracking read, although in parts it does feel as though it was written by a journalist. China today is Deng's vision is the impression I'm getting.

My knowledge of Deng was limited to when "Deng Xiaoping" used to ring up Andrew Denton on Triple M in the late 90's and always start the conversation with a very loud "Hello Cookie boy".

I just finished reading The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. I was quite surprised about how little has changed in the media industry (book was set in the 1930's). Articles about funding shortages at hospitals besides the latest Hollywood divorce, stories about "the poor" being mistreated beside daily horoscopes, etc. Ironically, people today criticize the "evil" Murdoch Newscorp, but still fail to realise that it is just giving the masses what they want.

There were speeches from some of the lefty characters denouncing individual achievement which were frighteningly similar to Obama's "you didn't build that" speech (and also a great response to that argument from Roark towards the end of the book). There's a part about how people reveal their "true self" by what they spend their money on and free time doing - and it is often different to what they publicly preach (a few acquaintances came to mind when I read this). Plus your usual Ayn Rand stuff tearing into collectivism, religion, distribution, altruism and sacrifice.

It's certainly no Atlas Shrugged, but I still enjoyed it.

Good to get a summary of the content of the book. Most people put up title and author but don't tell us the essence of the book.

I just finished reading Mises’ most famous work, “Human Action”. I have read excerpts in the past, but never got round to reading the whole thing until recently (partly due to its length, almost 900 pages). Mises puts the case forward for laissez-faire capitalism, and discusses in detail the fundamentals of Austrian economics. He explains the differences between government controlled economies (from interventionism to socialism and communism) and unhampered, free markets. He discusses many issues that are still very relevant today and answers them wonderfully. The only criticism I have is that some sections are quite dry, but you will be rewarded if persevere through these.

Whenever I read, I always take notes and copy sections/quotes which have an impact on me, and collate them when I've finished reading the book (it helps me learn/remember what I've read, and it’s a good resource to look back on without having to read the entire book again). Collating everything when I finished reading Human Action has been a daunting task. It has taken several hours, due to all the notes and quotes I took (still not finished).

I thought I’d include this quote here, because as I believe it explains much of the ‘risk taking’ leading up to the GFC (Nassim Taleb has spoken about this recently, and refers to it as having ‘skin in the game’):

"For society as a whole the squandering of capital invested in a definite project means only the loss of a small part of its total funds; for the owner it means much more, for the most part the loss of his total fortune. But if a manager is given a completely free hand, things are different. He speculates in risking other people’s money. He sees the prospects of an uncertain enterprise from another angle than that of the man who is answerable for the losses. It is precisely when he is rewarded by a share of the profits that he becomes foolhardy because he does not share in the losses too."

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Not bad for a book first published in 1949!

It has just been announced that Hilary Mantel has again won the Booker Prize, this time for the second book in a trilogy "Bring up the Bodies". She won a few years ago for "Wolf Hall".
Given the level of competition for this prize, it seems somewhat unfair to me that she should win twice for what will effectively be one book when she completes the trilogy.

I just finished reading “The Alchemist” by Paul Coelho, which my hippy-fiance recommended to me a while ago, but I only just read due to randomly coming across a few quotes from the book that I liked.

It is about a young Spanish shepherd named Santiago, who has a recurring dream about a treasure, but he wakes up before he learns of its location. A gypsy interprets his dream and tells him that the treasure is real and is located in the pyramids of Egypt. The book follows Santiago’s journey to find the treasure, and along the way the author adds many spiritual/philosophical lessons about life.

I’ve often heard cliché’s like “focus on the journey, and the outcome will take care of itself”, but this book put a whole new perspective on this for me. Another key them is whether it is possible to pursue one’s own selfish desires and still live a good life. The answer is not what you’d expect from a spiritual/hippyish book.

Today I finished reading "Trust Me, I'm Lying" by Ryan Holiday. Holiday is the director of marketing for American Apparel and a "media manipulator". The book is goes deep down the rabbit hole into the nitty-gritty world of blogs and online media.

Holiday explains the inner workings of online media, including many of the tricks he (and others) use to promote clients and shame enemies. He explains how online reporters and bloggers are paid by page view, why it is in their best interest to embellish and distort the truth, and the obscene lack of accountability. This may not seem all that surprising, but I was pretty gob-smacked by some of the techniques and how far some are willing to go. For example, in a bid to drive up publicity for a client's movie, Holiday anonymously leaked (lied) to several online publications that his client had been accused of rape. He defaced the movie's billboards, and even got LGBT and feminist groups to protest at the movie's opening night (he then invited to local news crew to cover the protest).

Holiday has obviously benefited greatly from his exploits, and this book almost appears to be a way for him to expose others and clear his conscience.

gav, so useful when you provide a synopsis of the book. So many people put up a title and an author without giving us any idea of the content.

Julia said:

gav, so useful when you provide a synopsis of the book. So many people put up a title and an author without giving us any idea of the content.

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Good to get a summary of the content of the book. Most people put up title and author but don't tell us the essence of the book.

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I certainly get the point Julia...currently reading a great book and will post a complete book review once i finish.

CanOz

Julia said:

gav, so useful when you provide a synopsis of the book. So many people put up a title and an author without giving us any idea of the content.

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Thanks Julia. I find doing this helps the content of the book "sink in" (I also keep heaps of notes which I don't post)

Just about finished Warrior Brothers by Keith Fernell. Good read by one of our finest SAS soldiers.

Also picked up the following books to read:

- How to Make Money in Stocks by William J O'Neil
- The Snowball Warren Buffet and The Business of Life by Alice Schroeder

Cheers,

“The Signal And The Noise”
by Nate Silver

Nate Silver is a statistics geek who became famous for creating and selling a system that predicts the performance of baseball players (similar to those used in Moneyball). He then went into political predictions and in 2008 predicted the winner for 49 of the 50 states in the US presidential election. His blog is now “leased” by the New York Times.

In the lead up to this year’s election he had Obama’s chances at above 60% (when most other polls were 50/50), which he controversially increased to over 90% the week before the election (other polls where showing just over 50%). This time he predicted all 50 states correctly.

His book is about trying to decipher the difference between the signal and the noise in data using statistical tools and utilising as much data as possible. Nate rejects “frequentism” and prefers the Bayesian approach. He discusses various areas in which predictions are made, and how successful these predictions are. The fields include weather forecasting, earthquakes, elections, baseball, economics, poker, financial markets and climate change.

The chapter on climate change surprised me a bit. Being a science/stats geek and a lefty on the payroll of the New York Times, I didn’t expect Nate to be so open minded. He speaks to authorities with very varying views, illustrates their differences and legitimate concerns (eg. even climate scientists aren’t confident about how accurate their models predict changes in sea levels over long time frames).

The chapter on financial markets was quite bizarre and a big let down in what otherwise is a pretty good book. He pretty much lumps all technical analysis in the boat of ‘seeing patterns where there are none’. Apparently momentum trading doesn’t work either due to transaction costs, and he illustrates this with a very flawed example. He states that looking a P/E ratios is a great way to detect a bubble. Unfortunately, holding that view would have meant you would have missed the entire bull market of the 90’s (where P/E ratios were historically high, yet continued going higher for 10 years!). Worst of all, he concludes that unless you have insider information, you should just invest in an index fund.

One thing I like is that he doesn’t dismiss the subjective element to analysis and modelling, and that our own beliefs and biases can play a significant role in the result:

"The numbers have no way of speaking for themselves. We speak for them. We imbue them with meaning. Like Caesar, we may construe them in self-serving ways that are detached from their objective reality. Data-driven predictions can succeed - and they can fail. It is when we deny our role in the process that the odds of failure rise. Before we demand more of our data, we need to demand more of ourselves."

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Despite Nate’s love for dissecting data and predicting, he doesn’t seem to “fall in love” with the numbers, or believe that it is an “exact science” like physics/engineering (as shown in the quote above). It is clear that he is influenced by the work of Kahnemann and Taleb (references them both); and that is a good thing.

The Ultimate Biography of the Bee Gees. I am only a short way in but have already come to the conclusion that the whole family is as mad as cut snakes Good read though

I'm going to have a go at Lee Childs, 61 hours, on the Indian Pacific next week.

sptrawler said:

I'm going to have a go at Lee Childs, 61 hours, on the Indian Pacific next week.

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It's terrific, as are all his books. That's the second to last one. The latest, which I've just finished, is "A Wanted Man".
Taut writing, no unnecessary words. Edge of the seat stuff all the way.
His protagonist, Jack Reacher, is imo the best drawn character in all of current thriller fiction.

I doubt you'll see much of the passing scenery after you've opened the book.

The apparently senseless killing of 20 small children and six adults at Newton primary school in Connecticut leads to the question of what motivates these psychotic schoolhouse killers.

I recommend that any looking for insight into the development of this type of killer should read "We Need to Talk about Kevin"

Kevin's mother struggles to love her strange child, despite the increasingly vicious things he says and does as he grows up. But Kevin is just getting started, and his final act will be beyond anything anyone imagined.

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Ignore the movie, but read the book. It is fiction, but gives an insight into how these things happen.

Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

Calliope said:

The apparently senseless killing of 20 small children and six adults at Newton primary school in Connecticut leads to the question of what motivates these psychotic schoolhouse killers.

I recommend that any looking for insight into the development of this type of killer should read "We Need to Talk about Kevin"



Ignore the movie, but read the book. It is fiction, but gives an insight into how these things happen.

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I couldn't get right through it. Lionel Shriver's style seems excessively verbose to me.

Calliope said:

The apparently senseless killing of 20 small children and six adults at Newton primary school in Connecticut leads to the question of what motivates these psychotic schoolhouse killers.

I recommend that any looking for insight into the development of this type of killer should read "We Need to Talk about Kevin"



Ignore the movie, but read the book. It is fiction, but gives an insight into how these things happen.

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Yes, I highly recommend this book too for the same reason.