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My first non-fiction of the year was Pulak Prasad's (of Nalada Capital fame) What I Learned About Investing From Darwin. I have mixed feelings about this book.

Let's start with the negatives. First off, there was a tremendous amount of mathematical masturbation through the book. Prasad takes into account so many hypotheses and probabilities that he can prove almost any point he wants to make. Second, his attempts at humour to make the book a better read were, let's just say, underwhelming (eg., "Almost everyone - and I say "almost" because this statement does not apply to my wife - makes mistakes"). It induced more eye-rolls than laughter. On many occasions I found the business case study style narrative more interesting than the investing advice (Walmart, Page Industries, Toys "R" Us, (what to do, and more importantly what not to do)). And lastly, and my biggest issue was that the whole connection with Darwin and evolution was, for the most part, tenuous at best. Similar to last year's Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, the overlay was not needed at all. It might have been cool if a biologist took their learnings and became an expert investor - but not an ex-McKinsey, ex-Warburg and current top-notch investor forcing evolution theories onto investment strategy for the sake of writing a book with a 'hook'.

Having said all this, there were some good investment philosophies (don't invest in government owned businesses, use historical ROCE as a mean to filter out bad businesses, etc), but it required some scouring and yes, it was ultimately worth it.

When it came to the evolution analogies - there were two I enjoyed. The first related convergence to investing (good companies/management will exhibit similar traits, no matter which industry, etc). And second compared good companies to the 'insidious' way rabbits multiply - first hidden in plain sight and then before you know, unstoppably (this was specific to an incident that took place in Australia in the 1800s). Great business with good management and strategy will take a long time to show rewards, but when they do, it will be so multifold that the wait will be rewarding, as long as you have patience.