Not really sure how it’s possible that I haven’t referenced these two articles by Michael Lewis on former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach. The first one details the (revolutionary) offense and his strategy for competing with some of the top-tier football programs. And, the second is a follow-up interview with Lewis on Leach after Tech got to No. 2 in the nation.

Now, while Ohio University’s (my alma mater) football program has had some success with Frank Solich, I would LOVE to hire Leach to the program. I think it could add the needed boost and spark to our program.

The most innovative product for a financial firm is one that always has volume and, sometimes, always has volatility. Many investors would prefer neither, they would prefer their investments boring. So there’s a clash here.

Similar sentiments were what I gathered from my reading of The Big Short by Michael Lewis. While there was a lot of common sense ignored in some of the large investment firms, it seems that the more transactions you can skim fees off of the better (if you’re a banker) and little thought was placed on the outcome or the quality of investment vehicle.

To me, I take the Warren Buffett philosophy on investing when I think of finance; it should be boring.

As I’m reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis, my mind can’t help but wander to his other book on the financial world, Liar’s Poker. This morning I was thinking about Dr. Mike Burry and I remembered reading this update on Liar’s Poker and thought it was worth mentioning.

If you’re interested in the Big Short as I am, you may find this Harvard Thesis to be rather interesting (as I did). According to Michael Lewis,

A.K. Barnett-Hart, a Harvard undergraduate who had just written a thesis about the market for subprime mortgage-backed CDOs that remains more interesting than any single piece of Wall Street research on the subject.

I was stoked last night to see Michael Lewis talk about his book, The Big Short, on 60 Minutes last night. Even better was getting to hear Dr. Mike Burry talk about his experience. Not a lot of new information if you read the Vanity Fair article, but still very interesting.

If I had to do it all over again, I’d have stayed in the finance world. I miss it. It was extremely fascinating to me (and still is). I’d opt for more of an investment route versus the audit role I had. Regardless, I still enjoy reading about investing, finance and other money matters, especially if it’s written by Liar’s Poker author Michael Lewis as this article on Dr. Mike Burry is. Note that Burry is featured in Lewis’ The Big Short.

Burry seems to be the sort of investor I like to read about: a value investor (read: like Warren Buffett). By betting against the banks lending practices, he’s been one of the success stories through the investment troubles widely publicized. Combine that with the fact that Burry is a one-man business, prefers writing letters to human interaction and has made most of his investment decisions based on 10K’s and public information and he’s my sort of guy. I wish I could find his old website letters – some are on the Scion Capital site. I’ve selected a few blurbs from the article that further explain why I’m fascinated with Burry.

By his late 20s he thought of himself as the sort of person who didn’t have friends. He’d gone through Santa Teresa High School, in San Jose, U.C.L.A., and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and created not a single lasting bond. What friendships he did have were formed and nurtured in writing, by email; the two people he considered to be true friends he had known for a combined 20 years but had met in person a grand total of eight times. “My nature is not to have friends,” he said. “I’m happy in my own head.”

…

Buffett had had trouble with people, too, in his youth. He’d used a Dale Carnegie course to learn how to interact more profitably with his fellow human beings. Mike Burry came of age in a different money culture. The Internet had displaced Dale Carnegie. He didn’t need to meet people. He could explain himself online and wait for investors to find him. He could write up his elaborate thoughts and wait for people to read them and wire him their money to handle. “Buffett was too popular for me,” said Burry. “I won’t ever be a kindly grandfather figure.”

…

“I hated discussing ideas with investors,” he said, “because I then become a Defender of the Idea, and that influences your thought process.” Once you became an idea’s defender, you had a harder time changing your mind about it.”

I finally got around to reading The Blind Side (it’s being made into a movie) by Michael Lewis. I wasn’t blown away like I was with Moneyball, but if you like Lewis’ writing (which I do) and sports (again, I do), you’ll enjoy this book. It follows the journey of Michael Oher (who was drafted in the first round of the 2009 NFL draft – wish the Bengals took him) and uses his story to demonstrate the importance of the Left Tackle in football, aka the blide side. Not a lot of quotables or anything, but the book left me with a real interest in finding out more information about Bill Walsh (his strategies, philosophy, etc) and the term “systematic opportunity”.

Michael Lewis documents the statistical similarities between his book Moneyball and Shane Battier. Everyone and their brother has already quoted this article, so I won’t. But it’s well worth the read.

Michael Lewis has writen up a review of The Snowball, a book about Warren Buffett.