In the last few weeks, markets are slowly beginning to turn around, make a possible bottom at 15200 and things are looking up on the whole. The relentless FII selling has slowed, if not yet reversed and our markets are showing signs of a true reversal. This, however, isn’t about the markets but the real food for thought and my first real passion- Reading.
Everything I’ve been able to do is through reading. I don’t know how but reading wide and about things which are not necessarily related to your daily chores helps one immensely. What I try and do is to somehow read a book a week or roughly 52 a year, at least for the past two years I’ve been able to hit that target with around 95% success rate. It certainly is a fading passion- most of us simply don’t read. Someone rightly said- buying books and reading them are two separate things!
If I have to rate all the books I’ve gone through in the past 8 years and make a Top 10 across genres list, it will be something on the lines of – Mossad, Animal Farm, Richer Wiser Happier, Boomerang, 100 Baggers, Bulls Bears and other Beasts, The Prize, Reminiscence of a Stock Operator, The Big Short, Barbarians at the Gate etc. The newest entrant on that list is The Spy and The Traitor.
I read a lot of spy craft books especially the ones on Israeli defence forces and the Mossad. This, however covers one of the greatest escapes from the strictest police state ever- the USSR by a KGB agent working for MI6, the British spy agency.
Let me tell you something – Imagine you are a spy working for the Britons, double crossing the KGB( Soviet spy agency). The Soviets know it and have put you under strict surveillance in their backyard- Moscow. The nearest border town which isn’t a Soviet satellite ( in theory) is in Finland, some 850km away. This is 1985, when modes of communication were almost non-existent, and bugged severely by the KGB, if at all you could find one. They know that you’re trying to contact MI6 but are sure that in a few days from now, your body will lie in an unnamed grave at an unmarked place. The only way possible is if you can contact the British diplomats in Moscow, who have never seen you and can never speak with you in person or on the telephone, with whom you can’t make any verbal/ written contact lest the KGB kill you on the spot. And if you can somehow make this contact and communicate to them your willingness to escape through the Finnish border half a world away, they will dispatch a couple of their diplomats which again will be under strict surveillance to take you out provided you reach within ten kilometres of the Finnish border, without being arrested or killed en route. If it all happens, you will try and hide in the British diplomats’ car without being noticed by the following convoy and pray that the five border check posts don’t catch you lying half naked in a car’s bumper. If somehow you make this crossing and the KGB doesn’t wake up to see that you’ve vanished under their nose and doesn’t dispatch the hit team to exterminate you while still driving through Finland, you might land in London through Norway!
So what do you think! This sounds so unreal that it’s scary! Well, this is exactly what happened with Oleg Gordievsky, exactly 37 years ago on July 19, 1985. Read this book for the joy of life, pour some whiskey and think how little do we know about the world around us.
If you find this book fascinating, pick up a couple of titles on the Mossad, their story as to how they managed to kidnap Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in 1961 or how they eliminated the Red Prince or how they flew down all the way to Uganda and brought the Israelis home.
One of the biggest Heroes of the Investing world, Charlie Munger has been termed as a book with legs by his wife. All the great investors read, and read widely. Some find solace in the poetry, some take care to learn History. It is but for a reason Investing is termed as the last liberal art. The game is one which requires patience, skill and chance. The ability to identify long runways, hidden agendas, big potholes, a frenzy to avoid, a bubble to stay off just doesn’t happen through the Balance Sheet. Investing is a lifelong learning journey which doesn’t only stop at finding the next multibagger. It’s about becoming a Man worthy to hold a conversation with, someone who knows his values and has the right ethics in place.
Investing for me is a journey to invest in myself, to make myself a ten bagger version of myself, over the next ten years, every decade. You read widely not to clear an exam or to sound intelligent at the next meeting with your boss, but to tell wrong from right, to be able to resist the temptation to follow the crowd, and most importantly, to know yourself.
PS: This is for all of you working in a hierarchical organization or a bureaucracy. Pick up Animal Farm. Once you learn that all you end up becoming is a pig walking on two legs, you will never be the same again! Till then, All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
Life is all about Compounding! 