Guy Spier's Book Recommendations
In an interview with Portfolio Manager's Review, Guy Spier, founder of Aquamarine Capital Management, shared the following on some of his favorite books in recent years:
"I sent Alice Schroeder’s book out to a bunch of investors. I think that it is a very valuable book to read. I know that it has been controversial, but setting that aside, I think that Alice probes into aspects of Warren Buffet’s mind and psyche to reveal more of his personality with all of the foibles of the human being behind Warren Buffett.
For those of us that are big Buffett fans, that is a huge advantage. It helped me to understand why I am different than Warren Buffett. I think it is a valuable read in that regard. It helps to place his mind in the center of the decisions he has made. The book lets you look at the kind of emotional life that Buffett had growing up. I do not think his phenomenal track record could have come about without that emotional makeup.
There are three books that I have read not so long ago on complexity theory. I think that they are extremely valuable. One is by John Gribbin. Even though I studied economics and I felt I had a good grasp of the kind of economics taught academically, I feel that the study of complexity theory as applied to the global economy is actually a much better model for understanding how the global economy evolves.
One of the books is by Benoit Mandelbrot who is famous for the Mandelbrot set. He also wrote a book about the fractal nature of financial markets. Mandelbrot is obviously a very modest guy because his fractal approach to financial markets predicts that sooner or later something like what happened over the last 18 months was going to happen. Unlike other commentators, who get in front of the TV cameras and say “I told you so,” he has not done that. He is a true scientist.
Lastly, an investor of mine gave me one of the two books by Atul Gawande who is focused on the very small things that make hospitals better. One of the books is actually called Better. The other book is called Complications. Atul Gawande gives a sense of how you can be extremely knowledgeable and totally focused on the right outcomes and still fail by a wide margin to get close to the ideal that you would like. Of course, this has massive lessons for investors.
I recently took up bridge, so I have been reading a lot of bridge books. I am looking forward to going outside Borsheim’s at the next Berkshire Hathaway meeting and playing bridge with whoever is willing to play me. I don’t think that it is a coincidence that Buffett chose to put an area to play bridge outside of Borsheim’s rather than chess or table tennis or any one of a number of other things. It is not just that Buffett likes bridge. He likes an awful lot of things. I think that he is sending a message, in his inimical way, which is not to force it down anyone’s throat. But by placing an area to play bridge right outside of Borsheim’s, Buffett is saying that bridge is more than just a great game, it is something that has really helped him, I believe, develop his mind. I think it can develop all of our minds in a way which is helpful to investing."