Monkey Business

The subtitle is Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle and the authors are John Rolfe and Peter Troob (2000).

I bought this book a long time ago when I cared about investment banking.  It does a wonderful job of describing the nonsense of that day-to-day existence.  Glorified brokerage, arts and crafts, and throwing shit at a wall.  Just a terrible profession.

Why We Fight

The subtitle is One Man’s Search For Meaning Inside the Ring and the author is Josh Rosenblatt (2019).

The story really resonated with me.  The author is the typical New York hipster/artist/writer, who spent much of his life as a pacifist, but in many ways as a compensation to avoid his fear of getting hurt.  Until one day, when he was 33, he got bored of living life in fear, and developed an obsession with fighting that led him to train and eventually take on his first MMA fight at the age of 40.

When I read Skin in the Game, the line that stuck with me was that you can only have evolution with the threat of extinction.  Mr. Rosenblatt’s tale confirms that very notion.  The line from his book that I will remember (quoting another) is that one should do “something enthusiastically enough to get hurt”.  This book is great.

You Can Be A Stock Market Genius

The subtitle is Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits and the author is Joel Greenblatt (1997).

Some years back, Harris Kupperman mentioned this book as one of his favorites on investing.  And it does focus the reader on special situations in stocks where risk/reward is more favorable – such as spinoffs, recaps, merger securities, etc.  However, given the highly automated and computerized nature of today’s markets, I question whether these strategies still work in nearly the same way, since algorithms are looking for exactly these inefficiencies (and likely do it far faster than any human mind).  Maybe when today’s lofty levels come back to earth, some of the concepts discussed will be more fertile terrain.  Or, maybe, I don’t pay attention to the stock market in the same way that I used to, so I’m not really prepared to put in the extra work to see for myself.  Regardless, his style is light and entertaining and his discussion of special situations is instructive.