Capital Ideas^™ 
Investment insights from Capital Group

Many of the world’s best-known investors and business leaders have cited a passion for reading as critical to their success.

Warren Buffett says he dedicates 80% of his day to reading books and newspapers. Bill Gates consumes 50 titles a year, and Mark Zuckerberg has challenged himself to read two books a month.

It should come as no surprise that Capital Group investment professionals are also passionate readers. “Reading helps me find interesting connections between my work and, well, everything else,” says equity portfolio manager Cheryl Frank. “More importantly, books help me lead a more balanced life and make me a better person.”

To help build your 2025 reading (and listening) list, here is a selection of books and podcasts that helped shape the thinking of our portfolio managers, analysts and economists.

1. Loonshots

Our portfolio managers spend their days focused on generating their best ideas for superior investment returns, so Rob Lovelace, a portfolio manager for New Perspective Fund®, found himself naturally drawn to Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries.

Author Safi Bahcall shows how organizations, corporations and teams tend to shift away from innovation and reject unconventional thinking and innovation. “Most of the great ideas are generated at the individual level,” Lovelace notes. The book draws out lessons for creative thinkers and entrepreneurs and includes historic examples that show how groups suppress risk-taking.

Lovelace notes that the book’s insights dovetail with The Capital System™ of managing portfolios, which seeks to combine independent thinking with collaboration by having multiple managers run portfolios. “We give individual portfolio managers the freedom to take their own views on companies and act on them — no idea can be rejected by consensus — but having multiple managers offers diverse perspectives,” Lovelace says.

2. The Uncertainty Mindset

Solutions portfolio manager Wesley Phoa discovered that a book about the restaurant industry, The Uncertainty Mindset: Innovation Insights from the Frontiers of Food, unexpectedly resonates with the way he thinks about investing.

Author Vaughn Tan takes readers deep inside research and development labs at high-end restaurants and explores how they come up with novel dishes to keep customers coming back for more.

The most successful teams build what Tan calls the “uncertainty mindset” into their organizational design. “The book is really about building teams that view uncertainty as a source of opportunity rather than something to avoid,” Phoa says. “It is very hard to pull off, but the teams that can combine agility, creativity and a commitment to structure tend to be successful.”

3. Elon Musk

Frank, a portfolio manager for American Mutual Fund®, found the details in biographer Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk to be particularly fascinating for investors.

Nearly everything written about Musk, one of today’s best-known tech entrepreneurs and an advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, is politically polarizing. However, Isaacson, who spent two years shadowing Musk, offers a broader history of the man. Musk is shown to be a hard-driving task master who likes to create crises to force focused hard work. He’s known for getting onto the production floor and personally reworking processes, especially before big deadlines.

“Musk is a rare individual who can prioritize big, impactful projects while still understanding the small details required to bring them to reality,” Frank says. “He takes big risks, often fails, but doesn’t give up.”

4. The Anarchy

How powerful are today’s technology giants? It’s a question investment director David Polak considered when reading The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, by British historian William Dalrymple.

The book tracks the rise of Britain’s East India Company in the 18th century, how it came to supplant India’s Mughal Empire and dominate what at the time was the largest economy in the world. Over several decades, the company transformed itself from a multinational business into a colonial power with its own private army and effectively transferred much of the wealth of South Asia to the United Kingdom.

“It's interesting to read a book like this at a time when we are having discussions about the influence and power of some of today’s large tech companies,” Polak says “But none of them hold a candle to the power that the East India Company had in the 18th century.”

5. Acquired podcast

Martin Romo, a portfolio manager for The Growth Fund of America®, and Capital Group’s chief investment officer, has offered several book recommendations on the Capital Ideas podcast. An enthusiastic listener of podcasts, Romo says he has recently been hooked on Acquired, which offers an in-depth look at some notable company IPOs, mergers and acquisitions.

Hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, former venture capital investors, delve into the histories of successful companies, offering details about their origins, their founders and business strategies. “You have to be a dedicated listener, because the episodes can run for several hours,” Romo says. “But you really get to know the DNA of an organization, how they went from good to great. For an investor like me, it is a great way to come up to speed on companies.”

6. Odd Lots podcast

Pramod Atluri, a portfolio manager for The Bond Fund of America®, is a close follower of economic news, so it may come as no surprise that he is a frequent listener to Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast.

Hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway offer perspective on markets, the economy and finance. For example, during the pandemic the pair looked closely at how disruptions to global supply chains would lead to inflation. “In particular, Tracy Alloway brings a fixed income perspective to the conversations, which is something I appreciate,” Atluri says.

Atluri is also a regular follower of Stratechery, a subscription-based podcast hosted by Ben Thompson. The podcast explores the strategic implications of leading technologies, with a focus on the business side of tech.