Book Bits: 01 February 2025

● The New Rules of Investing: Essential Wealth Strategies for Turbulent Times
Mark Haefele and Richard C. Morais
Excerpt via Barron’s
The notion that the global financial order could one day suffer or collapse under the weight of its debt has understandably given rise to a survivalist impulse to do whatever it takes to escape the financial system we have, and perhaps create a new system in the process. That impulse, for good or bad, stands behind the rise of cryptocurrency, but I am highly doubtful that cryptocurrencies will save us.
Cryptocurrencies are perceived by officials to be both a threat to the existing financial system and a facilitator of money laundering, which explains why, when Bitcoin fell 50 percent in short order, government officials went out of their way to say, “We told you so.” The U.S. secretary of the treasury pointedly warned Americans against “extremely risky” cryptocurrencies lacking “appropriate supervision and regulation.”

● Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future
Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato
Review via TechCrunch
In Reid Hoffman’s new book “Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future,” the LinkedIn co-founder makes the case that AI can extend human agency — giving us more knowledge, better jobs, and improved lives — rather than reducing it.
That doesn’t mean he’s ignoring the technology’s potential downsides. In fact, Hoffman (who wrote the book with Greg Beato) describes his outlook on AI, and on technology more generally, as one focused on “smart risk taking” rather than blind optimism.
“Everyone, generally speaking, focuses way too much on what could go wrong, and insufficiently on what could go right,” Hoffman told me.

● Quantitative Portfolio Optimization: Advanced Techniques and Application
Miquel Noguer Alonso, et al.
Summary via publisher (Wiley)
In Quantitative Portfolio Optimization: Theory and Practice, renowned financial practitioner Miquel Noguer, alongside physicists Alberto Bueno Guerrero and Julian Antolin Camarena, who possess excellent knowledge in finance, delve into advanced mathematical techniques for portfolio optimization. The book covers a range of topics including mean-variance optimization, the Black-Litterman Model, risk parity and hierarchical risk parity, factor investing, methods based on moments, and robust optimization as well as machine learning and reinforcement technique. These techniques enable readers to develop a systematic, objective, and repeatable approach to investment decision-making, particularly in complex financial markets.

● The Crazies: The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West
Amy Gamerman
Review via High Country News
Like the hardrock miners who flocked to Montana in the 19th century, cattle rancher Rick Jarrett looks to eke out a living and keep his family afloat in The Crazies (January 2025). But these days, money is not just buried deep underground, like the “Oro y Plata” that gave the state its motto; it surges from the mountains as wind. This narrative nonfiction book, by Wall Street Journal reporter Amy Gamerman, is a well-researched unspooling of a modern-day tale about land ownership, preposterous wealth and the legal scrum that ensued after two ranchers sought to lease their land to wind developers in Montana’s Crazy Mountains, near Big Timber.
Using detailed, vernacular sentences that hew closely to her characters’ perspectives, The Crazies unravels a NIMBY phenomenon that is happening across the West as the U.S. pushes to decarbonize, while landowners look to profit from a “new gold rush.”

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