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5 February 2025
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Please use the comment section to share your most enjoyable book of 2016.
It will soon be the time of year when people turn their mind to casual reading, so tell us your best book. It could be an oldie or a newie, and let's get a reading list going.
The great unwinding by George Packer
Chaos Monkey _ Obscene fourtune and random failure in Silicon Valley. Story of a failed PHD student who went from Goldman sachs to a small startup that sold to Twitter then onto facebook where he built agorithims for them. Very well written and interesting insight into silicon valley mindset and inside story of Facebook circa listing in 2013. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. Autobiography of founder of Nike. he oultines the early tears of Nike and how it almost went broke after failed japanese trade deals and product flops. Very interesting.
Retirement gives time for more reading! For those who wonder why some countries sustain wealth and others wallow in despair I thoroughly recommend Why Nations Fail by Economoglu and Robinson.For those who are interested in the historical shaping of global foreign policy,World Order by Henry Kissinger ,and for a terrific novel on how the Brits deceived Hitler about which part of the French coast the Allied Invasion would be centred on,I recommend The Best of Our Spies by Alex Gerlis
The most Important thing: Uncommon sense for the thoughtful investor - Howard Marks The book is more about psychology and ways of thinking about value portfolio management.
Scott Pape's new book The Barefoot Investor It covers everything from the cradle to the grave in one excellent book. In that sense it is correct when it portays itself as the "The only money book you'll ever need".
When Breath Becomes Air Nothing to do with investment – everything to do with life. https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Breath-Becomes-Paul-Kalanithi/dp/1847923674/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481187595&sr=1-1&keywords=when+breath+becomes+air T
"The Straight Dope. The Inside Story of Sport's Biggest Drug Scandal" by Chip Le Grand. "City Limits: Why Australia’s cities are broken and how we can fix them" by Jane-Frances Kelly and Paul Donegan "25 Years of Whitt & Wisdom" by Noel Whittaker "The organized mind : thinking straight in the age of information overload" by Daniel J. Levitin. "The sovereign individual : mastering the transition to the information age" by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg.
Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar is loosely about jokes and their relationships to different strands of philosophy. It's side-splittingly funny from start to finish, and I won't say any more because that would spoil it!
Narconomics; How to run a drug cartel, by Tom Wainwright. This book is an expose par excellence, written in an engaging style. It looks at the South American drug cartels through an economists eyes - similar to Freakonomics - the beauty here is the dispassionate observation of drug cartels as corporate businesses with their gruesome actions as being the inevitable outcomes of drug 'CEOs' trying to make ends meet. Its so good that next year McKinsey will probably turn it into a powerpoint. watch Narcos on Netflix, then read this book ... it will make you question everything you believe about how to tackle the illicit drug industry. highly recommended for the beach
On a light hearted note try GIRT a history of Australia that will have you laughing at every page and learning as well
Why Minsky Matters, by L Randall Wray. Minsky was a maverick economist who the mainstream rejected as a crackpot ... yet his theories of how an economy and markets work was vindicated by the global financial crisis. His core idea is that 'stability is inherently destabilising' Sounds odd, but it means that the longer we have stable predictable markets the more greed will embolden people to lever up ... the eventual result is the additional leverage makes the market/economy unstable... resulting in a spectacular meltdown ie you need to embrace capitalisms cycles for capitalism to work. Minsky's own work was very hard slog ... but this book from one of his students is a well written read that brings clarity to this Bear Grylls of the economist world to life.
Indeed Jeremy. 'Thinking fast and slow' is the Book of the Decade.
Yes, I Am Pilgrim a great read!
'I Am Pilgrim' by Terry Hayes Brilliant
The Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape, a great read for the young ones to start on the journey to financial literacy and for the older generation who did not bother.
Too many fans of Thaler? A great summary of his work in Misbehaving, The Making of Behavioural Economics.
Alastair Campbell's 'Winners and How They Succeed' is an easy read, describing how dozens of people have made a massive impact on society.
Snap. Did the same. There is a film also. Very refreshing. Looking forward to reading Michael Lewis' new book: The Undoing Project - about the partnership between Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman who wrote many brilliant papers on why we are such poor intuitive statisticians and related behavioural economics topics.
I've been getting into the audiobook format this year. I quite enjoyed 'reading' The Good Girl, by Mary Kubica while out walking! A suspense/thriller told from the different perspectives of each character.
I enjoyed dusting off 'Nudge' by Thaler and Sunstein. Great insights into how people behave and make decisions, often counterintutive.
The housing market was subdued in 2024, and pessimism abounds as we start the new year. 2025 is likely to be a tale of two halves, with interest rate cuts fuelling a resurgence in buyer demand in the second half of the year.
This examines the performance of key asset classes and sub-sectors in 2024 and over longer timeframes, and the lessons that can be drawn for constructing an investment portfolio for the next decade.
While encouraging people to draw down on their accumulated wealth in retirement might be good public policy, several million retirees disagree because they are purposefully conserving that capital. It’s time for a different approach.
The renowned investor has penned his first investor letter for 2025 and it’s a ripper. He runs through what bubbles are, which ones he’s experienced, and whether today’s markets qualify as the third major bubble of this century.
Getting regular, growing income from stocks is tougher with the dividend yield on the ASX nearing 25-year lows. Here are some conventional and not-so-conventional ideas for investors wanting to build a dividend portfolio.
2024 was a banner year for equities, with a run-up in US tech stocks broadening into a global market rally, and the big question now is whether the good times can continue? History suggests optimism is warranted.
After a stellar run for banks, investors are wondering whether they can continue their outperformance or if a rotation into miners is imminent. There’s a good case that a switch is coming, and it may last decades, not just years.
DeepSeek has surprised investors, but it shouldn't: it's part of a normal capital cycle. Big tech companies have made a lot of money, which attracts capital and competition, and eventually hurts returns and incumbent share prices.
If Australia is to control its own destiny in an AI-enabled future, it must build its own infrastructure, not rent it from overseas. Creating homemade AI is the first critical step in the long process of building Australia's AI economy.
The TV streaming business has become increasingly competitive, yet Netflix has managed to grow market share and become the dominant player. Here's how it's done that, and the opportunities it has moving forwards.
Markets are not driven by numbers alone. Examples from Tesla shares to Sydney houses show that investors must evaluate not just tangible assets or financials, but also the intangible story that magnifies their value.
A big market sell-off can force pensioners to 'sell cheap' in order to meet their miniumum withdrawal requirements. Investing in less volatile assets that also deliver regular income could provide an alternative.