A Gift to My Children: A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing by Jim Rogers

Summary: A strongly opinionated book on what is good for one’s life. And the opinions coming from a famous speculator does not help as it is in direct clash against those who believe in playing safe in life. Hence it is not a book for everyone. I like it myself.

Review

This book is different from the other ones written by Mr. Rogers. It is more a reconciliation of his past (as the eldest brother in his family, as a hedge fund guy, etc.), his present (being a father to 2 young kids, being well established himself already), and his kids’ future. Until you are a father yourself, it will be difficult to connect to this book.

The lessons written are part recollection of his life stories and part inference of the lessons he has learned from his experience. And this is where I can see opinions about the book would diverge. You either like it like myself (as a father) or you find it just feel like tougue-in-cheek kind of comments on secrets to success. Jim Rogers is not famous for being a nice person and it shows in the book.

If you are young and not yet experienced the ups and downs in life, you should forget about this book for now unless you can take criticism seriously. Read it when you find that you are in a position where you worry about the future of your kids. Then you will find this book useful as the lessons Mr. Rogers learned can be something you want to pass onto your kids too.

This is not a book talking about how to succeed in life. Instead it is a book on aiming high and shoot for the stars. It may not be applicable to everyone because Jim Rogers himself has a head start against many others early onward as a Ph.D graduate from Yale.

Life lessons is often very meaningful to traders too. After all, trading is one tough career choice comparing against other options. Thus many life lessons in this book is also applicable to trading in general. It should not be a surprise because Jim Rogers is a speculator most of his life.

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