Insights

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors record Robert Oppenheimer’s remarkable life in fascinating detail with many subtle insights applicable to high-achieving investment teams. As the “father of the atomic bomb,” Oppenheimer’s historic success at Los Alamos began with a strong intellectual foundation and thirst for a wide range of knowledge. He was the most celebrated theoretical physicist of his time (and worked with Einstein, Feynman, Bohr, Dyson, etc.), but it was his ability as a charismatic leader to bring out the best in others that led to the Manhattan Project’s (MP) success. Perhaps it was his love for psychology that allowed him to successfully interact with difficult and/or different people such as the MP’s military leader General Leslie Groves. We think the best investment leaders often exhibit many of Oppenheimer’s best traits: raw intelligence, passion, ambition, and humility.

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote that overconfidence is “the most significant of the cognitive biases.” Using compelling examples from various fields, the author advises both individuals and organizations to reflect on how to avoid overconfidence and be “less wrong.” From thinking in confidence intervals to considering the average opinion and relying on data, investors and investment firms can likely improve personal and professional performance. Investors should trade less often and sell their losers while organizations should find ways to reward well-intentioned failure. The book may help investors better calibrate their own confidence and help take Voltaire’s words to heart: “Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd one.”

Co-founder of Monty Python and celebrated actor/writer, John Cleese has written an interesting little book on creativity that can be read in one sitting. A big part of successful investing is the idea generation process and creativity is critical. The book highlights the importance of giving the unconscious mind time to consider complicated problems. Most prefer to make quick decisions and alleviate the anxiety of making important decisions. Mr. Cleese advises finding that childlike state of ‘playing,’ or becoming completely absorbed by an activity, as this often leads to creativity. For those of us lucky enough to be bitten by the stock-picking bug, we think this book will be a worthwhile addition to any investor’s library.

For those investors following Glencore’s attempted hostile takeover of Teck Resources and who want to learn more about the history of the industry, we highly recommend this book. The authors trace these “swashbucklers of global capitalism” back to the beginning and Marc Rich’s start at Philip Brothers in 1954. Fast forward 40 years and Marc Rich + Co. (for a deeper look at Mr. Rich and how he essentially created the spot market for oil in the 1970s, we also enjoyed The King of Oil) becomes Glencore in 1994 and mints at least seven billionaires through its 2011 IPO (less than half of the 14+ billionaires inside privately held Cargill). It is a fascinating look at this small, secretive group of ambitious traders that seek out inefficiencies in the global commodity markets for profit.

Morgan Housel, the author, is a well-known writer for a reason. He is clear, logical, and easy to read. This book offers up, in the form of many short stories, how behavior and not intellectual capacity is often a better predictor of financial success or failure. He makes the case that finance is too much like physics and not enough like psychology. Warren Buffett’s quote comes to mind, “If you have a 150 IQ, sell 30 points to someone else.” As it relates to an investment process, he emphasizes the importance of commitment and margin of safety. An enjoyable book.

According to the author, only two ‘stock pickers’ had ever made the Forbes 400 list: Warren Buffett and Shelby Davis. The book traces Davis’ unusual career beginning as a freelance writer, then GOP campaign advisor, and then the head of the New York State Insurance Department. Practicing Peter Lynch’s ‘invest in what you know’ style of investing, Davis eventually quit his job to focus exclusively on investing in insurance companies. He bought insurance companies around the world with leverage and passed down his passion for stocks to his son and grandsons. The Davis family went on to manage billions, and Shelby Davis’ grandson Chris still manages the New York Venture Fund today. The book is an enjoyable look at a focused, successful investor’s journey through both good and bad economic environments and markets.

We had heard many positive things about this book (more than 68,000 reviews on Amazon!), so we decided to move it to the top of our always growing ‘to-read’ book pile. Don’t start this book with any looming deadlines; you will likely have a hard time putting it down, and it’s a very thorough book. Although the book is massive in scope, covering early human history through today, with insights ranging from philosophy to capitalism, we found important takeaways for the growth and maintenance of an investment firm. The emergence of language more than 30,000 years ago likely led to the success of the Homo sapien versus the more imposing Neanderthal as it promoted social cooperation in extremely flexible ways. We think the best, at least those with the most promising future, asset management firms are those that can rally around a core set of principles and philosophy during both the good and the inevitable bad times.

Founder of the $55 B, United Kingdom-based global hedge fund partnership, Marshall Wace, the author has written a valuable guidebook to successful investing. The book is small and can be read in one sitting, but impressive in its reach. The author writes in a clear and concise manner and easily transitions between philosophical musings to market inefficiencies and the importance of humility and risk management. We think most investors will enjoy and gain from this book.