Guy Spier's Library Tour - Power Of Reading & Learning For Wealth, Wisdom & Happiness

when I moved from New York to Zurich I wanted to create an oasis where I could think straight which I felt I could not do in New York and one of the things I had an extra room available in the office and I set this room up such that uh it would enable me to think so there is no phone line into this room there is no internet and there's no computer and all we have is books and the only thing I can do here is read have conversations and uh maybe do off if I want to do off and and by the way I would add that I'm a deep believer in Mish P's injunction to take a nap every day I think that whenever I do take a nap I wake up wake up with a better sense of priorities of what's important a better sense of judgment so I think that it can help with one's investing but uh and I have the book room here divided up into a few sections so uh I I I subscribe to a lot of Publications and I buy just about any book that looks half interesting they first of all make it onto my Amazon Wish List and then over time every now and then I buy a bunch of them and so we have here you can see all the books that I haven't yet read they come in here and they go into the unread shelf and then we also have a whole bunch of Publications that are on red which need to be read over time then over time they get read and either they get the books and the Publications the Publications once they're read usually get thrown out uh the books either get passed on to friends or they get moved to other parts of the library which are places where I keep books that have become old friends that I want to keep around even though I've read them once but my goal is to have at least a third if not more than all of the books in this Library be unread in any particular moment of course the book that's read we already know what's in it and what's more interesting are the books that are unre so that's what's going on in this office let's take a look at a few books that you've read and a few that you still plan to read well uh what do we have here on the unread shelf um you know we have Keith Richards Al life this this book actually was recommended to me by uh Tom Gainer at the airport and uh he's got some great insights from it so that's one that I haven't read and we have one here written by a friend of mine called the rabbi and the CEO uh why not I haven't read that one either uh there's one actually here that I have read called by Keith farazi he was a Ted speaker and he talks about never eating alone I'm not sure if I agree with thing but it's always worth reading what Keith farazi has to say and what else do we have here that uh uh you know um there's too big to fail here which I should have read by now but it's sitting here we all know about this book it's an important book we have another unread book here we have too big to fail sorry in in the Plex this was recommended by Charlie Monger it's uh supposed to be a phenomenal insight into the way Google operates and what else do we have here that is perhaps interesting uh I see good to great and king of oil yeah some of these some of these are books that I should have read a long time ago but I haven't then if we go around here I guess that um I mean here we have a whole bunch of books that the average Val investor would love we have couple of copies couple of versions of security analysis so this is kind of like what everybody wants to have in their Library we have a more more recent edition of security analysis here and we have Marty Whit's book the um the conservative aggressive investor I actually have a copy of Seth Clan's book but it's at home so I can't show it to you right now here we have George soros's book The Alchemy of finance and we have it seems like two copies of this book power that was very popular in um in the United States at the time and it's kind of an update on M's uh injunctions to a prince it's got quite a bit of dust in it hasn't been open for some time uh what else do we have here that would be interesting to talk about I mean when Buffett purchased the rail railroads I uh I found this book on Amazon which really was just uh something look through for fun but it gives a history of the many different railroads that there were in the United States at the time I was thinking I might pick up some shares of some railroads what was your ultimate conclusion on railroads My ultimate conclusion was that Chris harn had gotten to it before me and at the time he was a big investor in Union Pacific and another one I don't remember which one uh CSX and I was following the CSX position pretty closely but um you know Warren Buffett says that you need to invest when uh it's like shooting fish in the barrel and he says not just fish in a barrel it's fish in a barrel and all the waterers out of the barrel and that was not the case either with Union in Pacific or CSX and I you know another way of putting that is that if you see a clear triple with downside protection that's probably a go if you what you see is a double or less it's probably not a go here's another uh book about ameran Express which really is is just a coffee table but but it's fun to pick up these things and to have them around of course here we have a copy of the snowball familiar book that uh was written by Al schroer and we have another book here that I'm sure is on many people's shelves uh I really am so impressed with what Warren Buffett has written R Buffett I've just called Mish P Warren Buffett Mish you should be pleased well you're not the first one so but this really is a phenomenal book I think he wrote uh he wrote succinctly and presented some ideas in a very simple way they're extremely powerful and this alone probably is enough to turn you into a great investor if you learn the lessons well of course the real issue is to learn the lessons well what else do we have here by the way while you look I'm wondering which your which Buffett biography your favorite is do you prefer the Lowenstein book or question I prefer the laen Steen one although I think that um uh Alice made a valuable cont valuable but cont controversial contribution to the understanding of Warren Buffett and as actually I see another copy of the snowall there uh various various other books there a biography of David Cameron here so David Cameron who was your classmate at o me like there is one about David Cameron but this was this will be one of the early biographies of David and really a big part of what this was about was to get all the stories about David Cameron out there uh before the election I think this came out before the election and there are also some things which either out of place or just happen to be here I mean I have a whole bunch of poetry here there's a whole book here um John Don's poetry which I used to read a lot of I I should really spend I have friends who would say that the more I read John Don's poetry the better my investing will get and it's not the position that I've entirely tested there's also uh you know uh a book that I have not I've only dipped into but I think that Charlie Monger would say is a phenomenal book is Boswell's biography of Samuel Johnson who was a very colorful figure in uh if I'm not mistaken the 18th century and uh so I have a collection of the letters of Samuel Johnson somewhere else here that I can't find right now collection of the letters of Ronald Reagan I've said this a number of times that Ronald Reagan um uh what I like about Ronald Reagan is that he spent his afternoons by reputation he spend his afternoons in the white house either napping or engaging in correspondence and he managed to get gorbachov to tear down the burlin wall so that seems to me to be extremely productive way to go about being in the world and if I could take naps in here and write letters to people and Achieve even 100th of what Ronald Reagan achieved that would be great and we all know while we're at it that um uh copying copying the great people is a very smart thing to do so R my and we doing a little bit of copying of Warren Buffett copying of mish PAB copying of Ronald Reagan another guy that we have on the wall here actually is we have Thomas Edison on it nestled amongst the photographs of my children we have a photograph of Thomas Edison and I think that you know the the best quote that I have from Thomas Edison which I love is um he said that he was Finding so many ways not to make a light bulb that eventually he couldn't help but succeed I think that that's just such an empowering statement and and I you know if I keep running out of ways if I keep trying I'll run out of ways to fail in life then I'll succeed and that simple attitudinal change would probably help so many people put more success into their lives so uh yeah one more book here which actually was really influential on me at the time this is a great book to read and I actually feel like a tremendous failor in comparison to people like the tises I mean the tises uh built their empire through hotels initially and they were really good at taking over these hotels and making them flow cash in tremendous ways and they learned an awful lot through it they were great operators and um it's a great book for anybody who hasn't read it just don't ask me for my copy CU I want to keep this copy here guys speaking of great operators um tell us a little bit about who you admire the most among public companies um obviously you have Buffett you have the Tish is with lows who else um do you have on your watch list and would love to be a partner with at the right price oh yeah I mean and they're all too expensive uh you know LIC is going to be interesting we they have an amazing had amazing run and amazing track record they're amazing set of Partners they clearly have a great relationship with each other Steinberg and cummings the question is what's going to happen going forwards and uh they've been a favored partner for Buffet I mean at one time they had bur Cadia I think they may have a partnership together right now um I think that PR wats has been an amazing uh guy and harder to follow because it's not as easy for me to understand the investment moves that he's up to and I haven't entirely agreed with some of his investment moves even the ones that have worked out really well for example he was buying massive amounts of puts on cdss at the time and it was a great way to play that by buying a shares of Fairfax but per effect another I mean we all know Marquel Corporation and the wonderful thing about these great Partnerships whether you have Steinberg and Cummings in the room whether you have Tom Gainer and Steve marel on the run you can palpably feel the partnership you feel the way in which the two partners like each other and work off each other uh so that that's an amazing partnership that I think we'll have a lot more written about it in the future uh who else really impresses me nobody else is coming to my mind right now uh there are many there are various people who are potentially um great people in the making and it's just too early to tell and some who are just interesting to follow who may not be make great Partnerships but it's going to be really interesting to see what they do I try and move to Europe there's a guy called uh Carl I think it is cm is his last name he's been an investor in ships and shipping industry and in various different kinds of offshore company and from time to time they've their shares have traded at massive discounts and by and large he's been very fair to shareholders there's another guy with whom I had an investment at the time a guy called grahe hosi who's been building up a junior Miner called London mining again extremely talented guy uh who's been an amazing Capital allocator uh and it's going to be interesting to see where he goes this these are not people in this they're not old enough to be in the same league as Burkshire hathway but have already developed or marel or lucadia but have developed interesting track records and God willing um now that you and I John are here in Europe we'll find more Europeans doing that and the great thing about the way the world has changed is that uh you can really now base yourself in Europe and even though Europe by the nature of the social welfare state high taxes less immigration is is a less Dynamic place you can base yourself in Europe but still look for stuff outside of Europe and look for stuff in Asia or in the United States I think it's never been easier to do that in the past you have to be more proximate it's not that necessary anymore well Warren Buffett is in omah we know the the world doesn't center around Omaha so we can't be too wrong being in Zurich from your mouth to God's ear John gu thank you very much for this tour of your library we will now go on to uh our mandatory nap so I need to have lunch first okay thanks guy yeah my pleasure

Channel: Guy Spier

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Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2024