Long Term Investing as a Mindset: Learning from Darwin

I spent a couple of days going through Pulak Prasad’s tome, “What I learned about Investing from Darwin”- a book that draws heavily from Darwin’s Origin of Species and Warren Buffet’s annual letter to investors.

As the founder of a private investment firm, Nalanda Capital, which has evidently shown stellar performance since its inception in 2009, Pulak is quite well-respected in India as one of our own home-grown “Warren Buffets”, therefore I picked up this book as the voice of a credible investor sharing his authentic insights. And also, to me the title was intriguing, because of my intense interest, (first kindled by the great naturalists like David Attenborough and Jane Goodall), in the natural world and how to accelerate restoration efforts before it is too late.

The author explains his investment style and success thus far — and makes it interesting and readable by comparing his investment insights with amazing phenomena observed from the natural world. The book delves into interesting nuggets from evolutionary theory to try and cultivate a “mindset” or approach to investing in the reader. The intent is to help investors to stay strong even in the face of “noise” from the environment.

I have summarized the insights in this review because it conforms strongly to my own investing style and bias…