The King's Birthday

Hello from Sydney,

Something that’s stuck with me is a story that a senior partner once told my team many years ago. Before heading into her regular meetings with a client, she would read the sports section of the newspaper that day because she found that the first 5 minutes of the meeting was typically small talk about some game the night before.

Another well-known GS banker Jim Donovan recommends reading 3 articles of the Wall Street Journal everyday - one on rates, one transaction and one opinion. Meanwhile JPM CEO Jamie Dimon’s morning routine involves 2 hours of reading the front page of 4 newspapers - the Washington Post, the NYT, the WSJ and the FT in that particular order. And then on weekends he flips through the Economist.

I’m a huge advocate for reading the printed version of a newspaper even if it’s a pdf because I find that it lets you scan and get a feel for what’s happened overnight just through the sheer font sizes and images. On a double sided-page, I like to print the front cover along with any other page that catches my eye from the Australian Financial Review, WSJ and FT. AFR’s Street Talk is my favorite because it speaks to deals in Australia and New Zealand.

💬 Made you think

I read this in the opening chapter of Warren Buffett’s biography and what I gathered is that being humble reduces the risk of any possible criticism towards you.

In other news, week 2 of the Nokia is going great. I’ve officially handed over my old phone and a lot of people have asked me why. I often say that it’s because I want to force myself to call people more but that doesn’t seem to convince them. Regardless, I now have an abundance of time where I feel like I’m in control of how I choose to spend it as opposed to the iPhone which in hindsight was everything but a phone.

Till next time,

Azam