Is there a better way to read a book? (HF Books)
I expect to get some sarcastic answers here, but hopefully there’ll be some constructive ones too.
I’ve just bought books: ‘Margin of Safety’, ‘Expectations investing’, ‘There’s always something to do’, and have the following question.
TLDR/QUESTION: How do you read (or what do you do when you read) to get the most from your reading?
Being mathematically gifted I breezed through school without much critical thinking directed toward reading and intaking comprehension-style information; maths just clicked when I saw it and naively I believed this would take me to the top.
Fast forward through a maths course at a top uni a year and a half of IB and I find myself at the bottom of the hedge fund mountain, hitting the fundamentals. I suppose here you’d be asking why fundamental and not quant? I’ve always been interested in businesses and don’t want to be coding for the rest of my life.
For some background: You’ll be surprised to hear I’m not totally illiterate. I can read a CIM / investment memo and instantly pick out what’s important and what isn’t, assigning weighting to each risk or strength whilst rationalising these alongside the financials.
I suppose what I’m wandering is: if there’s more to reading a book than just… reading it?
I’ve started reading the aforementioned books, and have been taking concise notes i’ll revisit. but I’m questioning if I could be doing more?
My questions are:
- How do you read/ do you have any techniques to maximise content retention?
- Are there any tricks you utilise to get the most out of a book? I.e do you think of several examples each time a new mechanism is introduced?
- And what other tips would you have for reading these three books? - eg test out their theories in the market whilst reading?
Appreciate your time.
Have you tried the scribbling method? Its basically just scribbling while you read to trick your brain into thinking you are taking notes which helps tremendously with retention and internalization.
Not come across before but clearly people enjoy it. Perhaps more suitable for an ADHD brain that prefers music or fidgeting alongside cognitive function? - although just my own speculation.
I used to fidget loads whilst learning as a kid but that habbit dissipated over time. I’m also keen on writing consolidated notes and I’m not sure constant scribbling would work unless I had a separate page.
Have you ever tried it?
I think what’s always helped me has been trying to put in words what I have learned from the book each time I finish reading a part it. Before doing this I’d find that I would read a book and then instantly forget most of its content within a couple of weeks if I didn’t engage with its concepts, and I think the sort of active recall, of trying to explain to someone what you’ve learned, really helps cement the core things you want to take away from it.
I keep an active word document where I would write out things that I think make sense wtr to my investment process/philosophy. It doesn't get updated that much anymore, but when I was actively consuming lots of content, I was putting tons of sutff in there, re-writing it, and integrating it into a framework that made sense to me.
As a side note - it is very easy to get caught up in the navel gazing of understanding investment philosophies, what is the process, what sounds super deep and thoughtful
NOTHING beats repetitions on ideas though
A lot of what you will read from the famous reading lists is sort of like the contextual background compared to more practical investing practices imo. Also a lot of the content out there on twitter and in podcasts can be good and a bit more practical as well.
I mean everyone in the world wants to buy a stock at a discount to what they believe it can be worth with a fat margin of safety. Everyone wants to find underappreciated parts of businesses, or businesses with big moats that can grow into a multiple. Everyone would love to own a compounder for 2 decades that 2x'd the market. McKinsey valuation and mauboussin have incredibly important lessons on understanding valuation and the frameworks to understand how the market digests a stock and business
But the nuance comes in how do you actually triage a set up. What is baked in. What really matters. What is my risk/reward. How do I find conviction in my views vs. the probability distribution reflected by the stock today. Where do you like the fall on the "alpha curve" of a stock's trading path.
So do the reading 100%, but spend more time turning over rocks. Let the market give you feedback on your work, one way or another. Nothing beats coming up with what you think is a really really good idea, and then it chops wood for 1.5yrs before you realize you had a bad confirmation bias / cart in the front of the horse / average idea that
So there’s a few books out on faster reading with max comprehension.
Specifically I think it mentioned start with the index, intro and conclusion, first and last lage of each chapter.
Philosophically - when you read these books, understand you’re having a conversation with the author. If it’s a new subject then it’s basically a one sided conversation and just like one in real life, you’ll get bored and drift in and out. If you know something you would reply back (in your mind), and then if the author is truly good, they’d anticipate your reaction and respond in the following pages.
then what you’re trying to do is have memorable conversations that are enjoyable, which requires a good author, a level of background understanding and a desire to push the envelope of the conversation (as opposed to just treating the words as a lecture).
For instance, imagine Seth Klarman is actually talking to you in this book - what are you going to challenge him on and why? Why does he think the way he thinks (his context)? Do you think think it’s relevant today - why/why not (is this based on a vibe or actual evidence/ experience etc).
The above, in my mind, separates good readers from poor ones.
Seriously, I thought I knew how to read until I read that book.
This hits on a pet peeve and unpopular opinion of mine. I think everyone should slow down with reading.
In general I've found all of the shortcuts to be both (i) ineffective for me and (ii) ineffective for my friends who claim to get through books quickly but clearly miss key points when I discuss the book with them.
I've got one friend who listens to everything on 1.5x. I've got another who is flying through a book every week or two. I've got another who reads those cliff note things for nonfiction. None of them really grasp anything when I talk to them about the book. And they're just 3 examples. Everywhere I look, people are moving too fast with books and not improving much.
I take forever to read a book, and I don't regret it. I don't go to the next page until I really know WTF I just read. I frequently stop reading to look up shit that was mentioned, and on audiobooks I'm hitting rewind all the time if I wasn't fully locked in. Often, I'll get to the end of chapter and tell myself "you didn't really pay close enough attention" and re-read it.
My case is simple: not many books are great, so you want to suck every ounce of life out of the ones that are.
I sort of agree here, except for the fact that you can definitely read a book in 2 weeks (even 1 depending on your job lol). Bill Gates says he tries to do 1 per week. Also there are MANY great books, probably not enough for someone's lifetime.
Doesn’t really sound like you agree much, which is fine.
My experience is people who approach it like you do tend to miss out on most of the value of the books. But that’s just my experience. If you can get more for less, you should. I guess a good test would be, take your favorite book that you read quickly, and try re-reading it slowly. Assuming it’s worth a re-read anyways. See how it feels. My experience is if a book is really good, I want to stop a lot to think about it and also go down rabbit holes of things mentioned in the book. So by the end of it, I’ve taken a long time to read it but I’ve also done a lot of connected reading and thinking tangential to the book.
Stop using TikTok and aggressively limit how much short-form media you consume.
Even long form content nowadays. There is just too much media to consume. Even if you don’t understand the deeper undertones of a piece of work, the show still makes logical sense , resulting in a large portion of watchers who flip episode to episode and thus show to show instead of letting it actually ruminate and thinking about what they just consumed. Used to be you’d have a whole week to think about WTF just happened in the latest episode of GOT, nowadays you can just watch and then have a YTer shove a lazy analysis down your throat. Of course I still watch TV shows and stupid shit all the time. But I just try to be more mindful about it I guess
Wow you just explained something that I've been trying to put into words for so long. Love when that happens. Especially that thing about immediately going onto YT to look for analysis and not having to actually think yourself.
I would also have 2 type of notes, one for "checklist" where I would write things that other investors tend to filter when they assess investments and another one "plays" where I would write down how they played different positions with a focus on the why rather than mechanics (e.g. don't care if he used 875 call options instead of buying the stock directly, want to understand his thought process for deciding to do)
also the more you read the more inclined you'll be to read, so it becomes a vicious cycle and starting is the hard part
I am really curious what people come up here with advice as I struggle with this as well.
You can divide this problem in to two:
Or after reading a chapter start with blank page and reconstruct the chapter in your own words. Keep it to one page.
● Your golden standard here is working through lecture notes and problem sets for something like in proof based Maths classes.
● Often a good way might be to have a project where you need this book and you use it only to get your project done. Learn by creating with the book as just a tool.
● Slow is deep, deep is fast. Do 25 or 50 min focused pomodoro with no distractions. It is crazy how much my reading speed goes up when deeply immersed in the book.
This is for the few books you really need to master. The problem is that this takes time and there is a lot of books I would like to read.
2. For books where you want good retention, but not a key book, think something like Against The Gods: the remarkable history of risk.
I hate to sound like one of those finance bosses who says "hAVE yOU cONSIDERED tAKING tHE cFA?", but in this case, it may be a good fit for you. Those tests force you to read, digest, and memorize a ton of finance related information in a short time period.
The “how to read a book” is obviously helpful so sharing some thoughts on retention etc.
1. Kindle Scribe can be useful to highlight / take note then consolidate through readwise / notion
2. For paper books other than sticky notes etc I would just read as many as possible for rentention purposes — a lot of books are arguing for similar principles with different examples / logic so it will help recollection
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