William Thorndike – Author of “The Outsiders” – 2 Qualities that Make a Great CEO

I first heard of the book “The Outsiders” in Berkshire Hathaway’s 2012 letter to shareholders. And who is going to ignore a book that Buffett calls “outstanding!”?

The book goes in detail on 8 different CEOs who excelled at creating exceptional long term returns for shareholders. In fact, the average returns of these companies’ shares outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of 20 – every $10,000 invested in these companies was worth $1.5 million 25 years later.

What’s their secret? And how can we use those lessons to find today’s great CEOs?

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How to Not be Wrong – The Power of Mathematical Thinking (in investing) [Book Review]

Investors have to interpret a lot of numbers, and make sense of a lot of forecasts in order to come to well educated investment decisions. But many of us went through the math class that taught us how to do this asking the teacher, “When are we ever going to use this?” and spacing out.

Jordan Ellenberg does an excellent job giving you a crash course in some basic math principles that have great benefits for investing.

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Investing Book Series: Competitive Strategy Chapter 2. Strategies to Outperform

In this series we look at investing lessons from some of the classic investment books out there and apply those lessons to today in order to spot potential investment opportunities. Today we look at Chapter 2 of Michael Porter’s book: Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, where he evaluates the 3 generic strategies companies use to outperform in an industry. [continue reading…]

Investing Book Series: “Competitive Strategy” Chapter 1 and Using it to Find Your Next Great Investment

In this series we look at some investing lessons from some of the classic investment books out there and apply those lessons to today in order to spot potential investment opportunities. Today we look at Chapter 1 of Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors where he evaluates major barriers of entry, and how to identify them. [continue reading…]