The wonderful thing about investing is that you don’t have to know people personally for them to be your mentors. A lot of great investors have written articles, letters and books that are publicly available. There are many ways to invest successfully, but it’s important to find an approach that makes sense to you.
Unlike the more “timely” weekly reading series, I intend for this page to become a library of “timeless” articles and resources that have been helpful to me in an investing context. Hopefully other people will also find them useful or, at the very least, interesting. I will add to this collection over time, so feel free to check back on occasion.
Note: apologies in advance for any broken links; if you are looking for a copy of any of the articles listed below, you may want to contact the author/organisation directly.
In no particular order:
Building a life
Howard Stevenson, professor emeritus at HBS and co-founder of the Baupost Group, shares some of his life lessons. Lots of practical insights and wisdom. For more, see his conversation with Sal Daher, covered previously on this blog, and his book Wealth and Families.
Partnership letters
The full collection of of the Nomad Investment Partnership letters to partners (2001-2014).
Reece Duca (IGSB)
How to craft a winning investment process and spot world-class companies.
Letter to a friend who may start a new investment platform
Written by Graham Duncan of East Rock Capital. Excellent read and well worth your time (especially for those who are thinking about starting a new venture). Also see his letter to a friend who just made a lot of money.
Talking your book
Patrick Luo’s research paper on the evidence from stock pitches at investment conferences.
Secrets of Sovereign
How Richard and Christopher Chandler’s bold bets transformed a $10 million family fortune into $5 billion.
Musings of the market in gold stocks and what comes next
David Crichton-Watt, founder of AIMS Asset Management / Phoenix Gold Fund.
The life and death of Adolf Lundin
Institutional Investor’s final interview with the legendary natural resources entrepreneur.
Do stocks outperform treasury bills?
Research paper by Professor Hendrik Bessembinder of Arizona State University. The original study looked only at US stocks, but the scope was later expanded to include global stocks. Although not mentioned in the title, the paper is really about the positive return skewness of long-term stock market returns, which basically means that a few stocks have very large returns, while most have modest or negative returns. This is quite intuitive – the challenge for investors lies in being able to identify the winners (lots of hindsight bias at play here) and having the discipline to hold them for the long-term (not easy to do as your portfolio becomes more concentrated, especially if you are a fund manager).
The trouble with optionality
Mihir Desai discusses how the emphasis on creating optionality can backfire in surprising ways. Instead of enabling young people to take on risks and make choices, acquiring options becomes habitual. You can never create enough option value – and the longer you spend acquiring options, the harder it is to stop.
Live long & prosper
I’m a fan, albeit somewhat sporadic reader, of Gordo Byrn’s blog. I was initially only interested in the topics related to personal finance, but over time, his writings have helped me step back and think more holistically about the concept of wealth (e.g. control over your time, quality of relationships with family and friends, physical health). His e-book (which you can access or download for free from his blog) contains many valuable insights and frameworks that can be used in your own life.
Valuation fundamentals in Asia
Richard Lawrence of Overlook Investments discusses in detail the tools, disciplines, and procedures for financial analysis of Asian companies. Amongst other things, he covers cash flow, the evaluation of management, projections and valuation criteria. This has probably been the single most helpful resource for me as a private investor. I also highly recommend his 2015 talk at the Richard Ivey School of Business (link here).
The sons of Stanford
A look at the Stanford “outpost” of value investing that has evolved out of a series of graduate school courses taught by Professor Jack McDonald. Includes interviews with a number of former students who have gone on to become notable investors. The chapter is an excerpt from Andrew Kilpatrick’s Of Permanent Value.
Lei Zhang’s lecture at CBS
The low-profile founder of Hillhouse Capital shares some of the investing and life lessons he has learnt since graduating from the Yale SOM. The notes are courtesy of Zong Z. Peng.
Reflections of a value investor in Africa
Francis Daniels, the co-founder of Africa Opportunity Partners, reflects on his personal investing journey and shares some lessons learnt from a career investing in the region. The presentation is a little dated but nonetheless makes for an excellent read. A short personal note: I had the great pleasure of meeting Francis over lunch a few years ago when I was based in Johannesburg. He was very generous with his time, insights and advice.
Art as an asset
An analysis of John Maynard Keynes’ art collection identifies general attributes of art portfolios crucial in explaining why investor returns can substantially diverge from market returns: transaction-specific risk, buyer heterogeneity, return skewness, and portfolio concentration.
Scott Adams on success
One of my favourite talks. The creator of Dilbert shares some key insights from his excellent book: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. His framework covers why goals are for losers, passion is overrated and how luck can be manipulated (sort of).
Kevin Kelly
68 bits of unsolicited advice.
Ozymandias
Percy Shelley on the transience of power and accomplishment (below taken from the British Library).
Ulysses
The final stanza from Lord Tennyson’s poem:
