Here is your weekly Saturday newsletter, where I share the latest updates from the site, a new idea worth thinking about, few stories you shouldn’t miss, a question from my mailbox, and a question for you. Let’s get started.
On SN This Week
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The Power of Meditation in Life and Investing
Here are the best things I am reading and thinking about this Saturday morning. But before that, here are the posts I published on the site this week, in case you missed any –
- Who Wants a 20% Annual Risk-Free Return?
- A Simple P/E Valuation Model that Works
- Nobody Knows What’s Going to Happen
- 20 Lessons on Starting Up
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Why We’re Ignorant of Our Own Ignorance
Here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…
Idea I’m Thinking – Dunning Kruger Effect
One day in 1995, a large, heavy middle-aged man robbed two banks in the American city of Pittsburgh. He did it in broad daylight, without wearing a mask or any sort of disguise. And he smiled at surveillance cameras before walking out of each bank. Later that night, police arrested a surprised McArthur Wheeler. When they showed him the surveillance tapes, Wheeler stared in disbelief. “But I wore the juice,” he mumbled. Apparently, Wheeler thought that rubbing lemon juice on his skin would render him invisible to videotape cameras. After all, lemon juice is used as invisible ink so, as long as he didn’t come near a heat source, he should have been completely invisible.
The Fastest Path to a Better Life
Here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…
Book I’m Reading – On the Shortness of Life
This is one book that stays by my bedside. In this, Seneca, the Stoic philosopher and playwright, offers us an urgent reminder on the non-renewability of our most important resource: our time. It is a required reading for anyone who wishes to live to their full potential, and it is a manifesto on how to get back control of your life and live it to the fullest.
Here are a few passages from the book that serve as great reminders on, well, the shortness of life –
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
Here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…
Book I’m Reading – How to Fail at Almost Everything and…
If you don’t know who Scott Adams is, odds are high that you would give a pass to a book with such a cheesy and hackneyed title. But if you did that it would be a huge loss. Scott’s How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is one of my all-time personal favourites and I can vouch for the tremendous utility of his methods.
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Owning Stocks is a Long-Term Project
Here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…
Book I’m Reading – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM) is the autobiography of American writer and philosopher Robert Pirsig, wherein he chronicles his motorcycle journey across the country with his son. It is however much more than just an adventure tale. Through his journey, Pirsig explains his philosophy on life, creating a manifesto through motorcycle maintenance.
There are many lessons to be learned from this book, but a handful of persist throughout the story that can help reshape your perspective. Like, here is what Pirsig writes on how we lose so much time on unnecessary affairs that we move swiftly past what is really important –
We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.
Why We Make Bad Decisions
Here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…
Book I’m Reading – What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars
The backdrop of this book is the true story of a trader called Jim Paul. His career in stock market started with a string of unusual successes that vaulted him from a dirt-poor country boy to jet-setting-millionaire. However, after 15 years of uninterrupted success, all of Jim’s wealth was wiped out in a matter of few weeks when he lost $1.6 million in a speculative trade. This devastating failure led him to intense self-reflection and discovery of some unusual insights about success and failure.
Thinking, the Einstein Way
Here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…
Book I’m Reading – Who Moved My Cheese
I read this little book multiple times before quitting my job to start work on Safal Niveshak in 2011. It is about, well, coping up positively with change. Who Moved My Cheese illustrates the simple fact that change will happen, whether we choose to accept it or not. The defining factor is how we deal with it; whether we allow ourselves to change or insist on staying the same.
You Are A Black Swan
Here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…
Book I’m Reading – The Black Swan
Black swan is a Latin expression, which was commonly used as a metaphor to describe something impossible or something non-existent. It came from the old-world belief that all swans are white since no one had seen a black swan before. Every time someone spotted a white swan, it was confirmation of their belief i.e., “all swans are white.” But this long held notion was invalidated the day first black swan was spotted.
A black swan event has following three attributes, writes Taleb in his book –
First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact (unlike the bird). Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.
86,400 Seconds
Occasionally, I send out this special post with a few ideas I am reading and thinking about. Plus, a question I am meditating on.
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Book I’m Reading – A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes
This is a brilliant book from Peter Bevelin. Through this book, he has distilled Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes into bite-sized principles and key quotes. In fact, this book is much more than a collection of quotes. It is a way to learn the powers of observation, understand the limits of our mind, and counter the narrative fallacy.
Sherlock Holmes is the epitome of rationality, and when it comes to making businesses decision, a rational thinking goes a long way in keeping you out of trouble.
Thinking is mostly an automatic process for everybody but while making critical decisions in life (and in business of investing) one needs to come out of the autopilot mode and learn the art of thinking clearly. Sherlock Holmes give us a framework, a blue print if you will, of thinking.