I’ve been catching up on some reading now that my university is done. I’ve been learning about investments and the stock market – something I knew very little about a few days ago.

I just finished reading these two books. They were very easy to understand and quite inspiring. I recommend them to anyone who is interested in learning more about investing. Start with the first, then read the second.

How I Made $2,000,000 in the stock market by Nicolas Darvas
How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad by William O’Neil

The reason I particularly like these books is that they go against the whole notion of listening to Wall Street analysts. Darvas’ book is mostly a story about how he made it rich on the market in the 50s and 60s. O’Neil is widely regarded as one of the best investors of the last century, and he’s the founder of www.investors.com. His book is extremely focussed on the math behind a stock’s rise. He encourages you to pay attention to charts, graphs and numbers and less on analysts, news and rumours.

From a recent interview with Jonathan Ive of Apple:

Something I found very interesting was Ive’s response to the question,”When you are coming up with product ideas such as the iPod, do you try to solve a problem?”

His reply:

There are different approaches – sometimes things can irritate you so you become aware of a problem, which is a very pragmatic approach and the least challenging.

What is more difficult is when you are intrigued by an opportunity. That, I think, really exercises the skills of a designer. It’s not a problem you’re aware of, nobody has articulated a need. But you start asking questions, what if we do this, combine it with that, would that be useful? This creates opportunities that could replace entire categories of device, rather than tactically responding to an individual problem. That’s the real challenge, and that’s what is exciting.

Now this is fascinating for me, because we are taught to always ask the question, “What’s the problem that this is trying to solve“, when designing or developing something new. Ive says revolutionary products come when you ask “What can we do with this?“.