The 4-Hour Workweek

Author Timothy Ferris is one of the most resourceful people I've come across. Having been impressed by his book The 4-Hour Body a few weeks ago, I decided to check out his other book The 4-Hour Workweek, and I was not disappointed.

Waving the White Flag on RadioShack

I think new management at RadioShack has the strategy right. They are testing out various configurations of different categories and labour models at a few concept stores, and rolling out the successful learnings to the rest of the store network. They are shutting down the least profitable stores, and cutting overall expenses. They are introducing new products (e.g. 3D printers) in an attempt to break reliance on declining categories. The problem is, it is taking too long.

The Art of War

I've seen Sun Tzu's The Art of War recommendations in enough business books that I figured I should finally go ahead and read it. Written some 2,000 years ago, the book is literally about how to command an army in order to win battles. But it is often argued that the concepts apply also to businesses in competition.

Support.Com's Price Is Far Too Low

In today's frothy market, it's not easy to find US companies trading at P/E ratios below 6. But after the giant plunge in Support.com's (SPRT) share price over the last few weeks, that's precisely where shares of SPRT sit on an ex-cash basis. The dramatic decline in Support.com's share price offers investors an opportunity to pay little for a company with a lot of potential.Read more...

Exposure

When a corporate scandal is ongoing in real-time, we outsiders haven't a clue as to what's going on behind the scenes. The involved parties clam-up to protect themselves while simultaneously launching public relations campaigns to come across as innocent. But the details do come out later.

Two years ago, the Olympus scandal rocked the corporate world. Olympus' CEO at the time has now written a tell-all book called Exposure detailing how the whole thing went down.

Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art Of War

Great men get a lot of air time, and often deservedly so. But sometimes a great man doesn't get the recognition he deserves. In John Boyd's case, he worked for an organization (the US Air Force) that deemed his work as classified. He didn't suffer fools, no matter how powerful they were, and thus made a lot of enemies who didn't want to give him credit. As a result, few people know who he is. I was blown away by his accomplishments, as told in Robert Coram's book Boyd.

Dacha New And Improved Management

For a few years now, Dacha Strategic Metals (DSM) has languished at a massive discount to its book value, and with good reason. Its previous management was a one-trick pony, having invested the bulk of the firm's assets in rare-earth metals. While this made them look like geniuses in the 2011 rare-earths bubble, the subsequent bursting of that bubble revealed these speculators for what they are: poor capital allocators.

If this same management team were still in charge of Dacha, I would probably not be invested in this company, despite the greater-than-50% discount to book value at which it trades. (Note that the bulk of this book value is made up of cash and a bunch of rare-earth metals valued at current market prices, with no leverage involved.)

Fortunately, however, shareholder activism led to the ousting of the destroyers of capital.Read more...