The 5-Minute MBA: Takeaways From Top Investing & Business Books by Joshua Soong, CFA, Deerwood Capital
[klarman]Who has time to read anymore? Except for billionaires of course, somehow they always find time to read books, newspapers, and the Robb Report.
It must be nice to be one of the few lucky people with the financial freedom to spend an hour each day for reading, thinking, and self-improvement. How can ordinary mortals with less than 3 commas ever catch up to them?
Getting an MBA at business school helps, but that costs $100,000 and two years. Reading a lot of books is equivalent to an MBA, but then again, if people had time to read entire books they would already be financially independent and not need to read said books. The rich only get richer, because they read!
So, as a small personal contribution to the struggle against wealth inequality, we came up with a solution. Compile the top investing and business books and summarize each with a one-sentence takeaway. Absorbing our list of takeaways provides almost all the benefits of reading the books, but only requires five minutes.
For example, if we were listing the best movies of each decade and its key takeaway, the first entry would be:
The 5-Minute MBA: 90’s movies
Passenger 57, starring Wesley Snipes
Always bet on black
Now, for your education and amusement, “The 5-minute MBA”.
The 5-Minute MBA: Stocks
Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd
Use fundamental analysis and buy below intrinsic value
The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
Buy with a margin of safety from Mr. Market
Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letters by Warren Buffett
Value investing works
Money Masters by John Train
Value investing works with different investors
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher
Buy companies that grow
Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman
Buy with a margin of safety
One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch
Buy companies that you know (that grow)
The Little Book that Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt
High ROC + Low EV / EBIT = Profit
You Can Be A Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt
Spin-offs, stubs, and LEAPs
The Little Book that Builds Wealth by Pat Dorsey
Network effects, cost advantages, switching costs, intangible assets
How to Make Money in Stocks by William O’Neil
CAN SLIM
The Aggressive Conservative Investor by Martin Whitman
Buy safe companies cheaply
There’s Always Something to Do by Christopher Risso-Gill
Buy net-nets
The 5-Minute MBA: General Investing
The Snowball by Alice Schroeder
Do like Warren does
Damn Right! by Janet Lowe
Do like Charlie does
Memos from Howard Marks by Howard Marks
Price is not value, markets are cyclical, risk is not volatility
The Dhando Investor by Mohnish Pabrai
Heads I win, tails I don’t lose much
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Own assets that produce cash flow
The Investment Checklist by Michael Shearn
Use checklists
The Manual of Ideas by John Mihaljevic
Study other good investors
Introduction to Financial Accounting by Horngren, Sundem, Elliott
Double entry bookkeeping
Pioneering Portfolio Management by David Swensen
Illiquid alternatives = Profit
The 5-Minute MBA: Risk
The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks
There are many important things, mostly tied to risk
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter Bernstein
Risk management is hard
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein
Too much leverage is bad
Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb
Markets are not gaussian, be long gamma
Antifragile by Nassim Taleb
Markets are not gaussian, be long gamma in life
The 5-Minute MBA: Psychology
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Be friendly, honest, and caring
Influence by Robert Cialdini
People can be influenced
Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charles Munger, Peter Kaufman Editor
Be rational
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay
People are sheep
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
People are irrational sheep
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
Use checklists
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
Incentives matter
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Circumstances + Practice = Success
Mindset by Carol Dweck
You can improve with practice
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Get in the zone
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Focus
The 5-Minute MBA: Economics and Markets
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
Capitalism works
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes
Economies need intervention
A Random Walk down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel
Markets are efficient
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Markets are inefficient
Irrational Exuberance by Robert Schiller
Markets are irrational
Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel
Stocks are good
Dow 36,000 by James Glassman
Stocks are REALLY good
Common Sense on Mutual Funds by John Bogle
Stocks are good, index funds are better
This Time is Different by Kenneth Rogoff
Crises happen (a lot)
Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty
Rich people make more money than poor people
The 5-Minute MBA: Trading
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre
Cut losers, ride winners
Market Wizards by Jack Schwager
The trend is your friend, until the end, when it bends
The Alchemy of Finance by George Soros
Prices can affect fundamentals
Education of a Speculator (1997) by Victor Niederhoffer
Speculation is awesome and will make you tons of money
Practical Speculation (2005) by Victor Niederhoffer
Speculation is dangerous and will lose you tons of money
Confessions of a Street Addict by Jim Cramer
Trading is stressful
Fortune’s Formula by William Poundstone
Don’t overbet
The 5-Minute MBA: Wall Street
Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis
Wall Street is a jungle
Monkey Business by John Rolfe and Peter Troob
Wall Street is a jungle full of monkeys
The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs by Charles Ellis
Goldman Sachs is good at making money
The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow
JP Morgan is good at making money and politics
Biography of a Bank by Marquis James and Bessie James
Branch banking is best banking
Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Private profits, socialized ris
F.I.A.S.C.O. by Frank Partnoy
Derivatives are tricky
Where Are The Customer’s Yachts by Fred Schwed
Brokers are not your friends
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Masters of the Universe humbled
The Financier by Theodore Dreiser
Successful financiers are aggressive
The 5-Minute MBA: General Business
The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
Business exists to serve society
Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson
First media mogul/elder statesman
The Outsiders by William Thorndike
Make bold acquisitions, create value, repurchase stock
Competition Demystified by Bruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn
Liquidate if you don’t have competitive advantage
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany MacLean and Peter Elkind
Accounting can hide the truth
King of Capital by David Carey and John Morris
Stephen Schwarzman is good at private equity
Business Adventures by John Brooks
Business can get crazy
Jack: Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch
Cut costs; exit if not #1 or #2
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Get the right people in the right seats on the bus
Losing my Virginity by Richard Branson
Be a bold, fun entrepreneur
The Box by Marc Levinson
Containers shrink the world
Personal History by Katherine Graham
Be strong and confident
From Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew
How to build a first-world country from nothing
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
East and West are converging
The 5-Minute MBA: Hedge Funds
More Money than God by Sebastian Mallaby
Hedge funds are awesome and will make you tons of money
The Hedge Fund Mirage by Simon Lack
Hedge funds are terrible and will lose you tons of money
Hedge Hogging by Barton Biggs
Hedge funds are a mixed bag
No One Would Listen by Harry Markopolos
Capital raising through affiliation and exclusivity
Fooling Some of the People All of the Time by David Einhorn
Public activist shorting is tough
Confidence Game by Christine Richard
Bill Ackman is 100% confident he is 100% right
The Big Short by Michael Lewis
Big shorts need big puts
The Billionaire’s Apprentice by Anita Raghavan
Don’t cut corners
The 5-Minute MBA: Technology, Media, Telecom
The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
Hit ’em where they ain’t
Cable Cowboy by Mark Robichaux
John Malone is a great cable and media investor
The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick
Execution is everything. Also network effects.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Steve Jobs is obsessed and brilliant
The Road Ahead by Bill Gates
The internet is the future
Idea Man by Paul Allen
Bill Gates is an edge walker
The Everything Store by Brad Stone
Give customers what they want
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
Give good customer service
The Mythical Man Month by Frederick Brooks Jr.
Software engineering is hard
Inside the Plex by Steven Levy
Google is smart and thinks big
The Men Who Would be King by Nicole LaPorte
Hollywood is tough
Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew Grove
Manage through strategic inflection points
Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? by Lou Gerstner
Bureaucracy is bad, turnarounds are good
Fire in the Valley by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine
Computing changed everything
From Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Monopolies and start-ups are good
The 5-Minute MBA: Retail
Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton
People like low prices
Pour Your Heart Into It by Howard Schultz
People like coffee shops
Grinding it Out by Ray Kroc
People like burgers
In-N-Out Burger by Stacy Perman
People like good burgers
The Billionaire Who Wasn’t by Conor O’Clery
People like duty-free shops. Also charity.
The 5-Minute MBA: Energy
Titan by Ron Chernow
Refine oil, get rich
The Big Rich by Bryan Burrough
Find oil, get rich
The Frackers by Gregory Zuckerman
Find hidden oil, get rich
The First Billion Is the Hardest by T. Boone Pickens
Buy oil, get rich
The 5-Minute MBA: General Interest
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Life is short, minimize regrets
How to be Rich by J. Paul Getty
Live a rich life
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Guns, germs, and steel affected history
Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
Women are good at business too
John Adams by David McCullough
The patriot’s patriot
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Be water my friend
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Follow your dreams
