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- [00:00]
A
Hello everyone and welcome to Investing by the Books, a podcast by Red Eye. I'm your host Eddie Palmyan and today we're excited to have Ihsan Ehsani on the show. Ihsan is an investor at Crescendo Partners, an activist and value oriented firm in New York, and he's also an adjunct professor in the finance division at Columbia Business School. Fittingly for this podcast, he is also the author of a new book, Finding Value in Numbers, which is a practical guide helping investors to build their frameworks and make better decisions. Finding Value in Numbers was released by Columbia Business school publishing in February 2026 and we're delighted to have his author on the show today. Here comes our conversation with Ihsan Ehsani. Hi Ihsan, and welcome to Investing by the Books podcast.
- [00:49]
B
Thank you, thanks for having me.
- [00:52]
A
It's great to have you on. Where are we reaching you on?
- [00:55]
B
Well, I'm based out of New York today since I'm working from home. That's why you see the background of our apartment.
- [01:07]
A
A lot of art and paintings there.
- [01:09]
B
Yeah, we do like modern contemporary art a lot. Yeah, we run out of spaces unfortunately to hang them, so we had to rent mid size storage to store some of those.
- [01:24]
A
Another big interest of yours is investing.
- [01:27]
B
Yes.
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A
How did you discover that?
- [01:30]
B
Well, I have always had interest in fundamental investing. Worked for close to 14, 15 years in management consulting as part of my work. Obviously I had to work with senior management of business, see how they can create value for shareholders. One thing led to another and one of my engagements was related to a company in which an activist investor was involved. I saw firsthand how that investor changed the organizational structure, institutionalized new capital allocation processes and created value management. Employees, customers and obviously shareholders benefited at the end. And that was really exhilarating. It motivated me to try to learn more about those type of professional activities and eventually that interest and enthusiasm morphed into a full time career.
- [02:49]
A
Perfect. And we will speak more about that a bit later in the conversation. But now we want to talk about your new book, Finding Value in the Numbers. Can you briefly tell us what the book is about?
- [02:59]
B
Well, as you know, besides my work at Crushendo Partners where I work as a professional investor, I also teach at Columbia Business School. I notice students generally struggle with two different things. One is as they are flooded with different streams of information and data from number of different directions, they feel lost. They not always necessarily recognize what type of information matters, what type of information is more relevant and can move the needle when it comes to the stock price. And the reason for that lack of understanding or feeling overwhelmed is because they don't have a framework. And the way I define the framework is a structured way of thinking composed of mindset and process, which allows you to zoom in on what really matters and then know what the steps you need to take in order to evaluate those opportunities and take, take a go, no go decision when it comes to that investment opportunity. So that was a key motivation for writing the book I mentioned in the book, that framework should be yours. Because if I tell you what your investment framework should be, when the economic situation gets tough, you're not going to stick to it. It's not second nature. So you might occasionally forget some of the steps. But having said that, you need to get started somewhere. And the goal with the book was to at least give you some hints or guidelines on how to get started in building your investment framework. So that was my number one goal. And then the ancillary goal associated with that was again, I saw many MBA students struggled with actually doing some of those steps, but when it comes to calculations and quantitative techniques, which are used in valuation and investment work. And that ancillary goal was to provide a step by step guide, easy to follow approach for them to be able to approach those quantitative aspects.
- [05:23]
A
And the foreword of your book is written by the legendary investor Mario Gabelli.
- [05:27]
B
Yes.
- [05:28]
A
How did that come about?
- [05:30]
B
Mario is a longtime supporter of Columbia. He himself went to Columbia Business school more than 50 years ago, has always been generous with his time with philanthropy and with sharing his wisdom. And as a member of faculty, I had the privilege of listening to him and his perspective over the years. And I really wanted him to sort of take a look at the book because in one of the chapters, his Private Market Value with catalyst approach is actually mentioned. So I discussed that with him, and he was gracious enough to accept reading the book. And that eventually led to a foreword by him. And I'm really honored that he accepted to do that.
- [06:30]
A
And if we go into the book, you have structured it into four parts. And the first part asks, is the opportunity investable? What do you mean with investable? In this sense, yeah.
- [06:42]
B
So as you have noticed, the book is a structure around four parts. And these four parts are essentially four questions. And I argue that if you want to spot right investment opportunities, the answer to all these questions should be yes. So the first question, which constitutes essentially the title of the first part of the book, is, is the idea investable? And by using the term investable, I mean one or both of the following things. Either you're dealing with a situation, a security, or a business which is mispriced, preferably for non economic reasons, or you're dealing with a good business. So if the answer to both of these questions is yes, then this constitutes a very interesting opportunity to explore further. If one of these two situations is present, you still want to explore that name and see if there is something there before proceeding with it or discarding it. And what that allows you to do is to quickly look at the universe of opportunities. I mean, if you look at the major indexes globally, we have around 20,000 stocks. And that doesn't even include other type of securities like options and credit and so on. So that allows you to quickly filter that vast universe of opportunities that you're dealing with, or the names that are pitched to you by sell side or by other fellow investors, and zoom on the ones which you think are really worth exploring.
- [08:45]
A
So if the answer is yes to that first question, if the opportunity is investable, the second part of your book then deals with a question that no investor can avoid. Is the valuation attractive?
- [08:56]
B
Exactly. Exactly. Security might be cheap, might seem investable, but that company might be cheap for a reason. It might be cheap optically. And if we decide to take a closer look at that stock or that company in the valuation phase, we might conclude that valuation is also very low. So the company might look optically cheap, but it's not really mispriced either. So therefore, as you correctly highlighted, evaluation is basically the heart of what investment researchers do. And it's the second phase that we go through.
- [09:45]
A
Could you maybe give a real world example of how you determine a case where a company's valuation was attractive and how you did that?
- [09:55]
B
Well, one key point to keep in mind is that valuation is both an art and science. And a lot of times we're not dealing with a single number, we're dealing with a range of values. And that's because in order to come up with valuation of a company, we generally make assumptions. And those assumptions might have some wiggle room, but have might not be necessarily spot on. So with that in mind, you could use a range of different tools to come up with evaluation. What I discuss in the book is an alternative to traditional dcf. While I agree that the DCF is a very important tool and has its own place in the arsenal or toolkit of a fundamental investor, because in the outer years we generally deal with the terminal value estimation, which is not really accurate, that makes the whole idea of DCF Valuation method a little bit more speculative. This is partially because DCF are based on projection of the earnings. And the speculative nature in the outer years come from the fact that we don't necessarily always know what the projections of revenue and earnings will be. Because of this, I suggest an alternative approach which is based on starting from a balance sheet. A balance sheet is more reliable in the sense that the numbers are what they are and we don't necessarily need to estimate in a speculative way. NOIA approach is composed of three components. The first component, which gives us the floor of the valuation of a company, stock or business in general, is based on reproduction value of a company. We look at the balance sheet assets and liabilities and ask ourselves how much does it take to reproduce those assets, whether they're in inventories, whether they're customers, and so on and so forth. That gives us the floor. Whoever wants to enter this business has to pay at least that much to recreate this company. But then there are two other components associated with this, with the whole valuation of the business. And one is the earning power of the business, those assets, that combination of assets generate some cash flow. And the second component is what I call is the earning power of eva, so to speak. EVA here stands for economic profit. If a company generates economic profit, that economic profit now and in the future has some value. So I introduced an approach to estimate that. And then lastly, beside the earning power of current economic profit and the value of the asset themselves, there is some other component involved in this case growth. Those earnings in the future will grow and and then I subsequently introduced a couple of tools and techniques on how to estimate the gross value in valuation of a business. The advantage of this way of looking at the business is that instead of fully based the valuation on the earning growth and estimation of those earnings in the future years, which is more speculative, where is basically breaking the valuation into chunks and for some parts in which we have more confidence and more solid data, we make a more accurate estimate and we only estimate the growth and value of growth for the smaller portion. And therefore as a result, I think this is a more accurate and more solid way to analyze the valuation of a company.
- [14:32]
A
How did you come up with this approach to valuation?
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B
So there have been number of practitioners and scholars over the last few decades that have introduced bits and pieces of such approach to valuation. So for example, if you look at the teachings and writings of legendary perspective professor at Columbia, Bruce Greenwald, who is now retired, he was a big advocate of looking at the balance sheet when investor wants to analyze the valuation of a business.
- [15:10]
A
So
- [15:12]
B
the reproduction value component of the approach came from Bruce's perspective as well as a model which was developed in the 80s and to some extent refined in ID is called dividend discount model, the EVA. The portion which is the second portion is something that is my own contribution in some other forms. In the past some practitioners used the ending power value to look at the sort of value of the earnings of a business. Today I elevated that and refined it and came up with the EVA notion. And then the last part, which is the value of growth again, has been proposed by various scholars and practitioners, including Rappaport, who is the author of Expectation Investing with Michael Morbason as well as Professor Paul Johnson at Columbia So first
- [16:24]
A
you ask if the opportunity is investable. Maybe we have a yes there. Secondly, we have talked about the valuation. Is it attractive? Hopefully we have a yes there too. Then the third part you have titled Is there a Path to Profits? What is the main purpose of this section in the book?
- [16:39]
B
I think one of the traps or mistakes that many value investors or fundamental investors make, especially in the early years of their career, is that they go and find cheap securities or cheap companies with the line of thinking that eventually market will recognize the value of this business and price and value converge. The challenge is that if there is no external mechanism or a catalyst, so to speak, these price and value converges might not happen for a long time. And if they don't converge for a long time, your return obviously will suffer. The whole notion of value trap essentially originated from investors getting stuck in scenarios like this. So in the third part of the book I argue that you need to identify or think about how the value and price will converge in the future, what is the estimated duration that this process will take, and especially what is the driving force behind that. Forcing ourselves to think about the catalyst and path to profit allows us to avoid opportunities that might seem attractive, securities that might seem optically cheap, but they will always stay cheap and essentially lead to value traps.
- [18:21]
A
When we discuss this at Red Eye, we usually talk about soft catalysts and hard catalysts. Hard catalysts having a specific date that something will happen, and soft catalysts being a bit more intangible, so to say. Is that something that you have thought about as well? Different types of catalysts and the timing of them?
- [18:40]
B
Yes, I think that's a good way of thinking about it. Some investors also consider time as a catalyst in the sense that there might not necessarily be a regulatory development or merger or any sorts of hard catalysts in Sight, but they think that the company is is essentially a good business and over time, by generating more and more cash, it becomes a more valuable company. I personally don't disagree with that, but don't think that time can be a catalyst. Perhaps this is because I'm an engineer by education and from engineering days. I do remember that the definition of catalyst was a substance which, if it's present, accelerates rate of chemical reaction. And if you think about investment processes using that lens, time is present for all investment opportunities. So it's not like it exists for one company and doesn't exist for the other one. On the other hand, if we look at traditional catalysts, in fact those are specific to that investment opportunity in question. So I tend to like and consider the former more of a catalyst than time. Having said that, if someone doesn't have any restriction from perspective of capital outflow or any specific mandate, you could always be patient and buy those wonderful companies and just hold them forever. And in many cases you would have satisfactory return. It's just that there is no guarantee that those returns are at the rate that you want because of the lack of the catalyst.
- [20:50]
A
I often hear investors talk about this being an edge that they have that they will stay in the market and they have the time on their side and they will just hold great businesses, but not as a catalyst. That is of course something else. How do you manage the downside risk of catalyst then?
- [21:10]
B
Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?
- [21:14]
A
Yeah, just an example. Because often you're waiting for something that will happen and an event that will hopefully bring this stock upwards. But it could also be that the catalyst is a disappointment for investors.
- [21:29]
B
Yeah, that's a good point. I think you should be very purposeful and selective in selecting investment opportunities. Depending on what your risk appetite is, you might want to go for an opportunity and forego the other one. A good example of that is the cannabis stocks in the United States. As of now, marijuana and related cannabis products are scheduled at the same level as heroin in the United States. So therefore distribution and sales of them has a lot of regulations. And they are also taxed on their gross margin, not on their operating margin or ebit. So there has been this talk of the United States government rescheduling cannabis stock, remove it from the same category as really hazardous drugs such as heroin. If that happens, then they will be treated like normal companies and the end result is that their cash flows will explode overnight. So that's an example of a catalyst which if happens, will immediately lead to doubling or Tripling or perhaps quadrupling the stock price of cannabis stock in United States. But on the other hand, if you look at the history of this industry, there has been talk of rescheduling cannabis stock for the last four years. And there has been a lot of roller coasters and people thinking that it might happen tomorrow, but might happen next month, might happen next year, and hasn't materialized yet. So if we think about the hypothetical scenario of an investor being cannabis stock since four years ago, that investor must have been very disappointed by now. So that essentially depends on your risk appetite. You know that when it comes to legislator and regulatory developments, there is no specific date, but the upside might be very attractive. Some investors might decide to go into that space. On the other hand, another investor might forego those opportunities and go for more solid opportunities. For example, a merger which is really, really, really high conviction and for sure it's going to happen, or things of that nature.
- [24:34]
A
Which brings us back to the second part of the book. If the valuation is attractive.
- [24:40]
B
Exactly.
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A
So if the opportunity is investable and the evaluation is attractive and there is a path to profits, your fourth part of the book asks, do we have a winning game plan? What do you mean by this?
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B
So having a winning game plan encompasses a number of different things. One of them is that, okay, we know that the stock is cheap and valuation is attractive and there is a catalyst. Now if you actually want to build a position, what are the things that need to be in place? One of them is sizing and how much we buy when we buy, and that sort of decision. Another one is how does this opportunity align with the rest of the positions we have in the portfolio. So there are key portfolio decisions and hedging decisions that might need to be considered or changed. And then lastly, there are more holistic aspects that we can think about, and those are thinking about the second and third order effects of any development in the industry that the company is operating in, the systemic nature of the market and things of that nature. So this amalgamation of different consideration is what I refer to as having a game plan. We need to sort of have a plan or at least concrete, a set of concrete actions when it comes to those items.
- [26:07]
A
And one concept that you bring up in this part is system dynamics. Can you speak a bit more about this?
- [26:13]
B
Yeah. System dynamic is a very niche field. It was initially created at MIT in the 1950s and 60s. And the founder of this discipline was a gentleman with the name of Jay Forrester. And Forrester was an engineer. And his idea was, you know, we have all these useful concepts in the world of engineering, like a control, like managing the flow of liquid in a pipe and measuring velocity and things of that nature. And why don't we apply these concepts, try to model the social system, the society in general and supply chain and things of that nature. And that perspective eventually led to formation of the field of system dynamic. I find it very useful to think about some of the dynamic relationships and interactions between entities, stakeholders in the stock market. And has been very beneficial for me.
- [27:34]
A
Can you say a bit more about how you apply it in investing?
- [27:38]
B
So at a very high level, system dynamic experts deal with stock and flow diagrams and causal diagrams. So they try to think about the phenomenon and construct cause and effect relationship and see how this cause and effect relationships form, whether reinforcing loops or negative loops. And they can occasionally take that cause and effect diagrams to the next level and build mathematical equation with stock and flow diagrams. So to give you an example of how these sort of modeling and cause and effect analysis works, you can think about a situation in which let's say a stock is undervalued. A value investor identifies that this stock is cheap. Then he or she goes to a number of conferences and idea dinners and also on CNBC talks about the fact that this stock is really undervalued and people trust that person. They start buying with huge amount of volume and then the stock price hugely shoots up in its sort of in the aftermath of those events to the levels which is not even rational by initial value investors standard. Why? Because here there is a reinforcing loop involved when that initial value investor, who is very credible talks about this stock. Then there are few more value investors who are influenced. They talk to their friends and they talk to their own friends. And suddenly there is thousands of thousands of people who think this stock is really good and it's worth buying at any price. And that snowball effect creates a reinforcing loop. And temporarily a stock price goes to levels which are really, really irrational. That doesn't necessarily have to be a value stock. You can see similar phenomena happening with the stocks like Tesla, Nvidia and so on and so forth. Generally this type of behavior or reinforcing loops lead to parabolic growth patterns. And parabolic growth patterns almost always end up with a crash. So thinking about these reinforcing loops and sort of use pattern recognition thinking whether a specific narrative about the stock and rise in price fits into that pattern. It's really useful for investors whether they want to, in case they want to invest in a stock or not. So that's one simple example of how you can apply that sort of thinking.
- [31:01]
A
Great. So this was one concept and now we have been going through these four parts. High level. But for those who are curious to dive deeper, you should definitely read the book. To read all of it. You have a full buffet there of things to go through. Is there anything else from the book that you would like to share?
- [31:22]
B
One portion of the book that we didn't discuss much was the chapters that are dedicated to intangible value. If you look at the list of top 10 companies by market cap in S&P in 1980-1990-2000-2010 and 2020, you notice that in the last 50 years we've had this gradual shift of the top 10 lists from asset heavy more mature industries like oil companies to turbine makers like General Electric and so on to more tech intangible intensive companies like Google Meta and so on. So the importance of this shift is very paramount when it comes to analyzing investment opportunities because the traditional accounting tools that we deal with, they were all formalized in around 1900, 1920 and they were designed to analyze the old economy businesses. They were not designed to deal with companies that have a lot of intellectual property, white collar knowledge workers or very very valuable brands. So therefore I argue in those chapters that if you want to do a thorough job, more accurate job of evaluating these businesses, you need to adjust your toolkit. And in one of those chapters I walk through how you can reconstruct the three main financial statements, adjust income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement to incorporate some of those key intangible assets, namely R and D, value of customers and value of human capital or the people in the business. So that's I think is one of the key contributions of the book when it comes to the Ministry in Value investing literature.
- [33:42]
A
And the book, as you mentioned in the beginning and we talked about the it's inspiring you to build your own framework and you provide a lot of examples for things you could have in your framework. Is there something you think should not be in one's framework?
- [33:59]
B
It's not for me to tell what people should use in their framework and what they shouldn't use. What I can however say is that it would be very beneficial to construct your framework with components which are almost near fact or very solid because when the foundation is strong, the conclusions that you make from those components will also be more accurate. So therefore I encourage people who want to build their own framework to discount emotional or hearsay or less solid theoretical views and work More on solid, more robust methodologies and techniques when they want to build their framework.
- [35:06]
A
Your book is named Finding Value in Numbers. So it's a clear nudge that the numbers are important. And that's something we pay a lot of attention to as well. Here at Red Eye we have a big group of analysts covering some 150 stocks. And we do a lot of quantitative analysis and have our own framework here. But we also have a qualitative rating which consists of three pillars and these are people, business and financials. And the people category. I was curious what your thoughts are on the importance of the people and how to evaluate them and build that into your framework.
- [35:46]
B
It's tremendously important and you can think of people at the very high level as management and board of the business and at the lower level, people who actually involved in day to day operation of the company. If you look at many large and growing companies today, one of the most important assets they have is people. You look at the consulting company like Accenture or McKinsey beside some of the software assets that they might have. Vast majority of what these organizations are is collection of people. So the value that they create comes from those people. So it's tremendously important when it comes to management. At the end of the day, companies are going to win or lose, create superior shareholder value based on the strategies and execution of the management team. So the strong management team is of importance, paramount, important when analyzing the company. You want an organization whose management has a clear vision and drive organization to obsessively execute on that vision. And that vision ideally need to recognize and incorporate the value that the customers bring to the table, the people of the organization bring to the table and its partners. And if you have that combination, in my view, you will have a long duration sustainable organization when it comes to growth. So I agree with you. That's very important component should be incorporated in the analysis.
- [37:39]
A
So let's shift focus from your role as an author and to what you're doing otherwise during the days.
- [37:46]
B
Sure. As I mentioned early in the conversation, I work at a firm called Crescendo Partners. We do essentially three, four things. We're involving activist investing in a small capital space in North America with a focus on Canada. We do have a long term value oriented fund, again small cap equity focused on North America. We do have in the past occasionally done a special situation investing and we also have a business dedicated to spac. We are one of the pioneers of that vehicle. Started the first one in 2005 and essentially bring a private company to public market New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq every two years. We announced our ninth deal late last year which might be of interest to you, is a Swedish company called Enright. It's a autonomous and electric trucking company that we announced the deal with with the valuation of over a billion dollars. So company will hopefully be trading on New York Stock Exchange in the middle of this year.
- [39:16]
A
Exciting. And what exactly are you doing at Crescendo Partners?
- [39:22]
B
So on the SPAC side, in our newest spac, I'm the Chief Investment officer and then on the activist and long term value oriented equity side I do analyst work.
- [39:39]
A
And how has writing the book changed your thinking on investing?
- [39:44]
B
Crescendo is my day to day job and beside that I'm an adjunct professor at cbs. I think what Crescendo does allows you to keep track of the pulse of the market and what works and what doesn't work from practitioner perspective. And the work at CBS allows you to test those with sharp and bright minds in the MBA classes and refine those. It also allows you to see what's cutting edge in terms of the latest research and apply that in your job and get feedback. So I think that relationship between Crescendo and my investment approach and the teaching have been interactive each feeding the other and overall has been very rewarding experience for me.
- [40:42]
A
The best of all worlds. What classes are you teaching at Columbia and how does that work?
- [40:48]
B
So in the fall semester I have a course for full time MBA students in value investing program which is called Activist Value Investing for a Small Cap. And that's a course in which we prepare students to the extent possible within the construct of a course for buy site, sit in an activist shop, we walk them through idea generation, evaluating opportunities by evaluation, engaging in negotiation with the company and building and exiting a position in activist shop throughout the course. And they also work on developing a pitch starting from early on in the class and they present those on the last day of the class and we bring a panel of judges from activist firm and then we select the winners on the last session. So that's the fall semester. In the spring semester I have another course called Applied Value Investing for executive MBA students which is more of less activists obviously more evaluation heavy course helping students develop their own framework. And that's the course that leans more heavily compared to the activist course on the content of the book.
- [42:16]
A
And with all your experience and expertise on building your investing framework, I have to ask you, when it comes to your own money, how do you invest personally?
- [42:25]
B
Well, I'M one of those people who doesn't use a different set of tools and techniques. Whatever I preach in the book, I try to utilize those in my personal, investing or professional capacity as well. So many of the ideas that they share in the book, those are the ones I utilize myself as well.
- [42:51]
A
Eat your own cooking, I guess you call it.
- [42:53]
B
Exactly.
- [42:55]
A
But how has this developed over time? Did you start out with one part of the framework and then you have some more recent additions or how has that been?
- [43:03]
B
I think the framework has always been structurally like what I presented in the book. What has happened is some components of it has been enhanced over time. Example of it is the intangible portion. Another part is that is worth noting is that. And it's not necessarily related to framework itself. It's the type of companies that I go after. So in the first portion I mentioned that you're looking for companies that are either cheap or good businesses. So initially in my career I occasionally looked for companies that were purely cheap. They might have been melting ice cubes or companies that we don't think would be around 15 years from now. But I did analyze and looked at them anyways. I occasionally looked at companies that had moderate to high level of debt. Over time I learned my lesson through getting burned or being wrong with the investment thesis. So. So. And these days I focus less on those type of scenarios and try to the extent possible, find good businesses and preferably in situations which are mispriced. And of course you need to have the catalyst as well.
- [44:50]
A
I recently read a thoughtful article by the investing philosopher and author Vishal Kandelwal, who we had on the podcast, I think episode 34. He wrote that having a process and being able to follow it under pressure are two completely different skills. And I came to think of this when reading your book, that you can build this framework, but then when the market is in turmoil or something happens in your companies, that's when you really get tested if you have a framework. So I'm curious what your thoughts are on this.
- [45:21]
B
I think having a framework is definitely important. But there is this important point which I don't discuss in the book, maybe in another book that I will be writing in the coming years, is that having a framework is not the first step. The way I think about this is through acronyms called rpf and R stands for result and P stands for purpose and F stands for framework. So a lot of people, when they want to analyze an investment opportunity, they start from the F or process or the steps that they need to go through. The problem with that is that reconstructing three financial statements, doing valuation work is not necessarily exciting. So you might not really be motivated to do go through all those steps when you see an opportunity. But if you instead start with results and purpose, then that motivates you to stay loyal to that framework and also feel excited about doing those type of analysis and going through those steps. To give you an example, let's say if you're a person or individual investor, you can come up with results and purpose, which is very inspiring for you. You say, well, I've been reading a lot of articles on Internet, watching a lot of interviews from all these fundamental investors are like David Einhorn. And the results I want to achieve is that intellectually and hopefully from a performance perspective, three years from now, I want to be David Ironhorn 2.0. That's the result you're shooting for. And why do you want to do that? The purpose or reason is because intellectually I want to be as good as him, I will be respected by my fellow investors, and also I feel good about it myself. And then financially I be independent, I can take care of my son or daughter, and so on and so forth. So now if you start with the results and then a purpose or why you want that result, then you would know what type of process or framework you need, not necessarily for investing, but for other things that you need to do in your life. For example, you need to read a lot of investing book, you need to do certain type of analysis, you need to go after certain type of investment opportunities, certain type of stocks, and so on and so forth. Starting from the framework or activities might not necessarily motivate you, but if you look at it the other way around, you feel excited, you feel motivated. Every day when you wake up, you know how close you're getting toward that vision. And it actually also helps you in constructing the right framework and refined over time. So I agree with that notion that many people think is simple. It is simple. Many of these tools and techniques we talk about are very, very simple and straightforward. Not rocket science doesn't mean they're easy, they're difficult. And the difficulty is essentially doing them day after day. Be motivated, excited about it, and then within the framework itself, constantly thinking about how you can improve that. And I think if you adopt such a mindset. As an example, you can use this acronym, which is rpf. You have a good shot of getting where you want.
- [49:45]
A
Thank you for that. As this is a book podcast, we'd like to wrap up with a few questions about reading and writing and you mentioned that reading books can be helpful. So do you have any recommendations for our listeners?
- [49:57]
B
Yeah, I do read a lot of books, less investing books and a lot of history books. Recently I read two books which were unbelievable. One of them was called Power Broker which is Pulitzer Prize winning title by Robert Carot. It's about a gentleman with the name of Robert Moses who was instrumental in building a lot of parks and roads in City of New York as well as New York State. It's a fantastic book and it was the best book that I read in 2025. Another historical book that I read was it's called Endurance and it's about the failed voyage of Shackleton more than 100 years ago. They wanted to go from west to eastern part of South Pole and of course they failed, but in an amazing turn of event they survive. And it's just an unbelievable book and many parallels you can see with the investing world in that when it comes to investing books, I like classics like Essays of Warren Buffett by Lawrence Cunningham. I think that's a good book. And from Columbia Business School Titles Expectation Investing by Michael Maubousin is also very structured and nice one.
- [51:28]
A
Perfect. I actually found the Endurance book in a book exchange shelf two weeks ago, but I haven't started reading it. My wife is reading it now. I think.
- [51:38]
B
Yeah, it's a great read.
- [51:42]
A
So do you want to write more books yourself?
- [51:45]
B
Yes, I really enjoy writing books. It allows me to achieve clarity of thought but also share ideas with fellow like minded people and get feedback from them. So I have a couple of projects in the pipeline that I'm working on. There are different stages of development, probably come to sort of fruition in 2027.
- [52:17]
A
Looking forward to that. Ehsan Ehsani thank you so much for coming on Investing by the Books podcast to talk about you and your new book, Finding Value in Numbers. Do you have something more you want to add here before we finish up?
- [52:29]
B
Well, thank you for having me. It was really a pleasure having this conversation with you. To the readers, I have a newsletter on LinkedIn called Value Hedgehog. If you have book recommendations, if you have ideas you want to discuss, don't be a stranger. Feel free to reach out. I'd be delighted to chat.
- [52:51]
A
Wonderful. Thank you so much.
- [52:53]
B
Thank you.
- [52:55]
A
Thank you for listening to Investing by the Books, a podcast by Red Eye. Follow us on Twitterbredai and email us at IB PodcastedEye SC to improve. We'd love to hear your feedback, so please rate and review us. Notice that the content in this podcast is not and shall not be construed as investment advice. This information is meant to be informative and for general purposes only. For full disclaimer visit Redeye Se. I'm your host, Eddie Palmian, and until next time, I sincerely wish you the best of luck on your journey through life and investing.