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Big Mistakes - Michael Batnick


Liberty

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New book by Michael Batnick coming out next week, about "The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments":

 

https://www.amazon.com/Big-Mistakes-Investors-Investments-Bloomberg/dp/1119366550/

 

I've always liked studying mistakes, hopefully to learn from them and make fewer of my own (I also liked the book 'Billion Dollar Lessons', not to be confused with 'Billion Dollar Mistakes', which I didn't like).

 

Short video of Michael talking about writing his book:

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi Liberty,

I have a similar appreciation of failures, and was wondering if you have any additional book recommendations in the category?

 

I have read through a few business failure books in the past year including:

Losing the Signal (Blackberry's story)

Good to Great to Gone (Circuit City's story)

Flameout: The Rise and Fall of Burger Chef

How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In (Jim Collins followup to Good to Great)

Business Adventures (Includes a few stories on failure)

 

I'm about to start on Billion Dollar Lessons.

 

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Hi Liberty,

I have a similar appreciation of failures, and was wondering if you have any additional book recommendations in the category?

 

I have read through a few business failure books in the past year including:

Losing the Signal (Blackberry's story)

Good to Great to Gone (Circuit City's story)

Flameout: The Rise and Fall of Burger Chef

How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In (Jim Collins followup to Good to Great)

Business Adventures (Includes a few stories on failure)

 

I'm about to start on Billion Dollar Lessons.

 

Looks like you've read more than I have in the business field, unless my memory's failing me right now. Have you read The Halo Effect, which is kind of a meta-level look at some of this? Let me know what you think of Billion Dollar Lessons.

 

Most of the "mistakes" or "things gone horribly wrong" books I've read have probably been about other things (history, military, memoirs, etc).

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I also study failure to avoid it.  I thought "What I learned from Losing a Million Dollars" was good. I have Jared Diamond's "Collapse" on my bookshelf, but haven't gotten to it yet.  If you like the cable industry, Cable Cowboy and A Curious Discovery about John Malone and John Hendricks have happy endings but both were always teetering on insolvency in the early days. 

 

The Smartest Guys in the Room and Conspiracy of Fools were great books about the Enron collapse. And I thought it would be tough to beat "Too Big to Fail" but I think "All the Devils are here"by Bethany Mclean edges it out. 

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I also study failure to avoid it.  I thought "What I learned from Losing a Million Dollars" was good. I have Jared Diamond's "Collapse" on my bookshelf, but haven't gotten to it yet.  If you like the cable industry, Cable Cowboy and A Curious Discovery about John Malone and John Hendricks have happy endings but both were always teetering on insolvency in the early days. 

 

The Smartest Guys in the Room and Conspiracy of Fools were great books about the Enron collapse. And I thought it would be tough to beat "Too Big to Fail" but I think "All the Devils are here"by Bethany Mclean edges it out.

 

Collapse is a fascinating book.  Has some good insights into human nature.

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I really enjoyed Billion Dollar Lessons, especially the first 2/3rds of the book. I felt the last third on how CEOs can better prepare was beyond the scope of the book, but I really enjoyed the jam packed history of all the poor strategic/capital allocation decision that led business failures.

 

What I Learned had some great insight on the psychology of losing trades. I've been thinking about some of my losers and how spot on the book is in its assessment of internalizing and becoming emotional when an investment goes against you.

 

Both were fun reads. Thanks for the recommendations.

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I really enjoyed Billion Dollar Lessons, especially the first 2/3rds of the book. I felt the last third on how CEOs can better prepare was beyond the scope of the book, but I really enjoyed the jam packed history of all the poor strategic/capital allocation decision that led business failures.

 

What I Learned had some great insight on the psychology of losing trades. I've been thinking about some of my losers and how spot on the book is in its assessment of internalizing and becoming emotional when an investment goes against you.

 

Both were fun reads. Thanks for the recommendations.

 

Glad you enjoyed it. I probably should reread it at some point, because I mostly remember liking it, I don't really remember that much what's in it specifically.

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  • 2 weeks later...

There is a program that I started watching on Amazon called Inside the Storm.  It's several episodes, each a mini documentary about the failures at Lehman Brothers, Kodak, Barings Bank and Kingfisher airlines. Very good so far,  I thought you all would appreciate it. 

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