The Winning Spirit: 16 Timeless Principles That Drive Performance Excellence (Audio Book)
Topic: Audio Book

Inspirational, motivational self-help book from Joe Montana (star football player of yesteryears) and Tom Mitchell (executive coach).

Nice book with time tested self-help principles to achieve success. All illustrated with foot ball similes. So, if one does not understand football and its nuances, it may be little hard to get the full effect. Nevertheless, good one to spend a couple hours listening to it.

One thing very impressive about the authors is that after they excelled in their respective careers, they started an investment fund with no background in investment management. They approached this new field like anything else they did in the past. Start small, get hang of basics, grow at a sustainable rate, get some early wins, practice makes perfect and rest is history. At the time the book was published, according to authors, the fund was 500 million dollars and more. Good for them and their clients.

Joe Montana is really good and highlights how important his family was behind his success. So, good to remember to make families a heaven for self-help and also remember to be grateful for all the families did for us and recognize contributions to whatever we are today.

Cheers!

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Magic Formula Investing
Topic: Audio Book

This is the accompanying web site based tool for much acclaimed book -"The little book that beats the market".

Good book and a simple web based tool showing the results of the calculations and formula described in the book.

I have not been a big fan of get-rich-quick formulas to buy and sell stocks. But, once you carefully read this book, a lot of what is said in the book is based on solid fundamental analysis which takes you closer to valuing the company well. It is no brainer that if you can value the company reasonably well, buy the stock when it is trading well below the value and time your trades well, you are going to be better off the market. Thus this book puts basic value investing to good practice.

The author, a well acclaimed professor of finance, has gone ahead and made available the tool at http://www.magicformulainvesting.com/ absolutely free of cost. Certainly deserves some praise here. Interesting thing is that the list of stock recommendations generated by the tool are pretty neat. Most of them are trading well below P/E of 15 which should be one of the criteria to base your trading on. That way you do not end up paying more than a reasonable price. The formula also takes into account other things such as return on capital etc. to make it a more sound investment.

5 stars.

Even if you do not want to use the formula and practice as recommended by the book, you can use the tool to eliminate many companies which would have taken substantial time if you were to do the research using other means.

Cheers!

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Secrets of Great Rainmakers: The Keys to Success and Wealth by Jeffrey J. Fox
Topic: Audio Book

Tips and tricks book geared towards sales professionals.

Rainmakers - people making a lot of rains (of moolah).

Nice book. A lot of uncommon common sense. From sales perspective. For people who are new to sales, a lot of new stuff. 'Cold calling' is considered to be the most dreaded of all tasks due to high percentage of rejections, abuse from customers and so on. One smart sales person's first call was to fix up an appointment for the actual call. Needless to mention that this person soon moved out of cold calling and probably managed an army of cold callers.

Many good tips on what to sell, what not to sell, when not to sell, when not to argue, how to make sure that you make your biggest sale when the customer yells 'get the *&^@ of here'. True!

Great book to listen to over and again.

Even if we are not sales professionals,we should read (or listen to) this book because all of us have to manage the most important brand called 'self' and should be able to sell it for the maximum moolah. Secondly, even if you are not a sales person, being able to effectively manage a bunch of smart rainmakers is a good way to make some rains yourself.

Cheers!

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Bait and Switch : The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich
Topic: Audio Book

This is a funny book.

If you have read (or listened) to author's other book 'Nickel & Dimed', you can probably guess what might be there in the book.

Author documents the first hand experience of trying to get a white-collar job in the US during 2002-2003 time frame and how it went. She ends with a very pessimistic note and it is up to you to decide if such pessimism was unique to the author or justified.

In 'Nickel & Dimed', the author hid her true identity and worked as a house cleaning maid, waitress and a few other blue collar workers to document realities of living 'American dream'. In this book, she does the similar thing for white collar professionals.

In this book the author puts on the identity of a PR professional trying to get a regular job in a company with benefits. Her assumed background is freelancing the same field. What fills up rest of the book is how she goes thru the process using resources such as career coaches, endless networking, resumes, job boards, interviews etc. She also takes a critical look at the entire process and so called useful resources available. You know, they say 'more people made money by teaching people how to make money than making it for themselves on the wall street'. Same thing holds good in job hunting too. At least the author feels so about career coaches and other helpful resources.

The project which runs for good part of one year ends on a sad note. Time is up but the author's dream to get a decent job is unfulfilled. American dream shattered. Bitter and cynical ending.

It's easy to write off the author as someone who did not put full effort into getting a good job, approached the subject with an agenda to prove that corporate world was unfair etc. But, knowing that how difficult it was to get a job between 2001-2003, it merits some consideration. During that time, many well qualified professionals worked in those jobs which they would have not touched with a 10 feet pole otherwise.

I think we can ignore author's pessimism but use the insight from the book to prepare ourselves for similar job market which comes again and again and goes along with different economic cycles. Always learning new things, getting new credentials, saving tonnes of money, investing wisely and other common sense activities all come handy to make our lives recession proof. "When your neighbor loses job, it is recession. When you lose yours, that is depression'

Cheers!

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Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras
Topic: Audio Book

This is a business classics. Came before another book from Collins 'Good to great'.

In fact, Collins says in 'Good to great' that, knowing all that they know now, 'Built to last' should have come second and 'Good to great' first in the order. First you build a great company (using 'Good to great') and then immortalize it using 'Built to last'.

In 'Built to last', the authors take a set of companies. In each pair, one company went on to become a legendary company and the other faded into oblivion. They make comparisons between companies such as GE v/s Westinghouse, Marriott v/s Howard Johnson, Motorola v/s Texas Instruments.

Authors are careful about how things might change for these companies in the future. They say their main focus has been to extract those characteristics that are responsible for transforming companies. Down the line, if certain companies choose to ignore them and write their own failure story, that does not disprove the principles. Good thinking. Because some of the companies that appear in 'Built to last' did not retain their greatness or companies which were thought have faded off have come back strongly.

Authors are extremely effective with compiling mounds of data, carefully analyzing the data, coming up with patterns and then validating (or invalidating) those patterns against hypotheses or fitting new hypotheses to fit unmistakable patterns. It is really an art to be able to do that so consistently in both books. Collins claims in one place that being able to do that is one of his skills.

A lot of good information. A lot of management insight.

The audio book read by the authors is a very nice one too.

Q&A at the end addresses many questions.

Cheers!

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Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
Topic: Audio Book

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Swimming Across: A Memoir by Andrew S. Grove
Topic: Audio Book

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Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw by Mark Bowden
Topic: Audio Book

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"Good to Great" by Jim Collins
Topic: Audio Book

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100 Ways To Motivate Others
Topic: Audio Book

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On Wings of Eagles by Ken Follet
Topic: Audio Book

On Wings of Eagles by Ken Follet

In 1978, during the uprising that led to the fall of Shah of Iran and put Khomeini in power, EDS corporation which was doing business in Iran got into some problems with Iranian government or certain people in the government. Two EDS employees were arrested and thrown into jail with no proper judicial process in the sight. The bail amount set was 13 million US dollars. That itself was an indication that there was no hope for real justice.

All efforts to secure the release of these two employees failed. Even the US state department under Carter presidency could not and did not do much as US was busy in sorting out a messy political situation. Shah stayed in power that long mainly due to US support. Even that did not stop people from staging a revolution. US was buys in ensuring safe passage to Shah and his close circle. Two common citizens thrown into jail did not become a priority. Also, there was always suspicion that EDS people may have been thrown into jail due to some irregularities.

When all regular avenues to secure their release failed, Ross Perot founder and then CEO of EDS took the challenge to secure the release into his own hands. He used one of his old military contact who had the experience of conducting daring commando operations in Vietnam to rescue his people from Iran. Bull Simons, a decorated army veteran, was asked to help and Simon was ever ready. Commandos were not from any elite unit of US armed forces. They were chosen from rank and file of EDS. They were trained and managed by Simons.

This book narrates the entire story starting with EDS in Iran, their life, how they landed into problem, agonizing days for the affected people and families, grit of Ross Perot and his commitment to take care of his loyal employees, preparations for commando operation, many near fatal incidents, how local Iranians helped out and how the operation took altogether a different form and ultimately how it all ended well.

Great book. After having seen many avatars of Ross Perot this book shows another avatar which makes you really admire and respect him. It is not unlikely if everyone feels that they will give their life to someone like Perot. It is also a good lesson for modern day managers who have totally forgotten to treat employees anything more than disposables.

Cheers!

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Use What You've Got, and Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom -- by Barbara Corcoran
Topic: Audio Book

Use What You've Got, and Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom -- by Barbara Corcoran

This is a really nice book. A lot of useful insight from a very successful entrepreneur sprinkled with many hilarious examples.

One of the quotes from the book is as follows.
"If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails "

The author later came out with a book titled as above :)

If you have lived in an apartment community especially in the Northeast, chances are you probably have had some association with Corcoran. Corcoran group manages many apartment communities all over Northeast. The author is the Corcoran behind Corcoran properties.

Corcoran stands out because she probably is one of the first women entrepreneurs to make it really big in real estate and that too in big apple (NY city). For a person who scraped a hard living working many odd jobs, achieving all that success before she turned 50 is amazing. She sold her company for 70 million dollars a few years back. Although the author does not seem to be associated with the company anymore, her name which became a big brand continues to thrive.

The author who grew up in a big family of 10 children quotes many funny quotes, anecdotes she heard from her mother while growing up and then describes a real life business challenge she faced and how she successfully solved it and how her mother's simple advice was as effective as it was in running a household as it was to solve a business problem.

Audio book packs a lot of punch. It is read by the author herself and she does a fabulous job of creating a very realistic experience of her childhood and business life with her very well modulated voice and histrionics.

Excellent book.

Cheers!

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The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel (Hardcover) by Benjamin Graham
Topic: Audio Book

The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel (Hardcover)
by Benjamin Graham

Benjamin Graham is called the father of value investing. He was probably the person who systematized the discipline with sound financial framework. Before his works, I think 'value' in value investing was very vague.

Graham served as a professor of finance in Columbia university. He also ran a successful investment operations managing monies of many rich people.

"Securities analysis"- his text book with co-author Dodd is a classic which was first published in 1940's. It continues to see many reprints and editions with little or no change.

I think Graham wrote this book "Intelligent investor" for those people who did not want to or could not understand intricacies of finance but still wanted to understand value investing. In this book, Graham takes out all financial mumbo-jumbo and explains concepts behind value investing in particular and smart investing in general in a way everyone can benefit from.

Graham stresses over and again one thing many investors seem to have forgotten to ask that is "how much?" Without being sensitive to the price and willing to pay any price to a good stock (at least at the moment) is the biggest sin. Even a hot stock with very high growth prospects most of the times fail to deliver adequate returns to justify sky-high price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio.

Graham lays down a strict rule regarding how expensive one can afford to bid for stocks. Normally up to 15 times the average earnings of past 12 years or longer and never more than 25 times the earning. Another important point made is not to attach much importance to projected P/E. Focus on what has happened and ignore projections. Compare this with some high flying stocks such as Google. Google is trading at 67 time its last 12 months earnings. If you use Graham's formula of 25 times the earnings for high growth companies, Google becomes an attractive buy at around 130. We have to wait for quite sometime for that. It can happen if the stock comes down by 50% :)

Overpaying for growth is not a good strategy for investor.

Graham also provides a very nice anecdote as how to withstand volatility of the market especially when the stock that you bought after applying solid value analysis goes down. The analogy used is slightly round about but makes sense. Say, for example, you buy a house for 250, 000. You obviously finance it with a mortgage of say 200,000. Your monthly payment is say USD 2000. Does your mortgage lender care if your house is apprised at say 175,000 after some years because real estate market went down? Probably not because your lender is more interested in making sure that you are able to make timely mortgage payments. Lender will get more concerned if you get laid off and start earning 60,000 instead of earlier income of 100,000. Lender will be concerned with this development even if you are able to meet mortgage payments. Now apply this to stocks. Say you have done solid research on a stock which is trading at say 18 times its earnings and is paying steadily increasing dividends with increasing net income. Stock market which is driven by many irrational emotions of people prices your stock say 10% below the price you paid for without any significant changes to fundamentals. Your company continues to produce good results, pays regular dividends and manages itself well. Should you be concerned very much just because market has priced your stock down by 10% than when you bought? If you are an investor, probably not. You are not going to sell it and take losses. You are going to "buy and hold". When should you get concerned, you should get concerned if fundamentals change or if the stock moves up and become pricier for no good reason. That's the time to sell and take some profit or eat up the loss if you have to.

This books is not for speculators who want to buy and sell frequently to make some money. Nobody has been able to make money consistently by trading in and out of the market. Money in stocks is made by looking yourself as a business owner (which you indeed are) and choosing to become the owner of companies with solid fundamentals and not some phony dot com with fancy ratios such price-to-vision and is trading at infinite P/E (because it has never reported any plosive earnings).

Great book. We do not need more validity for Graham's timeless principles than any other fact that Warren Buffet who is one of the most successful investors of all times is a staunch follower of Graham's principles. In fact, Buffet was a student of Graham when Buffet got his maters from Columbia. Buffet also worked as part of Graham's investment company.

If you read or listen to this book, do share your comments.

Cheers!

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Some interesting books
Topic: Audio Book
It's been while since listened to these books. Not much to write about them individually but all of them are decent.

The thinker's way : 8 steps to a richer life / by Chaffee, John.


How to talk so people listen [sound recording]: the real key to job success/
by Hamlin, Sonya.


The seven sacred truths : a lifetime of wisdom while you're young enough to enjoy it /
by Waitley, Denis.


The fourth mega-market, now through 2011 : [how three earlier bull markets explain the present and predict the future] /
by Acampora, Ralph, 1941-


Reminiscences of a stock operator /
by Lefevre, Edwin, 1871-1943.


Win your case : [how to present, persuade, prevail-- every place-- every time] /
by Spence, Gerry.

Perfectly reasonable deviations from the beaten track : selected letters of Richard P. Feynman.
Topic: Audio Book
Perfectly reasonable deviations from the beaten track : selected letters of Richard P. Feynman.
by Feynman, Richard Phillips


This is a very good book indeed. If you have read popular physics books, you probably have heard about Dr. Feynman who is certainly one of the finest physicists of 20th with so many credits starting with his work on the first ever atom bomb to leading the investigation into Challenger disaster of 1986.

Feynman is probably one of those rare who tried hard to bring physics to common man in a way lay people can understand and appreciate even some of the most complex aspects of physics. It did not stop him from using simple but very effective common ways to hammer down a point. Even when he was explaining what went wrong in Challenger disaster to senate , he put a piece of rubber in a glass of ice cold water and showed how the rubber became very brittle and lost its elasticity. He continued to say that's what precisely happened with rubber used in some o-rings of Challenger which was not up to specifications and cold weather on the day of launch made the rubber brittle which started the chain reaction and finally leading to disaster.

Feynman won Nobel prize in 65(?). He worked for a long time at California Institute of Technology () and shaped the lives of many many around him. Feynman's name was exposed to me quite early and , first since my father was a professor of physics he mentioned his names quite especially in connection with his popular science series. Secondly, my went to for his grad studies when Feynman was still alive and was a legend on campus. Another not so personal but still a reason being Srinivas Kulkarni, now a top astro-physicist at , is originally from Hubli. So when any article was written about him, he got associated with Feynman in his intro. , Dr.Kulkarni is Sudha Murthy's (wife of Infosys chairman) brother. Trivia.

Now coming to this audio book. Feynman's daughter brought out this book after his death in 1988. Feynman wrote many letters to many people ranging from very important to many common ones including a kid in Dun school in India. Letters read with right explanation and context make a very interesting listening experience.

Certainly 5 starts.

Assertive Communication Skills for Professionals
Topic: Audio Book
Assertive Communication Skills for Professionals
by Carol Price

Good one to get on top of basic assertive communication skills. Using many simulated exercises is certainly a big high light of the book. A scene requiring assertive communication is simulated and author and her group of students go about how best to address the situation. This makes you get the finer points well.

The Martha Rules: 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Grow, or Manage a Business
Topic: Audio Book
The Martha Rules: 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Grow, or Manage a Business
by Martha Stewart

More than the book, I have admired Stewart all along after having read about her and her life in other books and magazines. Having come from a regular background what she went on to accomplish is very impressive. Regardless of her conviction in stock scam etc., she managed to hold herself up and came out with this book which is not bad at all.

Stewart does a nice job of methodically going thru time tested business principles and how she applied many of them in her case.

One part that is very touching and impressive is when she chose to step down from her company when there was a lot of buzz around her during stock investigation. She explains why at sometimes you have to give up something that you hold so close to your heart in the good of bigger stuff.

Nicely done work.

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Topic: Audio Book
Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

If you read any magazine regularly or listen to NPR etc., it is unlikely that you have not heard about this book. So much buzz has been around this book written by Univ of Chicago economist who says he can find the reason given the right data. He calls himself a "causality" expert (i.e.finding the cause).

Does not live up to the hype created around it but is certainly interesting. Levitt is quite good at challenging conventional wisdom and coming up with altogether a total different reason based on facts and numbers that are available....some of the interesting things he looks at are why the overall crime in the US came down since 90s, why drug dealer continue to work when they make 1/10 of lowest hourly jobs and life ending circumstances, guns etc.....he uses the research from Sudhir Venkatesh who lived with drug peddlers of South Side of Chicago while was doing research for his Ph.d.

Overall an interesting book but could have been done much better especially since the material presented is so interesting.

Benjamin Franklin
Topic: Audio Book
Benjamin Franklin : [an American life] by Isaacson, Walter.


This is a good (audio)book narrating the life of one of the finest American scientists, statesman and politician.

The future for investors
Topic: Audio Book
The future for investors : [why the tried and true triumph over the bold and the new] /
by Siegel, Jeremy J.


Siegel whose book "Stocks for the long run" went on to became a best seller comes up with another book. This one written after 2000 crash is good reflection on the market reality. Siegel does a good job of documenting the experience and running some additional analysis to develops a variation of his original theory of buying good stocks and holding them for ever.

In this book, Siegel develops a solid framework around what goes by unclear and ill explained "value investing". The term is because "value" in value investing is not well defined. Siegel ties values to dividends and regularity of dividends and the in dividends. Thus, he helps one pick right value stocks at least per his theory.

In the light of all accounting irregularities, dividends have become more important than ever. It is difficult to dividends as they fudge the bottom line.

Siegel's point is not many people make money because they over pay for the growth when they are buying stocks trading at eye popping PE ratios such as 100 and above. Once you overpay for the growth, it is very difficult to make money when the market prices the stock . But, Siegel shows how the dividend paying not so sexy companies such as tootsie Rolls, etc. delivered better values than tech giants such as IBM.

Great and nice sequel to "Stocks for the long run"

Cheers!