Kill your laptop

After guests and going out of town and Baby Y being very ill, I realize I've hardly turned on my computer over the past week. It's fantastic. I've been reading.

Ironically, one of the the things I've been reading (finally) is Lowenstein's book on Buffett who was certainly not tethered to a computer ... Excel ... Bloomberg ... Facebook. On that note ... good night! (And turn off your computer already :)

Pizza

In the city of pizza, Y and I have rediscovered the joy of homemade pizza. Y got a pizza stone several years ago for his bday but it's been largely neglected ... until this week. We've made 6 pizzas in less than a week. Mmmm good.

• Empty a pack of yeast into 1/2 cup of warm water and let stand for 5 minutes.
• Meanwhile, pulse 4 cups of bread flour (King Arther is my favorite) and 1.5 tspn salt in the bowl of a food processor (or wisk together in a bowl if you aren't a kitchen gadget queen).
• Add 1 1/4 cups of room temperature water to the yeast + 2 tbspn of olive oil and mix together to dissolve the yeast.
• Pour water/yeast mix into food processor while running and continue to pulse until the dough pulls together into a large ball. Process for about 30 seconds until the dough looks sort of satiny. (Some rough approximation thereof is just fine.)
• Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and give it some good hard kneading until it forms a nice ball.
• Stick in an oiled bowl, covered with saran wrap (best for keeping in the moisture) or a towel and let rise for 1.5 to 2.0 hours until doubled.
• Meanwhile prep your toppings (oiling the cheese grater before grating makes the job much easier and the grater easier to clean afterwards - my favorite new trick of 2007).
• You can make a great sauce by frying some crushed garlic in a pan with some olive oil (just until fragrant, don't burn it). Add 28 oz. of crushed tomatoes (run them through the food processor if whole or diced) and cook down for 10-15 minutes. I love to add red pepper, fennel and oregano but it's not necessary.
• Once the dough is done rising - heat your oven to 500 degrees. If you have a stone in there, it's good to keep it at this temperature for 30 minutes so that the stone can warm up fully.
• Divide your dough into 3 pieces (for 3 medium size pizzas) and let rest for at least 10 minutes but not more than 30 minutes. Getting your dough into a crust shape is the hardest part, just don't let it be too thick, but you'll figure it out and the wonky handmade look is sort of endearing and it all tastes great in the end.
• Brush the crust with olive oil (to keep the crust from getting soggy) and top with your favorites. (My favorite is green peppers, onions, oil cured olives, fresh basil, pepperoni and mozzerella.) A pizza peel makes getting it into and out of the oven easiest but I'm sure you could innovate a good trick in its absence.
• Bake until the cheese and crust look done ... at least 10 minutes in my experience.

Mmmm mmmmm good!

Since I don't celebrate Christmas, this is sort of a strange time of year for us. I'm really glad that Baby Y is too young to know what's going on but that won't last forever ...

Abandoned When Genius Fails, decided that reading aobut the demise of an overleveraged, computer model driven hedge fund wasn't all that useful or interesting. Just finished Value Investing Today by Brandes and am slowly working on Money Masters of Our Time. Sort of silly but oh so appealing. Ironic to read after Taleb disparaging our lust for anecdotes of success all the while ignoring reasonable accounts of failure. I felt like I wasted so much time last week. Working at home is distracting. But I have gads of cover letters pending and so much stock pick work to do.

Black Swans (or the pleasure of reading)

Finally finished a book (The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb) for the first time in what seems years. I prefer to read books in one sitting but that didn't quite happen, nonetheless it was so delicious to forget about cover letters and just spend every spare moment last week reading.

I am a big fan of Taleb. I read his Fooled by Randomness in 2003 when I was first getting started studying for the CFA and was working for an investment advisor. I was feeling very doubtful about the line between luck and skill in the business and just generally befuddled by the meaning of being a good investor and Taleb hit a nerve as I was facing all these silly theories on charting and momentum and other investing hocus pocus during my work day. (I was also really amazed that he took the time to reply to an email I sent to him.) I'm not sure that Black Swan is the best thing to read prior to recruiting since it inspires more doubt than confidence in me, and confidence is everything right now. I have to forget all those little nagging worries about the impossibility of succeeding in this game through pure skill ...

Because in the end, someone has to manage the money and it may as well be someone with some doubts than someone with excessive confidence. I hope at least being sensitive to the possibility of enormous failure will make me a better investor. The book confirmed for me the value of fundamental, bottom up analysis and the inherent silliness in definitive predictions and overly complex models. But more importantly, it's just so enjoyable to have some affirmation/reminder that true pleasure in life comes from great literature and philosophy and art - not a job title, maybe not even historical returns. In that sense, it was a great book to read before recruiting.

Well, I have many more thoughts on the book but it's back to cover letters now for me. (Reading When Genius Failed now ... ha.) Just wanted to mention Taleb's book is very worthwhile.