To learn. To teach. To stay up to date. To wonder. To be interesting. To inspire. To be inspired. To invest. To get deeper into a topic. To escape (without moving your feet!) .To laugh. To get perspective.
Reading is a frequently neglected activity that is very important in these fast-moving times. My love affair with books started when I was 7. As a single child, novels and news magazines were my best friends and I used to devour Time and Newsweek by the time I was 12. My mom, who was a college professor, always encouraged me to read and we’d talk over dinner of what I’d read that day. Now I read 30-40 books every year, I read daily and I always carry books with me; when flying and even while climbing mountains. Something magical happens when you read a great book. Don’t you agree?
Which is why I will keep posting book recommendations here. I hope they spark something in you!
The central thesis of Kantrowitz’s book is that all of the companies he researched — Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft — believe they have to continually reinvent their business, or they will die. In other words, it’s “always day one,” a term that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is credited with.
When asked during an all-hands meeting in 2017 what day two would look like, Bezos said “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline.”
Read MoreCAN A SOLITARY TRADER BRING GLOBAL MARKETS TO THEIR KNEES? A real-life financial thriller, Flash Crash uncovers the remarkable, behind-the-scenes narrative of a mystifying market crash, a globe-spanning investigation into international fraud, and a man at the center of them both.
Read MoreWhy are self-confident idiots so often believed? Why are thoughtful experts so often given the cold shoulder? And why do apparently irrelevant details such as a person’s height, what they wear, their relative wealth, or their Facebook photo influence whether or not we trust what they are saying?.The recent rise of populist politicians and social media celebrities has left many of us pondering those questions….
Read MoreReflective, cerebral, bookish, unassuming, sensitive, thoughtful, serious, contemplative, subtle, introspective, inner-directed, gentle, calm, modest, solitude-seeking, shy, risk-averse, [and] thick-skinned. That’s Cain’s definition of an introvert. The book is primarily written for introverts – to empower them to be themselves, to help them learn about….
Read MoreA provocative look at how data is reinventing the market: where big firms will no longer be dominant. Will it lead to prosperity or calamity? Will it be an age of prosperity or of calamity? The main ideas in the book are as follows. This is the dawn of the era of data capitalism. Data-rich markets are sweeping across the global economy...
Read MoreConfession – Look I did not start off by wanting to read this book. The 550 pages looked dry and forbidding. In fact, I bought the book three years ago and it’s been brooding on my bookshelf ever since. I don’t know what exactly triggered it, but I am glad I did finally open the book…
Read MoreSure, Malcolm Gladwell can sell zillions of books and conferences by claiming that 10,000 hours of training makes all the difference. And Angela Duckworth can preach that the power of passion and perseverance ( aka Grit) is really what separates the best from the rest. However, IQ is (and always will be) a factor of utmost importance. “Certainly, IQ is not everything,” writes Hurley, author of Smarter, “perhaps it’s not even the most important thing, but it’s definitely one of them” High IQ isn’t everything. Proof? ….
Read MoreKey lesson from this book: you can be an expert practitioner and yet write fluently with humor and verve, something that 99.99% of financial types on the planet can’t do to save their lives! Long before the 2008-09 credit crisis and collapse, one of the strongest warnings about the dangers of derivatives came from Satyajit Das. The book starts and ends with the hilariously told yet instructive story of a naïve Indonesian noodle maker who got excited by derivatives (“no risk”) and was taken to the cleaners by a big bank. TG&M is a wickedly comic expose of the culture, games and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world. And played out with other people's money.
Read MoreIn my 19th book review of 2020, I welcome you to peek into the dark side of Big Data. Cathy O’Neil earned a Ph.D. in math from Harvard, was a postdoc at the MIT math department, and a professor at Barnard College where she published a number of research papers in arithmetic algebraic geometry. She then worked as a quant for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the middle of the credit crisis. She left finance in 2011 to work as a data scientist. Evolving from academic mathematician to quant to blogger, O’Neil has accumulated an unusual set of experiences and expertise and she has all the creds. This is the Big Data economy, and it promises spectacular gains.
Read MoreA decade plus after the GFC, there is a growing consensus that economics has failed and needs to go back to the drawing board. David Orrell argues that it has been trying to solve the wrong problem all along….. read the full book review at therealfinancementor.com.
Read MoreInner Engineering by yogi and mystic Sadhguru is a nonfiction book that explores the path to spiritual enlightenment. The main themes can be captured in three lessons….. read the full book review at therealfinancementor.com.
Read MoreThe book centers around the seven "sins"- behaviors that can be bad when taken to an extreme but can be good when taken in moderation. It’s not about trying to explain what is bad or good, but more of why our brains are wired to “sin”, things taken to an extreme. For example, we are wired to eat to protect against starvation but at the same time, this wiring can lead to a craving for high-calorie foods - the sin of gluttony….. read the full book review at therealfinancementor.com.
Read MoreOn how not to think like a loser aka critical thinking. From the creator of Dilbert. Loserthink refers to the many mental habits trapping people in their own bubbles of reality. Even the smartest people can slip into loserthink's seductive grasp…. read the full book review at therealfinancementor.com.
Read MoreAre you ready for Book Review #11 of RFM. A great warrior speaks on leadership. McChrystal explores these, profiling thirteen famous leaders from a wide range of eras and fields--from corporate CEOs to politicians and revolutionaries…. read the full book review at therealfinancementor.com.
Read MoreThis time we take a temporary diversion from finance/etc to take a fascinating look at a huge tribe that has had and will have a big impact globally. For many global companies, an India posting is now fairly de rigueur in order to give their executives the exposure and experience of working in a large and growing emerging market…. read the full book review at therealfinancementor.com.
Read MoreEasily one of the best books I’ve read. Ever. Because I could relate so much to it. In the early part of my career I spent a total of five years in the Big 5 audit firms. One firm in particular stood out for many reasons. I hated the dreaded evaluations after each audit. Called Job Evaluation Forms (JEFs), these were essentially tools to deny promotion or increments, or worse, to fire people based on very subjective ratings….
Read MoreFerriss is a very weird guy and the book initially looked like the typically shallow, markety, self help book. To be honest I skipped some boring parts related to setting up and running your business etc.
But I was surprised; there’s lot of insightful, practical stuff in it like….
Read MoreHere is my second review for 2020, a book which explores Jim Simons, a hedge fund legend and how he launched the quant revolutions. Jim Simons started a radical investing approach by crunching data and creating predictive algorithms—years before these tactics became popular…
Read MoreThere is a lot of fear and uncertainty as to how replaceable humans will be in the age of AI, robots etc. One school of thought predicts that it is only a matter of time before computers master every skill…
Read MoreRead Binod Shankar’s review of the book ‘Go Kiss The World ‘ by Subroto Bagchi, which is a remarkable story of a boy from small town India who ended up heading a huge company. Full review at https://www.therealfinancementor.com/
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