Author: Raoji

The Book ‘Markes Never Forget’ is written by Ken Fisher , the Billionaire Fund Manager and Lara Hoffmans.

The basic premise of the Book is that people don’t do enough homework to test their hypothesis or biases.If they go back in history, they would have found that markets would have behaved differently to their assumptions.

Some of the different assumptions he tackles are related to recessions, political biases, bull runs, volatility etc

Nearly all the data etc in the book are related to US markets and hence a bit of a bore.

The key takeway of the Book is “Go back in history and see how the markets behaved in similar conditions”

For example, if a new Govt is sworn in at the Center, go back and test how markets have behaved in the first year/second year etc. Or if you are a fan of a political party, check how the markets have behaved when they were in power . And so on…

I would give this book a miss…you can buy me a beer instead !

The Book ‘ Modern Monopolies’ is written by Alex Moazed and Nicholas Johnson who are entrepreneurs and consultants.

The Book is about ‘platforms’ like Google, Amazon etc which are taking over the world.

It contains interesting case studies about Nokia, RIM etc and how these powerful companies collapsed in front of the onslaught of platform cos.

In today’s world , a product ( such as a smartphone) or a software is a commodity. What is valuable are networks – networks of users, transactions or data.

The beautiful thing about platforms is that as networks increase, their utility increases, their marginal cost goes down and they become even more profitable.

Hence it is no surpise that investors love platforms. It is estimated that by 2040, 50% of the S&P 500’s net income will come from platforms.

In India, unfortunately there are hardly any listed companies that are platforms .

I would recommend this book as a good beginners guide to platforms.