Tag Archives: book

October 11, 2010 · 12:33 pm

The Snowball, Warren Buffett bio (book review)

Last Christmas, my brother gave me “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life“, by Alice Schroeder. He completely hit on the spot, though I only started reading it during last August holidays (Luca also started reading it to the point that she ended up buying her own Kindle version of it!).

The book is a thorough review of Buffett’s life, including relationships with family & friends and investment decisions. I had previously read other books about Buffett, but they were merely about his investment “strategy” so to say, nothing compared to this one. To complete the book, the author made over 250 interviews, so you can imagine the many insights contained in it.

There are many lessons or just ideas that can be taken from this book. Let me just point the few I can recall at the moment of writing this post:

  • The Inner Scorecard: the idea of acting and valuing yourself according to what you care about and not according to what others’ deem important.
  • The concept of margin of safety: from Benjamin Graham (recommended reading “The Intelligent Investor“).
  • Circle of competence: the idea of looking for simple business that have an enduring competitive advantage (technology companies are not that simple).
  • Cigar butts: companies which are worth more “death than alive” (looking for cheap price to book).
  • Snowball: the idea that compounding interest acts as a snowball falling down the hill, the sooner you start the larger the ball will be down the road (thinking about retirement here).
  • The story of the genie: or that you should invest in your own health as your body is the only one you are going to be given in this life.
  • The Ovarian lottery and the idea that philanthropy achieves more if exercised now and trying to maximize its impact.

Throughout the book you get to learn about many great entrepreneurial characters (e.g. Rose Blumkin, Bill Gates); about the workings of the board of directors of some companies (e.g. Coca Cola, Berkshire Hathaway); about some of the most impressive falls in corporate history (e.g. Solomon Brothers, Long Term Capital Management); about several depressions, recessions and crisis; and above all you learn about what were the thoughts and calculations behind some of Buffett’s investments decisions since the early 1940’s to date.

I definitely recommend this book (700+ pgs.).

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July 27, 2010 · 12:00 pm

World War III

Beginning of June I bought at Schiphol airport the book “The Next 100 Years; A Forecast for the 21st Century”, by George Friedman (author of “America’s Secret War”). I receive sometimes at the job reports and articles by Stratfor, the intelligence and forecasting firm that George Friedman founded. This was one of the reasons that raised my attention, the other were the headlines that could be read in the front page “2020: China Fragments”, “2050: Global war”…

Cover of "The Next 100 Years".

Friedman’s book tells us that when thinking about geopolitics we should be aware of:

  • Experience tells us that we should expect the unexpected.
  • We should not be confused by passing chaos and cyclical crisis.
  • Humans and countries are not that free when taking decisions, but they see limited their options by several constrains. He goes looking for such constrains.

If he had written the book in 1900 he would have pinpointed the following three things as defining for the century:

  • Collapse of European Imperial System
  • Quadrupling of World’s population
  • Revolution in transportation & communications.

Now, at the beginning of the XXI century he guesses the three defining issues will be:

  • The rise of American power
  • The end of the population explosion
  • The development of technologies to deal with a declining population.

You may wonder “the rise of American power?”, yes he makes the case that North American power has just started and it’s here to last: technology, economic power, control of the World’s seas (US Navy), military power, access to both Atlantic and Pacific oceans…

As he says, the USA “had the ultimate aim of preventing any major power in Eurasia. The paradox, however, is as follows: the goal of these interventions was never to achieve something –whatever the political rhetoric might have said- but to prevent something. […] Its goal was not to stabilize but to destabilize. […] The USA has no interest in winning a war outright.”

With this in mind, he explores what may happen in the next hundred years: Russia trying to reassert  itself, China fragmenting, Poland, Turkey & Japan as rising powers, some of them starting a global war, space-based power generation, Mexico challenging the US…

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July 3, 2010 · 12:00 pm

Book review: La Hermandad de la Sabana Santa

I was given “La Hermandad de la Sabana Santa”, by Julia Navarro, last Christmas as a present. I had seen it in bookshops for years and even though I liked the synopsis at the back I never bought it because I had lots of books in the to-be-read list. But now that I had it, I took it with pleasure to have an easy read in between more demanding ones (for it is in Spanish among other reasons).

The plot is around some detectives and art experts who are investigating accidents around the Sacred Shroud in Turin, and the find themselves following the thread of the Knights Templar… is it enough? Doesn’t it ring a bell? I found this novel very similar to “The Da Vinci Code”. I checked it, and Dan Brown’s book dates from 2003, while the one from Navarro is from 2004.

Honestly I found this book much simpler than “The Da Vinci Code”: its descriptions, dialogues, the thoughts of the characters… On the positive side: how the plot advances in several parallel timelines in the 1st, 13th and 21st centuries and how they all merge in the last frenzied 200 pages.

If you haven’t yet read “The Da Vinci Code”, I would read it first rather than “La Hermandad de la Sabana Santa”, however if you have read the former and you liked the genre go for the latter as well, and finally, if you read the former and had enough of it… better find another book.

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June 1, 2010 · 8:00 am

De Feria en Feria

Last weekend, on top of attending family visits and a wedding, I could spare some time in two different fairs: the “VI Feria de la Tapa de Madrid” and the “LXIX Feria del Libro de Madrid”. Both experiences, as it was expected, were a success.

Posters of "VI Feria de la Tapa" and "LXIX Feria del Libro" of Madrid.

In the gastronomic fair I had lunch on Saturday and supper on Sunday, the day it closed. There were 38 restaurants and taverns from the Madrid region represented in the fair, and each one of them brought 4 or 5 different tapas. By chance, while we were there on Sunday evening it was taking place the contest to elect the best tapa… My first thought was “it’s not a bad contest to be judge”, later I thought it better… one thing is to take 6 or 7 tapas at your will and rhythm, and a very different one is to take 38 tapas in a row! Anyway, the judges didn’t look bad at all.

VI Feria de la Tapa.

On Sunday I went to the book fair (I will come more times this year, until June 13th) and I had another please surprise. During the first smooth walk along the stands I stopped by the one of Ecobook bookshop and I asked about a book just to see if they had it by chance, and, they did have it! The book is “Confusión de confusiones” (of which I had already referred to in another post).

This book was written by the Spanish Jose de la Vega and is the first book about the stock market. Once I finish it I’ll write more about it, now I leave here the link of a blog about it.

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April 23, 2010 · 12:00 pm

International Day of the Book

Today is the commonly known as International Day of the Book. I learnt in the Wikipedia that it is actually called by UNESCO: “World Book and Copyright Day” (I wonder how the copyright part of it is celebrated…).

There, I also learnt that this tradition was originated in Catalonia, Spain, and that even though it is commonly stated that is the anniversary of the death of both Cervantes and Shakespeare (23rd April 1616), that is not correct as at the time England was using the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian one, thus Shakespeare died 10 days later.

Recommendations. My contribution on this day is the recommendation of the 3 books of those I read last year that I liked the most:

  • “Augustine’s Laws”, Norman R. Augustine.
  • “A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing”, Burton G. Malkiel.
  • “Particula Divina” (“God Particle”), Leon Lederman.

In the same way I would appreciate if you leave your recommendation of the books that you liked the most of those you have read recently in a comment to this post.

E-Books. Two weeks ago I read in The Economist an article about the publishing industry. It cited a study, from PwC, which estimated that consumer ebook sales in North America will have a share of 6% of the market in 2013 (up from 1.5% in 2009). That would be one out of every 16 people. However, I think I only know of one person reading e-books as of today (a member of Excelencia who spoke about it a year ago). Let’s see if we find more people doing so:

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