What I Just Read

It is always valuable to read books from investors who use a different approach from yours. The underlying idea is to develop all-weather investing skills by studying a range of techniques and styles, so you can survive, and even thrive, in any investment environment. Author Larry Hite describes himself as a "trend-follower," and while he found most of his success in commodities, he's willing to traffic in practically anything that moves. It gets the reader to think agnostically about asset classes and sectors, since any investment anywhere can have a trend you can ride.  In other words, think about ways to widen the cast of your net while you widen your range of techniques and styles. Hite made his fortune a few different times, and suffered a spectacular blow-up when one of his employees hid trades in interest rate futures from him. It's not always the case, but usually the guys who blow up--and yet manage to get wealthy a second time--speak most knowledgeably about...

River Cartwright blew up his career on a mission gone bad. Now he labors with other failed intelligence workers in "Slough House," shuffling paper, picking through garbage and doing soul-sucking work designed to drive them out of the job--or at least keep them out of way. This is an anti-John le Carré novel : instead of brilliant intelligence analysts sorting out a case, it's screwups and political outcasts. Except that Slough House is led by Jackson Lamb, a man who might be far more competent than he behaves. Author Mick Herron has an unusual gift for misdirecting the reader, in fact this might be his most notable technical skill. The reader spends a good portion of the book either in the dark or deliberately set up with incorrect beliefs about what's happening. [A quick  affiliate link to Amazon  for those readers who would like to support my work here: if you purchase your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or from my sister site  Casual Kitch...