What I Just Read

Readable history of the famous stand of Fox Company, a small US Marines force that held off enormous Chinese forces to hold open a key retreat path away from the Chosin Reservoir. It was one of the Korean War's many crucial turning points. This is a narrowcasted narrative: it discusses mostly one company and what happened to it, leaving out nearly everything else from this very complicated war. The authors give enough context to ground the reader on why and how the conflict reached the Chosin Reservoir, as well as how the Chinese then "entered the chat" with a huge army, overwhelming everything. Beyond this, however, the authors make just a few scant comments concerning broader aspects of the conflict, thus readers new to the Korean War may want to read a separate history of the war to fill in the blanks. It's worth it: the geopolitics behind this conflict are fascinating, and the see-saw conduct of the war itself is really fascinating, as MacArthur took a nearly de...

A limited book recommending investing in commodities and gold while warning of inflation and dollar weakness. Much less insightful and less interesting than it should have been. This book could have (and probably should have) been reduced to a four-page brokerage report, but author Larry McDonald fluffs it out to book length with stories and poorly organized financial history. You can save yourself several hours and simply read Chapter 9, the final chapter. The author also has moments of laziness and unrigorousness. He almost certainly exaggerates the accuracy and profitability of his market calls during the COVID crisis, he calls Nassim Taleb "an avid dead-lifter" (not realizing Taleb quit deadlifting and hasn't done it in years), and he inserts charts into the book that have nothing to do with the ongoing discussion. This last trick is one way to punch up the apparent rigor of your book, and unfortunately it usually works. Admittedly, this book will get you thinking ab...

"History repeats itself all the time in Wall Street." A fictionalized biography of Jesse Livermore, one of history's most famous speculators. This is an enriching book, worth reading every decade or so across your investment career. And it's a genuinely fun read, conveying the free-wheeling investment culture of the days before the Securities and Exchange Act. When you're young and beginning to invest, this book thrills you with all the bravado of speculating. When you're older, after you've seen a few things and learned many of the manipulations and other techniques the investment industry uses to extract money from you, the book becomes more of a cautionary tale of things not to do, traps not to step in, things to avoid. This is the third time I've read this book (I'm now in my fourth decade as an investor, so I guess that makes me one reading behind schedule), and what struck me most this time around was Livermore's self-admitted weaknesses:...