The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 05 Apr 2013 07:03 PM PDT Impatient Optimist: Bill Gates in his own words Edited by Lisa Rogak Publisher: B2 Books A compilation of views and quotations from Bill Gates over a period of 30 years on his personal and professional life. Anyone interested in his personal thoughts and how he used to drive his business forward will find this book interesting. Although he is no longer at the helm of one of the world's most powerful companies, Gates has steadfastly remained in the news. What Management Is: How it works and why it's everyone's business Author: Joan Magretta Publisher: Free Press This is both a beginner's guide and a bible for those who are also in management. The author distills the wisdom of a bewildering sea of books and articles into one simple volume that explains the logic of successful organisations and how that logic is embodied in practice. She shows how the principles of management which work in for-profit businesses can – and must – apply to non-profits as well. HBR Guide to Better Business Writing Author: Bryan A. Garner Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press Good business writing is not only for those in the corporate world. At one time or another, there is that need to put forward a proposal to a potential client, or to move a business relationship forward. This is a guide that covers all business writing from the day-to-day corporate communications to how to go about producing that annual report. |
| Biological aspects of boom and bust Posted: 05 Apr 2013 07:02 PM PDT The Hour between Dog and Wolf: Risk-taking, gut feelings and the biology of boom and bust Author: John Coates Publisher: 4th Estate ON the surface, The Hour between Dog and Wolf seems like a gimmick that cashes in on the most recent financial crisis, the one that turned the world upside down and wreak havoc in the lives of traders and bankers. Given a quirky title, the book looks intriguing, and its premise ground-breaking – how biology explains Wall Street's booms and busts. That, coupled with the book's portability and affordability, makes it a book that stopper at first glance. Truly it is. This book is wondrous to read. John Coates, who is a neurologist and a former Wall Street trader, disentangles the dichotomy of economics and biology. He shows how hormones of traders collectively form the physiology foundation of highly volatile financial markets, and that it is our body that affects our brain, not entirely the other way round as commonly understood where our brain commands our bodily actions. According to Coates, our body, through muscles, transmits information back to the brain fast enough to keep up with our emotion as well as to generate it. This theory can best be tested in the highly fluid and intense financial markets as Coates did on four professional traders. With consummate skills, Coates narrates and demonstrates how these traders, when placed in the nerve vortex of world economy, can discern the tiniest clues with their sense and react to market events so quickly that their brains cannot keep up and they have to draw on signals from their bodies to optimise their trades. Following Coates' theory, the traders pass through various cycles of changes both in their bodies and in minds from thrill and excitement to the belief that they are infallible. At their euphoric high points, one trader with impaired judgement places dangerous risk-taking bets, and his positions grow to dangerous sizes. As a result, traders are generally time-bombs having no inkling of their biological workings. But neither did we until Coates tells us so. "Human biology can today help us understand over-confidence and irrational exuberance, and it can contribute to a more scientific understanding of financial market instability," writes Coates, heralding a new movement that explains the tacit knowledge that we subconsciously concede but do not know how to explain it. This tacit knowledge shared between the body and the brain is now completely brought to light by Coates who ploughs deep down into our body like a surgeon. Hormones such as adrenalin, testosterone, cortisol that send instructive messages for us to react come to life under Coates' command. Along the veins as they travel, they fight to subdue each other, affecting rationality and regularity. But Coates obviously is not as wry and dry like a serious surgeon. He is funny, making the process of understanding the unification of body and brain, a process called homeostasis, highly entertaining and enlightening. Our goose bumps rise because our animal instincts have called for us to raise our fur, which we do not have. Our throats turn dry because in the face of challenges, our body conserves water, hence the dry mouth. The amount of bodily signals coming as they do from various tissues, every muscle and organ to be processed by the brain is as voluminous as the fun of reading this book. The entire narrative is awe-inspiring, and Coates himself, unlike most traders in the financial markets, displays cool composure in vindicating his theory. Hormones, brain cells, dollar and sense criss-cross and blink like security prices on traders' screens, but Coates is unfazed. He deals with them one at a time and in an organised manner. In the end, two highly distinctive fields of study coalesce, and the truth is out to our dismay – the financial system balances precariously on the mental health of those risk-taking, risk-loving, adrenalin-pumping traders who have way too many of the bad hormones to be trusted. Like athletes, these traders are short-term sighted and they do not make great use of their cognitive abilities because cognitive reactions are too slow for the cut-throat environment. Instead their responses are guided by subconscious fast reactions. In less scientific terminology, they follow instincts rather than methodical reasoning. Coates' compelling narrative questions the grand theory of Efficient Market Hypothesis and wobbles the foundations of one of neo-classical economics' most sacred tenets – that human behaviour is volitional – we choose our course of actions with a rational mind! This tete-a-tete conversation between biology and economics is a total game changer, as Coates says, "If the walls separating brain from body came down, so too would the barriers between many subjects." There are many ways to better manage fluctuations of financial markets, and defusing the explosive mix of hormones and risk-taking is likely to work if we do as Coates believes – financial bubbles are largely a male phenomenon. In that case, we should manage by first changing the biological diversity of markets. Welcome then women (calmer) and older men (wiser) to the testosterone world of trading. |
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