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This week I read The ETF Book, because I’m procrastinating. I though this would be a really boring and dry subject, but I learned a few things. I learned that Vanguard has a patent on Vanguard Index Participation Receipts (VIPERs), the structure of their ETFs, which are special class shares of their mutual funds. When you’re buying something, you should know what you’re buying. There are many different type of exchange portfolios as detailed below. | Grantor Trusts | Investment Trust | Exchange-Traded Notes (ETN) | Unit Investment Trust (UIT) | RIC Open-Ended ETF | RIC Vanguard ETF
—|—|—|—|—|—|—
SEC Registration Act | 1933 | 1933 | 1933 | 1940 | 1940 | 1940
Company dividend reinvested | No | No | Implied | No | Yes | Yes
Portfolio pays dividends | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes
Redemption in-kind option | Yes | No | No | No | No | No
Tracking error | NA | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes
Credit risk of issuer | No | No | Yes | No | No | No
Manager discretion | NA | Yes | No | Restricted | Yes | Yes
Allows concentrated positions | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No
Traditional fund share class | No | No | No | No | No | Yes
Economic Cycle Investing 
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This week I read Light on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar, because I want to enhance my practice. This is the bible on yoga. It has descriptions and photos of 200 asanas, different yoga postures. The appendix has a 300 week course if you want to be able to do all the poses. Although many fail to get past week 166. It is recommended that you do your practice under a guru. The origins of the word guru come from gu, darkness and ru, light. You need control over the mind to be absent of desire, fear and anger. It is thought that the loss of semen leads to death and its retention to life. 8 Stages of Yoga
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This week I read Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, because I need to get in touch with my emotions. Doesn’t explicitly label and organize within a chapter since stories are mainly a narrative to illustrate techniques. The end of the chapter summarizes points. Can probably just read summary at end of very chapter if you’re busy. Sometimes theory doesn’t match up with the real world. Chris Voss’s real experience as an FBI hostage negotiator was gained by people dying. You can benefit from their deaths by reading this book and finding out what works in practice. Conflict
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I wanted to read The Most Important Thing, but I wound up reading The Most Important Thing Illuminated, which had added unneeded commentary. I can see why you would annotate something like the bible, but this is not really a book you need to add annotations, especially smack dab in the middle of the text, which breaks the reader’s flow. The author, Howard Marks, is a cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management. The book grew out of a series of memos he sent to his investors. Instead of blog posts turning into a book, this is a bunch of memos turned into a book. If you’re looking for specifics, you won’t find it here. This is a collection of a lot of different “most important things” that investors need to consider in order to be successful. It is not one thing that makes you rich, but a lot of small things.
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This week I read Eat That Frog! from SmarterComics, because I wanted procrastinate by reading a book. I intended to read Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time the book, but wound up with the comic book instead. Previously I read Getting Things Done, which already put me in the mindset of doing things to become more productive. There’s no explicit list of 21 items in the comic book, so I’ll just assume each panel in the summary section is one of the 21 ways.
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This week I read Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages by Carlota Perez, because it was recommended by multiple sources. I had to pay money to purchase this book since it was not available at my local library. VC blogger Fred Wilson wrote about bitcoin in the Carlota Perez Framework. The book is divided into three parts. Part I talks about technological revolutions. Part II talks about financial capital in relation to technological revolutions. Part III talks about why this reoccurs. It is a difficult book to read when you have ADD, because it is easy to get lost in all the thoughts. Took me a lot longer than expected to get through the book. I think of the book is analogous to what happens when you crossing the chasm as a society due to technological changes. This isn’t an app you’re trying to get someone to use, but a large technological shift that is push and pulled by financial capital. The Sequence The sequence of technological revolution, financial bubble, collapse, golden age and political unrest is a consequence of capitalism, the interaction between technological revolutions and financial capital. It is not innovation, but how innovation spreads that causes this to be cyclical. You can decompose the sequence into 2 periods, each with 2 phases.
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This week I read Bandit Algorithms for Website Optimization, because I wanted more reference material for the Problem of the Month: Multi-Arm Bandit post. This book is a starting point if you find things on the internet too mathematical. It has code examples in Python. The figures in the book are plotted using R.
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This week I read Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil, mathbabe, because she accuses me of building WMDs. O’Neil is a data scientist with a PhD in mathematics from Harvard, who was previously a professor and a quant for D.E. Shaw during the Financial Crisis of 2008. I have a few issues with the book other than it saying that I have fallen to the dark side of big data. The book goes over how models affect a person’s life through their lifetime starting with school, college, courts, work and voting. O’Neil’s main point is that correlation does not imply causation and unfortunate individuals are lumped into groups by association, which damage their prospects for life. For me, there are probably bigger underlying issues that need to be addressed. The models are merely a reflection of reality. Businesses treat people like cogs, because they are cogs. Weapons of Math Destruction
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This week I read Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, because I’m impatient and want to solve big problems. I think of the book as a mix of design thinking, agile sprints, usability testing and lean startup. Knapp has refined the sprint process through experimentation and this books serves as a step by step guide. The stories in the book were fresh to me since they were more recent examples and companies in Google Venture’s portfolio. Sprint The purpose of a sprint is to generate and test ideas to solve a problem before fully committing resources.
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This week I read Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do, because I need to learn how to connect with people quickly and effectively. It is easier to accomplish goals with other people than alone. The book is a quick read. Clicking
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This week I read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, because I was inspired to improve my drawing skills after finding out about 100 Days of Childhood Memories: The Book. Previously I read The Elements of Drawing, which also talks about drawing. At first I was going to finish the book in a week, but after going through the first part of the book, I need to stop reading it. To get the most value out of the book, you need to read the book and stop and do the exercises, which take about an hour each. Unless you do the exercises in the book, there isn’t a point to reading the book cover to cover. Drawing is not so much as creating art, but having the skill to see the world. Drawing is about seeing as much as it is about putting pencil to paper. Improving your drawing skill will help you notice things about the world that you missed before. I want to improve my drawing skill to better see the world and to better convey ideas to other people. Five Perceptual Skills Drawing can be broken down into 5 perceptual skills.
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This week I read What Women Want. Previously I’ve read The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, which talks about pickup artist (PUA) culture and the different techniques they use to seduce women. I don’t feel good about people using those techniques and people falling for them. For practical purposes of improving your odds at mating, What Women Want is written with that in mind. All you have to do is become a better person who is social and happy and women will mate with you. The previous title of the book was Mate. It gives advice based on science, but it doesn’t have to give any data or stories to back it. It just states things as fact, which is why they are able to fit so much good advice into the book. As I was reading, I thinking saying, “Oh, so that’s why, “. Lot of content, worth a read if you’re single. Choices
