Reading is a very cost-effective business
In a 100,000-word book, the author basically has to eat a concept before the book can be served on the table.
For a book of more than 200,000 words, the author basically has to have very original insights in one field, and he has to make painstaking structural arrangements before he can write it.
This is the basic appearance of the operation of the civilized world: the achievements of civilization that some people have contributed with great effort, and the other part of them can obtain without much effort, which is so cool.
I finished reading 58 books this year, exceeding the small goal of one book a week expected at the beginning of the year.
The following ten books have helped me a lot in my cognition, and I hope they will be helpful to you.
Book 1: "Competitive Advantage - Perspective on the Enterprise Moat" - Investment
The author: Professor Bruce Greenwald, a famous American economist, is an authority in the academic and practical field of value investing. Greenwald and Kahn emphasized that there are only three types of sustainable competitive advantage, that companies that do not have a competitive advantage should focus on improving operational efficiency, that companies with a competitive advantage should consider their interaction with competitors when formulating their strategies, and that most of the competition revolves around price and volume
This book is a rare and easy-to-understand book that exemplifies all the competitive advantage models of enterprises, and is of great help in understanding and analyzing whether a company has a moat and the depth of the moat.
At that time, I had a feeling of enlightenment after reading it. It's worth reading for everyone who studies value investing.
After reading this book, it is better to read Porter's Competitive Strategy again
Book 2: The Emotional Life of the Brain - Psychology and Brain Science
The author is Sharon Bergley Sharon Begley。 A great book to understand how the brain processes emotions. We often encounter emotional self-reinforcement that we can't extricate ourselves from.
Understand how the brain responds to emotions and the relationship between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex at the principle stage. The amygdala deals with emotional problems, fear, anger, jealousy, sympathy and other emotions, instinctive emotions are used to help us avoid emergencies, but when we modern society, complex situations appear, continuous emotional appearance, how to control emotions is a very important ability, since it is the ability to learn Xi.
The author was the first person to systematically study meditation, and later used functional MRI to scan the brains of those monks who were very meditative, and found that it was very different, thus confirming the positive effect of meditation on the control of emotions in the brain.
Book 3: "Big Country, Big City" - Society
Author: Lu Ming
The free flow of people and resources in the country is important to maximize the overall benefits and productivity of the country. Urbanization is inevitable, and more and more people will gather, and the vice president will of course use congestion, high housing prices, and traffic jams. But the efficiency has really improved.
There is also echoing content in "Being Inside", the efficiency of urbanization is much higher than that of rural areas. After industrialization and informatization, the size of the city and the size of the population will determine the height of a country. The unification of the large market effectively avoids redundant construction and local protection in various localities, and is conducive to the rational allocation of the market. It is a book that allows you to understand the reasons why the current national policy has been implemented.
Book 4: "Warren Buffett's Moat" - Investment
The author is Pat Dorsey, former head of equity research at Morningstar, where he led Morningstar Securities Ratings and Morningstar Moat Ratings.
He is very good at enterprise analysis. Four types of economic moats are introduced, namely intangible assets, switching costs, network effects, and cost advantages, and then expounded what industries can be compared to concentrate on moats and signs of moat erosion, and then led us to use the methods introduced in the book to judge economic moats with actual cases, and finally introduced some valuation methods.
Very good book, the analysis is simple and thorough, the experience summarized is useful, and "The True Law of the Stock Market" was also written by him, and the content is more in-depth, which is very necessary as an advanced view.
Book 5: Value Investment Handbook - Investment
Author: Tang Chao, is an investment V with strong writing ability, with profound and unreserved analysis of the principles and methods of investment, as well as the process of thinking.
He wrote: A simple rule: Anything with a price-to-earnings ratio higher than the inverse of the market risk-free rate should not be touched. That is, if the market risk-free rate is 4%, all stocks with a P/E ratio higher than 25 times will not be touched.
The most important thing I learned in this book is the valuation method and what makes a good company, and how ROE is a signpost to lead me to the reasons why the company is good.
Book 6: "Influence" - Psychology, Social Category
Author: Robert S. Robert B. Cialdini is one of Fortune's 75 must-read smartest books and has been used as a textbook by Stanford University and other universities.
Munger, as a more intelligent person than Warren Buffett, sent a check to the author after reading this "Influence" to thank the other party.
The book speaks of 6 principles, which are verified by a large number of examples. The 6 principles are reciprocity, consistency of commitment, preference, scarcity, social proof, and authority. It seems to be very clear what it means, but there are many ways to study the reasons and how to apply them.
The book is very practical, the cases are just right, the analysis is thorough, and the coverage is quite extensive - it includes almost all the cases in psychology books I have read, and it is already a famous book.
"First Mover Influence" is a sequel 20 years later, which proposes another tool, the importance of "alliances", that is, the principle of the existence of these groups of alumni associations, parent groups, and hometown associations.
Book 7: "Chip Wars" - History
Author: Chris Miller, the book is the 2022 Financial Times, The Economist Book of the Year
The development history of chips will be helpful for investment in the chip industry. It is also the most important invention in the last 50 years, in which Moore's Law, which doubles the performance every 18 months and is half cheaper. So far, it has worked. The exponential growth is truly unprecedented, breathtaking.
From it, you can get a glimpse of Intel's development, TSMC's growth and the difficulties of lithography machine construction. This paper analyzes the challenges and games faced by China, the United States, Japan and other countries or regions in the field of semiconductors.
Book 8: "Munger's Way" - Investment
Charlie Munger (1924-2023), who just passed away this year, is 99 years old. In the book, at the age of 98, he still attended the shareholders' meeting of the "Daily Journal".
The book, which includes his Q&A at shareholder meetings at SECO and The Daily Journal, lasted for more than 30 years. I mainly learned Xi investment, business analysis and life wisdom from his presentations. Because he has been through a long enough period of time, it is clear from his God's perspective what remains the same and what changes. This is a book that explains the deeper problems of investing. It took me 2 months to read it, and I will gain something from it.
My three favorite words from him:
Jealousy, resentment, self-pity are the graves of thoughts. Self-pity can easily evolve into delusions, and delusions are the black holes of the spirit.
I've never met a smart person in my life who doesn't read every day, not a single one.
How do you get what you want? The answer is simple. If you want to get what you want, you have to deserve it.
It is a good embodiment of Munger's thoughts, and the analysis and judgment of some enterprises are also helpful to understand companies and investments.
Book 9: "Genome" - Popular Science
Author: Matt Ridley, Translator: Yin Ye, I saw that it was Yin Ye who translated, I just tried to read, I have watched some of his popular science videos, he can say complex things simply, this is a high-level ability.
As for the author, he became famous as "Rational Optimist", and also wrote the "Gene Trilogy" of "Genome", "Innate and Acquired", and "The Origin of Virtue"
Ye Yin is the CEO of BGI, a Ph.D. at the University of Copenhagen, and a genomics researcher. He has published more than 60 papers (including co-authorship) in internationally renowned academic journals such as Nature, and is a real expert in genetics.
In terms of exposure to medical innovative drug investment, a lot of professional knowledge is required, and this is a good entry point.
I learned from the book that human beings have 23 pairs of chromosomes, and each pair of chromosomes has DNA in them, and DNA is a manual of how the human body is produced, assembled, operated, and behaved. Informative and readable.
Book 10: Money Game - Business
Author: Shan Weijian, he is a strange man, moved bricks in the Gobi, studied at the University of San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley, and was a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania for 6 years. After that, he participated in the transformation of Ping An Bank of China. He is currently the Executive Chairman of PAG and is involved in Wanda Commercial Management's investment. The experience is exceptionally rich and legendary.
This "Money Game" is the process of acquiring the First Bank of Korea and is a compilation of Shan Jianwei's diary. For the first time, I had a detailed understanding of the complex and tortuous process of the painstaking negotiations. At the same time, it is very helpful to understand the banking industry.
These ten books, in no particular order, have been very helpful to me. You can also see that the scores are unusually high, and I hope it will be useful to you.