The Joy of Books

Earlier this week my clients received the Aitken Advisors 2024 Booklist.

Every one of the vast armies of service providers my clients work with is excited to talk about and talk up their offerings, but I wonder whether this overlooks a critical first step?

Better I think to start by asking ‘who do I want my clients to become, where are they going, and what do they want to be when they get there?’

The primary challenge for investors in a confused, noisy, too often hyperventilating world is to remain calm, focussed, confident, energised, knowledgeable, anticipatory, and always in control.

In a world that seems to be moving faster and faster, I wonder whether an overlooked superpower might be to slow down our decisions, to read more, & to think.

In this age of informed bewilderment, what steps do you need to take today to become the world champion of reading: when was the last time you had a distraction-free hour to yourself?

Everybody is constantly distracted & allegedly too busy to reflect deeply on challenges & opportunities alike; yet anybody who can consistently carve out - to begin with – just thirty minutes of uninterrupted thinking time each & every day is already winning.

Carve out an hour or more & you’ll be lapping the field.

Over the course of the first fifteen and a half years of my business, at my own expense I’ve dispatched over three thousand, two hundred books to clients on a wide variety of topics.

Even better, in homage to Carnegie it seems I have also started a few corporate libraries.

I love the idea of my clients having the courage to remove themselves from their screens and then lose themselves in a wonderful book, or two, aiming to improve their perspective and knowledge.

For example, last week during my forty-eight hours in New York, I met a still young man of whom nobody has heard, yet who for many years has harvested extraordinary profits from markets.

It was a fascinating discussion about macro & about risk; but three-quarters of our hour together was on books. How good.

Please keep in mind that knowledge is different from information. People often conflate the two. Especially today. Don’t conflate them.

Too often I hear people say, ‘I have no time to read’.

Nonsense.

It’s not that we don’t read anything anymore — in fact, we live in a world of continuous textual availability.

We read all day long: we read our iPhones, we read our Bloomberg screens, & we read our emails.

However, this is the written word in fragments, bound up with broken images. As an informational landscape, it bears no relation to where we were a generation ago.

On your commute this morning did you notice the number of people with their heads down, glued to whatever drivel is trending on social media?

I always have a book with me. Try it, it’s empowering.

And remember: those who do not read books have no advantage over those who cannot read books.

In 2017 I read Education of a Wandering Man, published posthumously in 1988. Leaving aside the embarrassment of not having heard of a man – Louis L’Amour – who sold more than two hundred million books, I was inspired by his advice on reading:

‘Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That’s absolute nonsense. In the one year during which I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people. In offices, applying for jobs, waiting to see a dentist, waiting in a restaurant for friends, many such places. I read on buses, trains, and planes. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you life long?’

On a good year, I read seventy books; in a busy year like this one I am on track for forty-five. My anti-library of unread books across the hall here reminds me of both how much I have to learn, and of my ignorance.

I want my clients to be the world's most well read investors: dispatching three thousand, two hundred books to them across fifteen years is part of that mission.

What are you reading, and why?

Be well, read well.

See you later.

Wimbledon