Meditate for Profit

Vishen Lakhiani is a successful businessman, philanthropist and expert in meditation. He owes much of his success to his ability to communicate with his subconscious mind and tap into his unknown potential. His new book shares a very interesting story about his early career when he was working in telesales (Lakhiani, 2015). With the use of meditation, he tripled his productivity by just changing one simple thing in his habit.

The “Recovery Oil”

Cryotherapy, or “cold bath therapy”, is a popular recovery method among athletes. According to experts, coldness constricts blood vessels and decreases metabolic activity, which reduces swelling and tissue breakdown. “Ice baths don't only suppress inflammation, but help to flush harmful metabolic debris out of your muscles,” says David Terry, M.D., a runner who has finished both the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run and the Wasatch Front 100-Mile Endurance Run 10 consecutive times.

Macro Always Wins

In the early twentieth century, there was a very large global conglomerate in the United States. It had various businesses in a number of countries, including coffee plantations in Guatemala, hydroelectric plants in Bolivia, banks in Peru, steamship lines around the world plus a large export business. This conglomerate was a favourite company of many investors because of a number of things. Firstly, it had a fine diversification of business around the world; secondly, its directors were some of the wealthiest and ablest financiers in the United States; and most importantly, the company always paid its quarterly dividends.

The Young Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16ᵗʰ President of the United States, and arguably one of the greatest leaders of all time. He was well-known for his leniency towards his opposition and his patience with his subordinates. For example, during the Civil War, many of Lincoln’s generals did their jobs horribly, and half the nation condemned their incompetency, but Lincoln showed no malice towards them. In another instance, when others spoke harshly of the southern people, Lincoln replied: “Don’t criticise them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”

Investigate Later

The Legendary George Soros famously describes his approach to the market as “Invest first, Investigate later” (Soros, 2003). Many investors are not unable to understand this quote. Is it not much logical to do a thorough research about a company first and only then decide to invest in it or not? Why does Soros say something which completely reverses the process?

To understand the reasoning behind Soros’ famous quote, it is useful to consider a little anecdote by another famous investor, Nicholas Darvas (1960).

The Perfect Speculator

There are many books in the investing literature which do not get their deserved attention, usually due to awful writing and poor presentation. The Perfect Speculator by Brad Koteshwar (2005) is exactly a case like this, in which many great ideas are buried by the clumsiness of the author. That being said, if you look beyond the messy surface, you can find a lot of useful points for speculating in the stock market, especially if you are a fan of Nicholas Darvas (1960), William O’Neil (2009) or Mark Minervini (2013). Below are key messages from the book―

True Breakouts

Most traders have experience drawing trend lines on a chart to identify support and resistance, but they usually do not draw those lines with an objective method, much less to employ them scientifically in a trading decision. To tackle this problem, Thomas DeMark (DeMark 1994, 1997; DeMark & DeMark, 1997, 1999) laid out a set of rules to determine not only how trend lines are drawn, but also how to qualify a breakout, and how to project a price target in case of such a move.