Book Review - The Dhandho Investor

The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns by Mohnish Pabrai
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found an audio book of "The Dhandho Investor" online and thought I should give it a listen. After all, it has been listed in the top economic and finance books on Goodreads, so I thought it was worth a shot.

It is clear the author of "The Dhandho Investor" is a disciple of Warren Buffet, often quoting him and Charlie Munger throughout the book. Consequently, Pabrai echoes these famous investors principles, which is to find great undervalued companies with little downside and huge upside. The goal of an investor is to hold onto these companies for a long time, and slowly reap the rewards.

Considering I have been binge watching a lot of Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger clips on YouTube, I found "The Dhandho Investor" to be unfortunately redundant. Indeed, there is some original thought with special emphasis on Indians migrating from Uganda to America to slowly build profitable empires in the shapes of hotels across the country, but even still, it lacked a special quality that is often seen in other finance books by well known investors.

A few takeaways from "The Dhandho Investor" is the importance of ingenious ways to build capitals. The example of "Papa Patel" and family members of the same name pooling their money together to invest in the first hotel is a brilliant idea. I have witnessed similar acts where I currently live, since newly immigrants from India live in a large house together, invest in a company/business and slowly reap profits that will benefit the future generations. However brilliant this idea is for the Patel's, it is not applicable to most citizens that were born and raised in North America. I suppose the only benefit of reading this book is the reinforcement of Warren's ideas that it is important to find a sound company with a good manager, and then heap loads of cash into their stocks to eventually generate a large surplus of income in the future.

Recommend read for anyone that is interested in this investor, Mohnish Pabrai. If you have very little knowledge of stocks I would probably stay away from it, since the author uses technical terminology that investors tend to use when discussing the Stock Market and trading. A hopeful book for any new immigrants to the Americas, or those that want to find a clever way to generate income by pooling money together with other family members or friends. All in all, a somewhat interesting read, but one that I am happy to put down in favour of a better financial investment book.

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