One of the most powerful aspects of Twitter is hearing firsthand from icons in the business world. We’re all too aware of Elon Musk, but there are much more sane leaders on Twitter to learn from.
Top hedge fund manager Dan Loeb is one of the legends that graciously shares his book recommendations.
Knowing what books most impacted people like Dan is a massive quality filter that you don’t get by going just off what the average Joe’s on Amazon say about the book in reviews and star ratings.
Best Stress & Mindset Books
Dan’s recommendations first caught my attention because he mentioned The Art of Learning, which I’m currently reading.
In addition, I had recently purchased The Upside of Stress after Keith Rabois mentioned it as a life-changing book, and Dan mentioned it as well.
Dan also shares this talk by Dr. Alia Crum (one of Dwek’s students) at Davos in 2018:
This is actually amazing. Housekeepers changing the mindset of their work becoming exercise had powerful positive effects:
The housekeeper connection is weirdly something I’ve always wondered about, but didn’t hear anyone ever talk about.
I think there’s a similar thing with construction workers. Anecdotally I’ve noticed a lot of them overweight. Perhaps that’s a mindset thing, perhaps they don’t move around as much as we think, or perhaps it’s eating Carl’s Jr. every day that offsets their caloric expenditure!
Loeb comments on the connection to stress at 3:50 in the video:
The powerful connection is that stress paired with a mindset of seeing stress as positive is a powerful combination that high performers use to do the things they do.
So the 3 connected books are
Also recommended by Keith Rabois.
This is a useful summary on Mindset by Brain Pickings:
Dan Loeb and Disney
Dan Loeb is known for his letters to CEOs, especially when he feels they’re being greedy.
He’s been in the news recently with his letters to Disney.
In essence, “Mr. Loeb’s Third Point wants Disney to buy more content instead of paying dividends” according to NY Times.
The full letter can be seen here.
Interesting Facts on Dan Loeb
I always love hearing how these juggernauts had family in the business world, somewhat.
According to Wikipedia:
His father also served as an outside director of Mattel, Inc. for over 30 years and during one period became interim President of Mattel. His mother is a historian and independent scholar.[6][7]
Loeb’s great-aunt, Ruth Handler, created the Barbie doll and co-founded Mattel Inc.[7] In 2009, Loeb told an audience “[I] associated success in business with Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls. I think it was a very powerful enforcer early on to like business.”[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_S._Loeb
In 2014, Loeb was reported as one of a number of “prominent investors [who] have taken to Transcendental Meditation”.[60]
Loeb is an advocate for criminal justice reform and helps fund the Marshall Project, a nonprofit online journalism group, and the Brennan Center’s Innocence Project. He is concerned with those unfairly imprisoned and successfully pushed for the release of Bernard Noble in April 2018, who served more than 7 years in prison for possessing two marijuana joints.[87][88]
Dan Loeb’s Recommended Investing Books
This should of course be it’s own article, or dissertation, but making quick notes of it here.
Dan recommends investing books Quality Investing and You Can Be a Stock Market Genius. He says they’re both mandatory reading at his firm.
I’m personally shocked that a top hedge fund manager needs to read books like these, but at the same time, it’s vital to hear other investors’ opinions and perspectives to help formulate your own. Any edge you can get.
This Twitter search is good to keep tabs on other books Dan might recommend.
Keith Rabois’ Recommended Books
Just making a note to publish another post on Keith Rabois’ recommendations, he Tweets a lot about his book recommendations, as seen here:
https://twitter.com/search?q=book%20from%3Arabois&src=typed_query
Such as this:
And this:
And this general recommendation:
Which is helpful, because I have been reading 90% nonfiction the last 15 years.
Here’s an old list by Rabois from 2015: https://medium.com/@rabois/reading-list-604c88ecefa4