The year 2020 was more of reading than usual with pandemic causing me to remain more at home, as an investor the bread and butter of making good decisions is reading more and consuming more data and making a rational decision with accumulated data. So here’s a list of investing books that I enjoyed in 2020 and a few of them are not investing books but lessons which could be applied to investing.
The Black swan - Nassim Taleb talks about how “unpredictable events“ shape the most important events in our lives and why they aren’t predictable and trying to predict them will make us vulnerable, Taleb also argues that people who know that “Black swans“ cannot be predicted and rely on empirical data and willing to prepare anticipating such events stand a better chance to gain from such events. As the pandemic of COVID - 19 took shape I re-read the book and remains close to me in terms of how vulnerable and “Naïve” we are at predicting events.
The Outsiders - This book is a phenomenal one and talks of 8 best Capital allocators and how their decision shaped their respective companies in the long term. The role of a CEO is mainly to allocate Capital and prioritize teams to achieve the goals and doing it with the lowest cost and best resources, this book gave me a framework to think about what good Capital allocation is and how it drives a business.
3. Titan - Ron Chernov - This book is about Rockefeller and Standard oil. One of the best books on business. This book covers a great deal about Rockefeller’s life and an in-depth look into events that shaped Rockefeller and standard oil, one of the indisputable King of oil. This book covers economies of scale, how can a monopoly disrupt all other businesses and set price, how a 1st generation entrepreneur like Rockefeller had that canny ambition to rule the roost of American business. .
4. The psychology of money - An easy to read book, but very difficult to implement the ideas. Why is it so difficult to implement ? because the ideas are so simple and as humans we have always believed that to achieve massive success things cannot be so simple. so most people discard the lessons with that premise. I have personally applied a few lessons from this book.
5. The Halo effect - This is another stunning book which deals with false notions we have about the halo surrounded around some companies and some CEO's, where we live is so random and chaotic we always try to find order.
6. Investing for growth - This is the book by Terry smith of Fund smith. The book covers a wide range of areas and is a compilation and selected version of his annual letters. which is very informative.
7. The Bull, A history of the boom 1982-2004 - Maggie Mahar - This book covers the cycles from 1982 -2004 and how the bull markets from that period were shaped and its attributes. which reading it with the current context is fantastic.
8. The almanac of Naval - This book covers the tweets and select materials of Naval ravikant, A simple and an easy digestible book with lots of wisdom.
9. Charlie Munger Almanac - This is a treasure trove for anyone, i re-read this book again in 2020, and each time i read this book i get more insights, which is to say as we mature there are more to capture from this book.
10. Free Capital - This book is about how 12 private investors made it big, Most of them have very unique characteristics and backgrounds and almost all of them are different in their approach and still made it big. This book is an embodiment that almost all strategy works and we should stick to what suits us.
11. Market Wizards series Jack Schwager - This is another terrific book covering interviews of traders and investors. There are many unique ways to trade the market and almost all of them works if you follow it. There is a new series in 2020 which too is a favorite of mine, apart from the trading style what impressed were their mindset and how they approach trading psychologically. appalled
12. How to decide - Annie duke - This is like the sequel to the book Thinking in Bets and has some useful tools to decision making.
13. The great mental models Vol 1 & 2 - Shane parish - These books covers the fundamental concepts in the big disciplines like physics, psychology, chemistry and probability. A good book which should be put to practical use if we need to gain the wisdom in it.
14. Thinking Physics - This book was recommended by Naval , This is a fantastic book that does the job of taking complicated abstract concepts in physics and explaining it in simple term.
With a year gone by wish you all a happy and a prosperous new year 2021.
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