8 books reviewed


[Review by Robert Jones 1-18]

BEHAVIOURAL INVESTING BY JAMES MONTIOR, 2007:

Short, easy to read chapters offer a treasure trove of insights into investor behavior and biases that lead to poor decisions.  This book should be on every investor's desk, frequently referenced to help protect us from ourselves.


[Review by Robert Jones 10-18]

THE GREAT REBALANCING BY MICHAEL PETTIS, 2013:

Michael Pettis has the outstanding ability to explain complicated economic concepts and relationships in simple terms. This book's contents are very timely amidst the U.S. trade war with China and covers the period from the 2008 global financial crisis.  It answers many questions on the tip of our tongues such as what would happen if China dumped its US Treasury holdings, how can the U.S. and China re-balance the huge U.S. trade deficit with China, and it gives examples of similar cases and outcomes in other countries in history.  The book is loaded with interesting insights and explains how current global imbalances, especially relating to China and Germany vis a vis the rest of the world, arose and how they can be solved.

[Review by Robert Jones 7-14]


INFLUENCE BY ROBERT CIALDINI, 1984:
This is an amazing, important book about human psychology and its deleterious effect on decision making. It is simple yet powerful and helps us tune in a bit more to what's happening around us, and reminds us to click our brains off auto-pilot. Rather than summarize key points I recommend you (from teenagers to any age) read this book cover to cove.

[Review by Robert Jones 4-12]

THE INTELLIGENT ASSET ALLOCATOR BY WILLIAM BERNSTEIN, 2001:
An outstanding book that every investor should have regardless of portfolio size. It covers the basics of investing from soup to nuts including common mistakes that investors make, the case for exchange traded funds, and the art and science of asset allocation. If I had to select one book on investing this would be it

[Review by Robert Jones 9-02]

PIONEERING PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT BY DAVID SWENSEN, 2000:
An outstanding book that is destined to become a classic. Written by the CIO of the Yale Endowment, this book covers many different asset classes from a practical standpoint, and discusses many actual cases of successes and failures. Although David clearly has nothing to prove given his enviable track record at Yale, he does not water this book down with conservatism: instead he strongly voices his opinion on a number of issues such as fund manager compensation, securities lending, fixed income investing, etc. A must read for any serious long-term investor.

[Review by Robert Jones 3-06]

UNCONVENTIONAL SUCCESS:
A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment by David Swensen, 2005: Another destined-to-become classic although it is very similar to Mr. Swensen's first book (see a review of Pioneering Portfolio Management above). While reading this book, especially towards the end, I couldn't help thinking about the potential damage that Mr. Swensen may have caused to Yale's student center as it tries to place new graduates in companies, and to Yale's fundraising department as it tries to convince corporations and alumni to donate money to Yale. Read the book and you'll see what I mean. Of course, as for me, I found the frank comments about the "failures" of the mutual fund industry in the US to be extremely valuable and insightful.

[Review by Robert Jones 2-04]

VALUING WALL STREET BY ANDREW SMITHERS AND STEPHEN WRIGHT, 2000:
Despite the condescending tone that consistently pervades the book, this selection is outstanding and thoughtful. The main topic is "Tobin's q" which explains that to determine whether the stock market is over or undervalued, one should divide aggregate stock market capitalization by aggregate corporate net worth and if the result is way over or under 0.65 then the market is over or under valued. The authors strongly believe that this ratio provides much higher forecasting accuracy than the widely used P/E ratio or other commonly used metrics. Too bad many of us weren't aware of the book prior to the bubble crash in 2000! There are many areas of the book that I find to be fascinating, such as Chapters 24 and 29 which discuss why it's a fallacy to use inflation, interest rates, and yield ratios (such as bond yields compared to dividend yields) as the basis for calling market valuation levels or to explain relatively high or low P/E ratios.

[Review by Robert Jones 5-21]

WEALTH OF WISDOM: THE TOP 50 QUESTIONS WEALTHY FAMILIES ASK EDITED BY TOM MCCULLOUGH AND KEITH WHITAKER, 2018:
This is a great reference book covering important topics of interest to wealthy families. Each chapter is short and written by a different wealth management industry practitioner, and doesn't have to be read cover to cover. Instead, readers can leverage the insight of wise counsel and search up the topic or author as issues arise.






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