Book Report: The Next Perfect Trade

It's a book on investment strategy. Since I'm not a full-time investor, a lot of this was lost on me. I had to look up a lot of jargon. E.g. "pyramiding" an investment. That's when you take the profits from a leveraged investment and, instead of saying, "whew now I can pay off my loans", you use the profits as collateral for even more leveraging so that your risky investment stays risky. But even though I'm not an investor, the fundamentals of strategy still shone through. E.g., don't feel like you have to be 100% invested all the time; if you don't see good opportunities at the moment, hold some resources back. Later, when you do spot a great opportunity, you'll be glad you can quickly invest more in it.

The book assumes that you're already good enough at investing to know a good opportunity when you spot it. This was disappointing, and not just because I'm not a skilled investor. You see, I didn't buy this book to become a great investor. I bought it because I play boardgames about twice a year, and this book's author is usually there. And if he's there, he probably wins whatever boardgame we're playing. I was hoping that, by learning how the author thinks about strategy, maybe next time we play I could anticipate some of his thinking.

But this book points out that it's important to understand the fundamentals. And I only play boardgames once or twice a year. I can expect to lose at boardgames as long as I insist on playing against people who are better than I am.