I’m continuing to lean into my curiosity about the late 1960s through roughly 1982. This was a period of social and economic change. Interest rates were near 20%, and inflation was double digit.

Last week, I shared a biography I read about how Thomas Rowe Price Jr, founder of T. Rowe Price Group, navigated that period. This week, I dug into how Warren Buffett handled it by reading Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules. It was pre-Berkshire Hathaway, so Buffett was managing an investment partnership, Buffett Partnership Ltd. (BPL), and investing other people’s money (his LPs’).

This book isn’t specifically about the period in question. It’s more of a framework that details the principles that governed Buffett’s investments and how he applied them during the years he was actively investing via BPL, 1956 to 1969. The book is unique in that each chapter focuses on a Buffett principle, which is explained and then supported with excerpts from various BPL letters Buffett wrote. It does a great job of explaining his thinking and some of the investments BPL made. It devotes a section to the structure of BPL. It describes the three investing strategies Buffett used at BPL to generate outsize returns: generals (buying generally underpriced securities), workouts (profiting from merger arbitrage), and controls (taking majority ownership to influence a company’s direction).

This book also explains Buffett’s thinking regarding how to navigate the period I’m interested in. I learned that Buffett opted to sit on the sidelines and not invest. In May 1969, he announced that he was closing BPL and would return investors’ money. He went on to send a 17-page letter to his investors in early 1970 about the mechanics of tax-free municipal bonds, which he suggested they invest in. After BPL closed, the stock market experienced a very volatile period with significant declines in several years.

It was great to learn about the early Buffett days, his strategies, and why they worked. It was also eye-opening to see how he sidestepped the period I’m curious about. Anyone interested in BPL or Buffett’s early days should consider reading this book.

Every weekend since the Memorial Day Challenge (see here), I’ve been adding all the books I read before 2024 to the Library section of this site. As of this past weekend, I’ve officially added all the books I’ve read from 2020 through today—roughly five years’ worth of reading.

I still need to add books from the years before 2020, and I’ll continue to do that over time. But getting 2020–2025 done felt like a nice milestone. I now have a place where I can go back and see how my reading and learning have evolved over several years (and they’ve evolved a ton!). This project isn’t going to win awards or generate any revenue, but I’ve put a ton of energy into it over the past few months, and I’m proud of how it’s turned out.

As of today, I’ve added a total of 110 books, and I’m excited to add more as I continue learning.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 74 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my tenth weekend, and I added two more books:

• Manias, Panics, and Crashes by Charles P. Kindleberger and Robert Aliber
• Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will be of value.

I’m increasingly curious about the late 1960s through roughly 1982. Inflation was double digits. Interest rates were right at 20%. Lots of social and economic change was going on.

I’ve been digging into this period for the last few weeks to understand what happened, why it happened, and what can be learned. This week’s book, T. Rowe Price, is a deeper dive into the time. This biography of Thomas Rowe Price Jr., founder of T. Rowe Price Group is a reread; when I read it before, I noted that Price was ahead of the pack in seeing what was coming in the ’60s and ’70s and positioning himself and his portfolios to sidestep the turmoil.

The book has a chapter dedicated to the period from 1971 to 1982. In that chapter, it details the macro events that Price focused on to understand what was happening and determine what was likely to happen. It also provides perspective on the political climate and discusses how the actions of Richard Nixon and Arthur Burns accelerated inflation. It details how Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker Fed Chairman and the drastic actions he took to get inflation under control. This chapter talks about a lot more and does a great job of describing how the dominoes fell during this period.

Lastly, this book uses Price’s private notes to highlight his thoughts on the trajectories of inflation and monetary policy. Understanding the raw thoughts of someone as they navigated this period was very helpful. It also details the actions he took with his portfolios, why he took those actions, and why his portfolios performed so well.

I’m glad I read this book again. It was even better than the first time because it helped me answer specific questions and fill in the gaps. The chapters covering the 1960s through the early 1980s were exactly what I was looking for and I absorbed more from them the second time around.

Anyone interested in learning more about one of the great investors and entrepreneurs or the changes in the investment landscape from the 1930s through the 1980s might enjoy reading T. Rowe Price.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 73 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my ninth weekend, and I added two more books:

• Blood and Oil by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck
• Atomic Habits by James Clear

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will add value to others.

As I read biographies of entrepreneurs and investors, one time period keeps coming up, and I’m increasingly curious about it: the late 1960s through roughly 1982. Inflation skyrocketed to double digits, and interest rates reached nearly 20%. This period had a profound impact on the economy and society.

I shared a few weeks ago (see here) that I’m digging deeper into this period to understand what happened, why it happened, and what can be learned.

This week’s book, Inside the Nixon Administration, is the personal diary of the chairman of the Federal Reserve during most of this period, Arthur F. Burns. When I found it, I was excited about reading it because it contains the raw thoughts of the man setting monetary policy during this period, including about what he saw inside President Richard Nixon’s administration. No spin, no wordsmithing, none of that, which is rare in books. This diary was never meant to be viewed by others, so it’s truly a glimpse into the mind of the Fed chair at the time and into the real Nixon administration.

This book isn’t written like a story you can follow. It’s literally daily journal entries about what Burns was dealing with or thinking about that day. Even though it doesn’t flow like a nice story, what he shares is fascinating.

I learned why Nixon chose Burns as Fed chair: because he was a friend and advisor. They’d worked together in the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, Nixon as vice president and Burns as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. It was also revealing to see how heavily involved Burns was in the Nixon administration. He regularly attended meetings in the White House and met with Nixon’s inner circle.

And it was interesting to see how the close relationship between Burns and Nixon allowed Nixon to influence monetary policy. The result wasn’t great—inflation and price controls. But what was more interesting to learn was what was most important to Nixon. He made employment a priority because it increased his odds of being reelected, even if that meant rising inflation.

Burns also candidly assessed several administration officials, including Paul Volcker, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and John Connally. The most interesting assessment was that of Richard Nixon. Burns began optimistic and holding him in high regard, but the more he worked with him and observed how he made decisions, the more his view of Nixon turned dour. By the end of the diary, Nixon and his circle were embroiled in the Watergate scandal, which Burns shared candid views about.

I’m glad I found this book. It gave me a valuable perspective on one of the most important men during this critical period in the country’s history.

If you’re interested in this period or the Nixon administration, consider reading Inside the Nixon Administration.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 72 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my eighth weekend, and I added two more books:

• Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
• The Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will add value to others.

In addition to entrepreneurship, I love investing. It’s an intellectual sport that you can never master and that requires continual learning. A few weeks ago, I listened to a podcast with investor and Columbia Business School professor Michael Mauboussin in which he described the concept of expectations investing. The gist is that it’s a method of figuring out what’s already factored into a stock’s current price. He mentioned his book, which details the method, so I bought a copy.

I read the updated and revised version of Expectations Investing, which describes an interesting framework for deconstructing a stock price. The main principle in this framework that makes it different from other valuation methods is that you don’t forecast cash flows to determine the worth of a company and its stock price. Instead, you estimate expectations that are factored into the current stock price to determine what the market anticipates cash flows will be and how many years into the future the market is forecasting those cash flows (i.e., the forecast period). It’s akin to starting at the end and working backward, which intrigued me. Once you know what the market is expecting, you can determine if those expectations are reasonable or will likely lead to revisions (i.e., changes in the stock price).

The framework is great, but it’s not for beginners. I think of it as a graduate-level approach to value investing. It’s not easy to execute initially, but with work and practice, it can be learned by anyone. The book’s website offers useful tutorials that supplement learning.

Other things I like about this book are the “expectations infrastructure” frameworks around thinking about company value creation (value triggers, value factors, and value drivers). The three methods for estimating the continuing value of a company in a discounted cash flow model that incorporates inflation expectations were very useful. And I found his step-by-step approach to determining a company’s cost of capital useful.

I’m glad I read this book. It led to my doing some modeling and analysis of companies using this method, which was both frustrating and fun. If you’re interested in learning about advanced value investing and understanding what’s priced into a stock already, consider reading Expectations Investing.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 71 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my seventh weekend, and I added two more books:

• The Joys of Compounding by Gautam Baid
• Working Backwards by Bill Carr and Colin Bryar

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will add value to others.

I’m a first-generation entrepreneur committed to learning as much about entrepreneurship as I can. The best way I’ve found to do that is to study entrepreneurs. So, every week, I share a book that I’ve read about an entrepreneur; most are biographies. I post my latest read every Sunday in the Library on this site.

A few years ago, I read The Power Law, which details the history of the venture capital industry, mostly focusing on San Francisco’s ecosystem and VC firms. As I continued learning venture capital history, I discovered Georges Doriot. He was a Harvard Business School (HBS) professor, and he founded one of the first venture capital firms in 1946. His firm, American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC), was publicly traded on the stock market. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a publicly traded VC firm; this intrigued me.  

I found a biography about Doriot’s life, Creative Capital, and gave it a read. Doriot was born in France and emigrated to the U.S. after his father’s factory was decimated in World War I. He was the first Frenchman to attend HBS and started as an investment banker in NYC but quickly became an assistant dean at HBS. This role morphed into his teaching a course and being promoted to an "Assistant Professor of Industrial Management."

An interesting part of this story is Doriot’s path through the Army during World War II, which was pivotal to his founding a VC firm. He managed procurement, which during a global war was no easy task. He and his team had to create products that met the unique needs of deployed troops (think boots that leave minimal footprints in the mud so enemy soldiers can’t track U.S. troops), have private companies manufacture products in sufficient quantities by certain dates (think General Motors building 100,0000 Jeeps in four months), and coordinate delivery of ungodly quantities of various goods and food to war zones. The team building, product development, and problem-solving skills he developed were invaluable and gave him experience managing chaos (which is valuable to entrepreneurs).

Also notable was that even in the early days of VC, the Power Law ruled returns. ARDC’s best investment, which made up the majority of its returns, was a $70,000 check into Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) that turned into more than $200 million for ARDC, in large part due to ARDC owning over 50% of DEC when it went public.

This biography was well-researched and had a thorough bibliography and notes section. Anyone interested in learning about the birth of the venture capital industry or why VC firms don’t do well as public companies should consider reading Creative Capital.