illumin8

Introducing illumin8

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” – Herbert Simon

Ever thought of cooking a great dish ? You don’t need to be a Michelin star chef to understand that to make a great dish, firstly you must ensure that every piece of ingredient that’s going into the making of the dish is also of fine quality.

 

Same is true for investing too. As an investor, to have a successful investing career, you must have fine investing ideas. And one of the finest source for great investing ideas is “Reading”.

One of the key habits of successful investors is reading and it is highly unlikely that you excel in the market without being a voracious reader. Don’t take my word for it, these are what superinvestors have got to say:

 

Superinvestors on Reading

“I don’t think you can get to be a really good investor over a broad range without doing a massive amount of reading.” Charlie Munger

“I’m a passionate reader. That’s why being an investor is the perfect job for me.” Irving Kahn

“I don’t know of any successful investors who come up with good ideas without reading.” Thomas Kahn

Read voraciously and wait patiently, and from time to time these amazing bets will present themselves.” Mohnish Pabrai

Read as much as you can about the markets, economy, and financial history.  Never stop reading.” Seth Klarman

“I read voraciously and still do. I read lots of business biography because it informs me about human behaviour, how people behave in their business life and how that effect how they will do.” Chuck Akre

 

One of my favorite book is Steven Pressfield’s masterpiece “Nobody wants to read your sh*t”. I highly recommend everyone to read this. The central idea is captured in this passage :

You begin to understand that writing / reading is, above all, a transaction. The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer must give him something worthy of his gift to you” – Steven Pressfield

Unfortunately though, we live in a world of information overload, deluge in data and click baiting headlines. This is a double whammy.

Firstly, you pick up something to read only to realize that the content is hollow / poorly written / there is nothing original or insightful. Secondly, bad or substandard reading material takes away from us something finite, precious and irreplaceable resource– our TIME.

 

Introducing illumin8 from Stock and Ladder

Dear reader, illumin8 a humble attempt to present you with a handpicked collection of 8 pieces of awesome content on investing. It could be a blog piece, editorial column, newspaper story, YouTube video or even a podcast which was found to be interesting, insightful and illuminating.

While the focus will be on investing, the net for good content will be cast far and wide to cover the areas of business, economy, management, and behavioral economics.

 

Here’s the first issue. Hope you will find this as useful as I do.

Keep Reading, Happy Investing !

 

Issue no. 1, Nov 8th, 2019

1. Legend is a word which is really apt for Peter Lynch. Here’s a great interview he gave recently and shared some of the secrets of his success. And he clarified / qualified his point on “owning what you know”

 

2. Amazon and Jeff Bezos continue to amaze us. Here is a fine collection of lessons from Bezos shareholder letters from 1997 to 2018

 

3. There are many top schools like Harvard, Stamford, Princeton etc. and then there is Yale.  Most prestigious schools run a large endowment fund but none can match the investing success of Yale as there is only one David Swensen whose greatly successful template for long term investing, popularly known as “The Yale Model” has made Yale incredibly rich.

 

4. The recent spectacular listing gains of IRCTC seems to have made the investors waiting excitedly for the next IPO’s. Amidst this Euphoria Prof. Aswath Damodaran chips in with some interesting IPO lessons for public investors…

 

5. Everyone loves music and as such the music industry is thriving. One player to really leave a mark on the whole is Spotify. Spotify is definitely music to the ears but with Apple and Amazon giving a spirited challenge, is Spotify music to the investor’s wallet

 

6. Ian Cassel is one of my favorite writers and his latest blog post was a thought provoking one with deep meaning. We have read that conservative investors sleep well and getting good sleep is considered a success parameter for long term investors. And here we have Ian with a fine piece telling us that it’s okay to occasionally wake up in the middle of the night thinking of our investments

 

7. Recessions are inevitable. Just like rough seas make good sailors. It’s a bear market and recessions that makes a good investor. The Ritholtz team put up a nice video on building recession-proof portfolios

 

8. While investing in equities one should have an owner’s mindset and by investing in the shares of a business one automatically becomes a part owner of that business. Berkshire Hathway is a great example of creating a collection of business you love owning. Prof. Sanjay Bakshi recently shared with a wonderful note on how to create your own Berkshire Hathway

 

Bonus: Not to mixed with the wonderful content till now, here is a piece I wrote on Winners betting selectively. By putting your money only on ideas on which you have the greatest conviction you are giving yourself a better chance to succeed

 

Do you love Reading? Check out the best books to read at the Superinvestors Bookshelf
Let’s stay connected, Follow me on Twitter @Stocknladdr
Terms of Use: Read Disclaimer

 

Do you love Reading?

Check out the best books to read at the Superinvestors Bookshelf Let’s stay connected, Follow me on Twitter @Stocknladdr

 

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