Supertrends: Winning Investment Strategies for the Coming Decades by Lars Tvede

• Hardcover: 472 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (June 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470710144
• ISBN-13: 978-0470710142

This is quite an intriguing book, and an excellent one at it. If you have no time for details, just flip all the way back to Appendix A: The 100 most dramatic events, 2010 - 2050, to get a summary and gist of it all. Otherwise, the chapters itself are mind-numbing at most parts.

Split into 5 parts, the salient parts are summarized for my future understanding and reference.

1) Superscares
Crises:
- A great explanation of business cycles by looking at inventories (4-5yrs), capital spending (9-10yrs) and property (18 -20 yrs).

Money and Assets:
- MV = PQ.
- Money flow can dry up very quickly and assets with huge values (i.e. property) can drag the economy down fast

Bubbles, Scares and Crashes:
- The fact that these exists does not mean trends will not continue.
- The key thing is to realise if trends end or they are over-inflated

2) Supertrends
Population growth, female emancipation and aging:
- Global population will rise but stablised, however urban population will increase dramatically with focus on emerging markets.
- More will progress up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, fueling explosion of leisure activities.
- Increased female emancipation leads to less children plus decreasing workforce ratio rapidly later.
- Huge increase in aging support. 


Globalisation, urbanisation and wealth explosion
- Growth explosion by emerging markets as they leapfrog with better technologies than the past with no legacy infrastructure

Intelligence, knowledge and innovation
- Moore's law in practice for many technologies (compounding effect due to meta-ideas)
- Meta-ideas fueling increase in IQ over the years
- Focus on genomics and computing

Environmental and resource strain
- Increase in population plus longer lives
- A good comparison was done of various stands on global warming. Author seems to be inclined that this is a scare and would drive bubbles in commodities and alternative.

3) Superempires
Tribes and Empires (a good historical narrative was shared)
- Empires decline due to the disappearances of the following: the need to achieve, the will to achieve, the opportunity to achieve and the incentive to achieve
- Future empires will not be geographical but economical and through social fascination (social fabric achieved by certain ideals or way of thinking)

War, terror and the bottom billion
- Most wars will be civil and terror-related
- The bottom billion will have missed the boat, as they are locked out due to a vicious cycle of problems (landlocked, conflicts, natural extraction economies, bad governance and bad neighbours)
- Drivers of war and peace was nicely presented

4) Supersectors (7 of them in the order below)
Shape of things to come
- Most technologies are S curves
- 2 key factors - rapid growth and a great profit model
- Categories - Asset, network, speed, customer relationship, cost-cutting, financial timing, financial arbitrage, active financial
- 20 drivers of civilization summarized (as above)

1. Finance
- Controls everything. Has strong entrenched network effects

2. Real Estate
- Residential property is a business cycle kick-starter; commercial property is a lagging indicator
- Increase in holiday homes and global tourism due to increasing middle class
- Focus on urbanising cities, cities where people want to work, high IQ areas, network effect areas + scarce land
- 3 crucial aspects of property markets: location, valuation and property cycles (a 30-step review of timing is provided)

3. Commodities
- Many commodities are unlikely to face an end limit; we will be able to replace with alternatives or extract better
- We become more effective in growing food
- Energy will have alternatives before we finally break the fusion barrier.
- Pressure for commodities will get greater due to increase in population and urbanisation but we will be able to cope.


4. Alternative Energy
- Going solar and being more efficient
- Debunking hydrogen


5. Genomics and Biotechnology
- Essential an Information Technology
- Gene manipulation to improve food production and longevity


6. Information Technology
- Will continue to explode, reaching human brain capability by 2030
- RFID, GPS and mobile phones (location technology) will provide new possibilities
- IT will become more unbundled, atomized, instant, mobile, contextual, autonomous, virtualize physical items and more real time
- People must focus on creativity for jobs


7. Luxury
- Driven by growth in wealth, especially in emerging markets


8. LifeStyles
- IT will shift the focus of jobs to service and creative sectors
- Future economy will be storyteller economy (luxury, finance, sport, health/food particularly)
- Focus on the experience!

5) Superbrains
- Virtual/microscopic developments follow aggressive progression curves whilst physical/industrial technologies are much slower
- If a human need can be met by IT or molecular technology, solutions will evolve much faster than demand
- There are 5 rules for intelligence
- Happiness stems from having a (1) pleasant/comfortable life (2) engaged life and (3) meaningful life. Essentially, freedom (particularly economic)

Integration Marketing by Mark Joyner

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780470454596
• ISBN-13: 978-0470454596
• ASIN: 0470454598
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches

In summary, the book is nothing new but it serves to reinforce strong concepts of anchoring one's business and growing it phenomenally. Concepts are one thing but execution is key. The book brings the concepts across clearly enough but leaves the execution to the reader. 

The book is structured into 3 parts: The Idea, the Strategy and the Mastery.

Part 1: The Idea 

- Upsell and cross-sell 

- See/know the battlefield

- Integrate your self into a Traffic or Integration stream 

- Definitions of Integration Marketing concepts are given here

Part 2: The Strategy

- With integration marketing, opportunities open and you will earn more profits faster

- 4 Steps - Identify deals, testing integration, strike deals that at effortless and not time-consuming, duplicate and scale

Part 3: The Mastery

- Future definition especially between Traffic streams and Integration Streams Integration points. The latter is more important as the targeted audience is already engaged

- Focus on External Internet Marketing instead of Internal as it is where you capture larger audiences

- Mathematics concepts are introduced to better calculate the chances of growth for different marketing actions

- Create ecologies that forces others to sustain your business as well

Waiting by Ha Jin

• Paperback: 308 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (September 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375706410
• ISBN-13: 978-0375706417
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches

Read this book when I was in reservist onboard a ship.

It is a very easy read, showing insights into a very Chinese culture in a Communist China via a love story.

Some parts are quite random and the story flows like a life story without too much of a heavy plot.

Good for easy light reading?!

The Wallstrip Edge by Howard Lindzon

6*

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Business Plus (February 18, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446508640
• ISBN-13: 978-0446508643
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.1 inches 

Lindzon is a great advocate of momentum investing/trading as seen by this book. It gives a different perspective/method of investing as compared to Fundamental Analysis or Technical Analysis as it leans more towards behavioral science.

My personal opinion is that this technique might not apply well in other markets.

Here’s the summary of the content delivered and the content reorganized for reference. Under each point, I have emphasized his key message. 

1. Trends
1. Charts have little value as they add noise only
2. Valuation matters only at extremes of the market. Valuation is difficult as well and hard to time.
3. Trending stocks are hard to value
4. Filter out noise
1. Daily volatility is normal due to the massive amount of information or data exchanged everyday. Most of it is noise and does not impact prices in the long run
2. Keep an eye out for trends instead
3. Either trade or invest, not both. Doing both causes you to lose focus.
4. You don’t have to trade too often. Doing so frequently shows that you are influenced by noise which is unpredictable.
5. Everlasting Trends
1. Information – companies that help to shrink the world like Fedex, Google
2. Vices – gambiling, smoking
3. War and Defense
4. Health Wellness and Vanity
6. Hot trends
1. IT especially Human Computer Interface for connectivity
2. Medicine and its alternative (Spirituality and Wellness)
3. Oil and alternative energies
4. Consumer electronics focusing on fashion

2. Tips to find trends
1. Select from all-time-highs as this is where the money is flowing
2. Select an all-time-high stock which has traded for sideways for a long time. Longer the better.
3. Look at stocks that have real visible presence and earnings.
4. Be wary of stocks which has already risen more than a few times from its first all-time-high
5. Research sufficiently
1. Don’t overdo it
2. Focus only on all-time-highs
3. Look at bloggers

3. Other Tips
1. Manage your Money well
1. Sell the losers and ride the winners
2. Never average down
3. Buy when the market is healthy (more all time highs to choose from)
4. Determine your risk tolerance
5. Have a strategy
6. Aim to survive for another day
7. Sell on the way up as trends do end
8. Practice effective exits and stop loss
9. Never ever leverage
2. Bear Markets
1. Look out for great brands/leaders on sale
2. Avoid the following industries
1. Airlines
2. Electronics
3. Components
3. Avoid stock tips
4. Use/leverage social networking

Bursting with Energy by Frank Shallenberger

6*

• Paperback: 290 pages
• Publisher: Basic Health Publications; 2nd edition (December 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591201276
• ISBN-13: 978-1591201274
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches

The book is split into 2 parts

1. How your health is related to the amount of energy you have
2. 8 Secrets of improving your energy

Dr Frank’s health theories are based on the premise that the level of energy dictates how healthy we are. This reflects how old we are as well, not in terms of years but rather, physical ability.
The first part of the book tells us the mechanism of oxygen usage for generating energy and what factors affect this. It also reveals what causes diseases and why we feel lethargic at times. Some of the myth busting revelations gathered from this book are:

1. Obesity is resultant of the lack of energy (of inefficiency) and causes a vicious cycle
2. This cycle is usually a resultant of imbalanced carbohydrate intake, hormonal changes and body condition inefficiency
3. Exercise does not have to be hard (anaerobic) to burn fats. This instead will make you lose fats slower.
4. Energy affects all parts of your physical condition and efficiency

8 Secrets of improving your Energy

1. Water
1. Drink sufficiently especially when you wake up
2. Rest
1. Rest during anabolic phase (6pm-6am) as body repairs itself during this time
2. Don’t eat 3 hours before sleep
3. Sleep in the dark
3. Sunlight
4. Supplements
1. Use this with a good diet to have the best nutritional synergy
5. Food
1. Eat unlabeled food (most natural)
2. No trans-fat
3. Eat less more especially carbohydrates (or those high in glycemic index)
4. Fast occasionally to detoxify
5. Eat slowly
6. Exercise
1. Especially when older
2. Exercise between FBT (fat burning rate) and ATR (anaerobic threshold rate)
1. max heart rate is 208 –(0.7*age)
2. FBR is 0.65 of max heart rate
3. ATR is 0.85 of max heart rate
3. FBR and ATR is subjective depending on health. FBR can be estimated by a slight difficulty in talking when exercising.
4. Alternate between Interval and Circuit training
7. Breathing
1. Breathe with your stomach and not your chest
8. Bio-identical hormonal replacement

There is much emphasis on Dr Franks product range as well although many of his advice can be applied via one’s effort.

Beowulf

Read the show and watched the show. A bit sad for a story like this.

The Lead Ladder - Marcus Schaller

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (August 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071479090
• ISBN-13: 978-0071479097
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches 

This is a very short and easy book to read. It summarises the necessary details and guides the reader on a step by step journey in building leads. The content is cast in a way that it follows a salesman who has failed in his sale business and is starting to build it from scratch with the help of a friend.

The Lead Ladder is characterised by a pyramid shape where the base forms the reach, then leads, then one-to-one consultations then to clients. At every step higher, the number drops and the service is more personalized and differentiated. Schaller advises to 'work backwards' in determining the number of clients needed then calculating the size of your reach. This determines the type strategy in collecting leads.

It is important to focus on a particular niche or market as well so that your marketing message is not lost on the reach. The message must be focused enough to answer any potential clients' questions or needs.

Managing leads database is critical and followup is a must. Being consistent will win you clients as different clients move up the ladder at different speeds.