Sunday, April 02, 2006

Three Books

Well I have been offline for the last week or so mostly just reading regular books. So I will give a review of them now.

I finished this book




It is essentially a quick read bio of Charlie Munger. While there is nothing actually wrong with the book, it is more of a long article than it is an actual in depth study of munger form an investing prospective.

If you are looking for a book that will give you some insights on investing specifically this may not be the book for you, but if you want to study success in general than this book is fine. The author as created a niche where she has written several books on successful business persons and so the book just seemed as if it came form qa formula, a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

But I would recommend it because there just is not much out there on Mr. Munger.

I also read this book



I must say that this book was really excellent. Now unlike most books about Bufffet this book doe snot try to reduce Buffett to some quantative fomula where yo can pick a few criteria and come up wewith stocks to buy. Rather this book does a great job talking about Buffett's use of the circle of competence to make decisions, and that's the real secret to Buffett style investing. While I have read about the whole idea of circle of competence this book is great becaue ot actually provide a visual diagram to aid in understanding the concept.

The last part of the book is a bit long as it bogs down form an investors point view. But overall I feel that thios book is a definite must read.

I also read this book



I plan to do a in depth revire of this book and the blog that goes with it. The book basically takes a lot of what Buffett has written over the years in the annual report along with some of Grahams writings and breaks it all down in a very easy read. If you have not read Graham's



you should, but if you find Graham's book a little too much for just starting out than overall Mr. Town's book sets forth Grahama's and Buffett's principles an a way that are easy to understand. So while I will talk about this book in greater detail in the future I think that if you are new to investing you can get ag read handle on some key concepts form this book.

overall it is a good book for new investors to start learning.

The final book I have read is this one



actually i am about 80% through the first edition of the book from 1994 because it was available in my local library for free. This ios a really good book because it combines both a bio of Buffett as well as observations about how he invests. This book is over 600 pages (the most recent edition is I believe over 1000 pages)but it is a quick read as it is broken down into short chapters. IF you want the mpost comprehensible overview on Warren Buffett, a one stop shopping experience so to speak, than this is a great book. I think it actually is the best book for someone to read about Buffett before trying to figure out how to invest like him by reading other books on Buffett.

Well that's about it. I am slowly working on developing my theory on investing. Essentially what I mean is that I am developing a thought process on how to invest so that I may apply it to what to invest in. Ths is not to say that it is some type of investin gprogram, but more of a disciplined thought process.

I hope to be able to outline it for you in the next week or so.

Steven

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