adsyoung

Hey guys,

I was thinking the other day that I would love to read a book that was essentially a catalogue of all known business models (not just web startups) with examples and discussion.

I was reminded again by this post on the web startup business model wiki: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=648223

Does anyone have a recommendation along these lines?

Cheers

For much of early life I hadn't paid much attention to the world of finance and the markets as it seemed very difficult to know who was worth listening to and who was full of it, so I largely dismissed it as an insider's game.

But recent events have sparked my interest I guess and I've started doing a bit of reading and playing catch up.

So far I think I've identified 3 models for investing in the stock market that make some sense to me and everything else I've heard so far seems either a crazy temporary hack, pure luck or some combination of the two. At the risk of sparking a flame war, I'm curious as to whether people here disagree with my perhaps fairly naive understanding of this world or if you have other reasonable models to add etc...

The models are...

1. The Warren Buffet Berkshire Hathaway model: Place very few bets. Work really hard and be very disciplined in finding the rare opportunity and insight and then bet heavily when you do. As described by Charlie Munger in the second part of this talk http://www.paladinvest.com/pifiles/MungersWorldlyWisdom.htm.

2. Index fund model: Stop taking on risk in trying to beat the market all the time, an unlikely feat, and just go along for the ride. It will be bumpy (very bumpy perhaps) but have some faith that in the long run the market tends to go up as the human race goes about creating more wealth in the world (real wealth hopefully in the future).

3. The Nassim Nicholas Taleb Black Swan model: The world is dominated by large unexpected events (like the recent one) some are positive and some are negative. Limit your exposure to the negative ones by putting the vast majority of your money in extremely secure things like T Bills and then gamble with the remainder hoping to find a large positive event (like the next google). Anyone who thinks they can be exposed to the large negative events and effectively manage that risk is nuts.

Depending on an individuals particular appetite for hard work, risk, emotional rollercoasters and the like I could imagine any of these 3 being argued as a reasonable strategy.

Any thoughts to help me along would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

When I'm waiting somewhere or on public transport I'd like to be able to read or even edit code on the iphone. Has anyone worked out a halfway decent experience for doing this?

When I read the title of Paul's latest post "What I've Learned from Hacker News" I was hoping he was going to talk about what things he's learned from the stories and discussions here that stand out, not what he's learned about running the site itself. So I figured that may possibly make an interesting Ask HN question.

What important/useful things have you learned from the stories and discussions here that stand out to you?