A Stranger In Your Own City

Saddam Hussein ruled over Iraq for decades before the US toppled his regime. What happened after the centralized state was dismantled can serve as an eye-opening lesson. In A Stranger in Your Own City, stories from a wide variety of Iraqis tell the tale of how Iraqi society reacted to the regime change.

Atomic Habits

Your mind and body are programmable! Once you do something a number of times, it becomes a habit that is much easier for your body to execute. Atomic Habits is a terrific book about how to achieve that state in an efficient manner.

Born in Blackness

I really enjoyed this world history lesson that includes Africa's significant effect on the world. In Born in Blackness, I learned a ton of stuff that is generally glossed over in traditional tellings of world history.

Karsan Value Funds: 2023 Q3 Results

Karsan Value Funds (KVF) is a value-oriented fund, as described here. Due to securities regulations, the fund is not open to the public at this time. Should that change in the future, there will be an announcement on this site.

CCT: Time to Move On

As KVF has grown, the time and inclination I have towards conferencecalltranscripts.com has reduced. As such, it's time to put it in the hands of a more capable and energetic operator. If anyone has interest in running it, please contact me at sajid . karsan @ g m a i l .

The Profit Zone

How a business makes money at one point in time is not necessarily the same way it makes money at another point in time, say five years in the future. This is because of changes in competitors or customers or other factors outside of a company's control. In order to stay or get into that "profit zone", a company must have a relentless focus on its customers needs so that it can keep evolving. This is the premise behind the book, The Profit Zone.

The Inside Scoop

Two friends, Ben and Jerry, took their ice cream brand from zero to one of the major leaders in the super-premium ice cream market. They did this with a relentless focus on quality (the best ingredients, the processing that results in the best taste), the customer (constantly trying new flavours), and perhaps most of all, countless hours put into execution. The Inside Scoop is the story of that company as told by the CEO who took over from them.

The Undisputed Truth

Mike Tyson took the world by storm when he burst onto the boxing scene. At 19, he became the youngest person to become a heavyweight champion. But things did not go so smoothly after that, or for many years before it, for that matter. In The Undisputed Truth, Tyson takes us through his life.

Pitch the Perfect Investment

You've got the perfect stock idea, but you're also broke and don't have much in the way of your own capital. How do you convince someone to act on your idea? How do you even know it's a good idea? How can you tell if it's a good fit for the person you're talking to, whether a portfolio manager, your professor, or a colleague? This is the topic of the book Pitch the Perfect Investment

Karsan Value Funds: 2023 Q2 Results

Karsan Value Funds (KVF) is a value-oriented fund, as described here. Due to securities regulations, the fund is not open to the public at this time. Should that change in the future, there will be an announcement on this site.

The New Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding

It's clear that muscle mass is negatively correlated with mortality. I don't know if the link is causal, but I think there's a decent chance that it is. With that in mind, I've decided to put some effort into increasing my muscle mass. To learn as much as I can about doing so in the smartest way possible, I turned to perhaps the greatest bodybuilder of all-time.

The Appeal

I've read a few murder mysteries over the years (I enjoy the genre every now and then), but The Appeal is the most unique I've ever read. You'll understand right away as soon as you start reading it. I almost put it down because I didn't understand how it could be good, but I didn't and I'm glad for it because it was very good!

What's Gotten Into You

Our bodies contain some 60 elements (oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, magnesium etc). How were these elements made? Where did they all come from? How did they get into us? Dan Levitt takes us through the estimated history in his masterful book, What's Gotten Into You

Outlive

Want to live a longer, healthier life? Peter Attia's book Outlive is all about how to do that.

Shogun

In the year 1600, European and Japanese cultures clash in James Clavell's epic novel Shogun.

Karsan Value Funds: 2023 Q1 Results

Karsan Value Funds (KVF) is a value-oriented fund, as described here. Due to securities regulations, the fund is not open to the public at this time. Should that change in the future, there will be an announcement on this site.

Quit

Everybody knows we're supposed to persevere when things aren't going our way. "If you're going through hell, keep going," says Winston Churchill. That attitude can help when you really need to get something done. But applied in the wrong context, it can cost us a lot too. In Quit, Annie Duke argues that we overvalue things like grit, and as a result don't walk away enough.

No One Wins Alone

I really enjoyed Mark Messier's book No One Wins Alone. As a fan of the Edmonton Oilers growing up, the book brought back a lot of memories, and provided a view of what it was like on the inside.

Hammond Power

I recently sold all my shares of Hammon Power (HPS.A). I have no beef with the company: it has done extraordinarily well. It's simply a case of price catching up with value.

Trade Wars are Class Wars

Massive trade deficits and surpluses are often caused by financial repression. That is, some artificial mechanism is keeping wages or spending down in some country, causing exports to rise relative to imports in that country. As such, trade wars are not really conflicts between countries, but between classes within those countries. So argue the authors in the excellent book Trade Wars are Class Wars.

Economic Facts and Fallacies

The government, the media and society at large take a lot of stuff for granted in forming their policies and opinions. The problem is that a lot of it is wrong. In Economic Facts and Fallacies, Thomas Sowell refutes a lot of the "conventional wisdom".

Chip War

Over the last several decades, silicon computer chips have shifted from being parts used by fringe, nerdy, hobbyist groups to becoming integrated into almost everything we do. This is even more the case in the military. Where once bombs had to be launched by the dozens to even have a limited chance of hitting a target, today's precision-guided (thanks to onboard chips that make mammoth calculations) missiles are neccessary to win wars. Chips have become a matter of national security. Chip War makes this case to the reader, and provides details on the industry's evolution, with a focus on the countries that play a role in shaping this industry.

The Alice Network

Helping The Allies fight back against the Nazis was a vast network of spies embedded in the territories occupied by the Germans. With many of the men either dead or fighting on the front lines, a lot of this spy work was done by women. The Alice Network is a novel about one node of a spy network that actually existed.

Rules of Civility

I've enjoyed a couple of Amor Towles' other books, so I decided to grab his first novel, Rules of Civility

Karsan Value Funds: 2022 Q4 Results

Karsan Value Funds (KVF) is a value-oriented fund, as described here. Due to securities regulations, the fund is not open to the public at this time. Should that change in the future, there will be an announcement on this site.

For the fourth quarter ended December 31st, 2022, KVF gained $7.58 per share, increasing the value of each share to $47.11. This 22% pre-tax return trounced the mid-single-digit returns generated by the S&P 500, Russell 2000 and S&P/TSX indices. Currency gains helped returns by $0.29 per share in the quarter.