Reddit reviews Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

• The idea that "startups" and "startup founders" are in a continuous state is bullshit. So some of the time you may be in a learning stage, trying to devour all the content available about a topic, and sometimes you may be in an executing stage, where your focus is on getting things done. I think it is OK to go with this flow and enjoy it. E.g. sometimes I read 3 books in a week, sometimes zero. Yes I am sure people read more /r/iamverysmart
  
  
• Creating interesting and successful businesses requires intelligence. In general, intelligent founders will be attracted to books, because [in whatever form] they still contain the bulk of our civilization's intelligence. Yes, more photos are uploaded to Facebook every microsecond (or whatever) than the data in the entire Library of Congress, but really, the knowledge that has stood the test of time is that which is still contained within books.
  
  
• Reading news and business publications creates an emphasis on "the latest cool thing" or "the latest opposite thing". Open plan offices are bad. Open plan offices are the future! In the grand march of time, this opinion and argument is trash. One of the reasons Bill Gates always recommends Business Adventures is that the lessons are timeless, and repeat themselves every cycle. This kind of information is mainly contained in books. There is something about the "pay-to-read" format (currently) that still holds.
  
  
• Obviously, reading-with-an-intent-to-learn specifically about your chosen subject area is very close to "work", and while that's not "bad", it does mean you are not "switching off" or allowing your brain to branch out, be creative, relax, be inspired, take a few hours off-duty. So there is plenty of value in reading things that are completely unrelated. E.g. You may get more inspiration and value and love from Moby Dick than From Zero to One.

Here ya go.

I just bought it on Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-Street-ebook/dp/B00L1TPCKW

On Amazon it says “Business Adventures remains the best business book I’ve ever read.” —Bill Gates, The Wall Street Journal

That is not an affiliate link lol -.-;

There's a lot of generally good information in there, both about investing and life. When i read them i tend to skip past the more boring number stuff and look for his folksy knowledge -- back in 2006 I was in my final year of college, and an Econ class had us compare Warren's "weapons of mass financial destruction" in 2003 to Alan Greenspan's "Frothy markets" --

the difference helped me decide to sell the condo my parents had bought in 2004 (i was paying them rent, but they said they'd split any profit with me or i could assume the mortgage and eventually pay them back) -- we made a small profit and were lucky to sell near the top. I then later saw the FED was pumping money into the market with QE; and also, Warren's advice from (i believe 2010 letters) "if there were a way i could buy several hundred thousand homes and cheaply manage them, it would be the best investment i could make" -- the $170K condo i bought is now worth about $300k 6 years later.

more generally - he's a contrarian who pushes to be cautious when others are greedy, and greedy when others are cautious. his frame of mind greatly influenced my mom's investing style and mine, and she went from not graduating college to being a multi-millionare through both cheapness and a lazy portfolio that managed to beat the market. I'm a bit more active than her but have been doing well myself, i've got the real estate bets doing well and also, am an early-ish bitcoin investor. and macro-economically, after the markets crashed in 2008 i knew to get fully invested and ignore any fear till the markets went back to where they were before (based on what i saw the FED doing). -- so since markets re-aligned in ~2014, my stock market returns have been just in line with the market instead of outperforming, but if you look at my portfolio as a whole i've been killing it.

here's a good books that (imo) works well to replace the older shareholder letters -- http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118503252,subjectCd-FI00.html

or, another book i just read that Gates calls the best book on business; warren also likes -- https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-Street-ebook/dp/B00L1TPCKW

many similar points of timeless advice that work. I would say though, try to get through his more recent letters, or if it's too dry, they are heavily covered by media and it's worth reviewing what you can. also, Charlie Munger seems to be the more "high IQ" person, he's worth reading anything you can find on. I'd start with page 39 here, it's pretty readable -- http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2014ltr.pdf

Let me know if there's anything else I can help with!

I don't have a particular view on the effect of the rise of passive on vol, but it's a popular theory that it's lowered it. However, it's not obviously true to me. Back in the 60s the theory was that the rise of mutual funds would lead to increased vol as everyone was forced to rush for the exits at once in a downturn. That turned out to not be true.

I think it inevitable that one day there will be another recession, the market will fall, and vol will rise. I think the interesting question from a theoretical perspective is whether the current low vol is a structural change as well as a cyclical change. IE: we could be in a low vol period and also the world has permanently become less volatile, or we could be in an incredibly low vol period for some reason, but things will eventually return to the long term average. I suspect there's been a structural change but like I said I don't know why.

Amazon is offering the republished version in late 2014. It can be pre-ordered now! Amazon Link

I read the chapter and enjoyed it, just bought the Kindle version. Can't wait to dive in.

Here's the link for the Kindle version for anyone that's interested

>I really like learning about cases like Enron.

Check out the book: Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street