The Dhandho Investor
Pabrai distills value investing into its most concentrated form, drawing from the Patel motel empire: 'Heads I win, tails I don't lose much.' Find situations where downside is limited and upside is enormous. Few bets, big bets, infrequent bets. His 'cloning' strategy of following the best investors is contrarian in its simplicity — why reinvent the wheel when you can copy the best?
The book front-loads its argument and spends its second half running through example after example; more than one reader says it should have ended sooner. A vocal complaint attacks the low-risk framing head-on: one reader asks, “in what universe is investing 100% of your family's money 'low risk?'” while another says Pabrai's own account of betting the family savings “took my family's savings to the roulette table.” Others say the content barely differs from what Buffett and Munger already give away, calling it the “same concepts as Warren Buffet newsletters which I can get for free.” The Patel-motel comparison draws skepticism too: readers say it doesn't “translate buying motels with your extended family to buying undervalued stock,” since running a business you live in isn't the same risk as owning a sliver of a public company. Few readers see a bet that failed; the book highlights winners almost exclusively.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
