Automotive Industry book / FIATY / Munger quote

[west]

According to http://www.futureblind.com/2012/08/charlie-munger-on-business-education/, Charlie Munger said the following:

 

... if I were teaching business school I would have Value-Line-type figures that took me through the entire history of General Motors and I would try to relate the changes in the graph and data to what happened in the business.

 

I plan on doing this.  While the strategy is applicable to more than the automotive industry, I figure I might as well try it there since I'm considering investing in FIATY.

 

Getting historic Value Lines is easy enough.  My library has them going back to at least 1980, maybe earlier.

 

However, I'm not well versed with all the automotive industry/GM books out there.

 

Does anyone have any books they'd recommend?  For what it's worth, I'm thinking *decades* of history here, not just, say, the last decade or since the financial crisis.  And, while I'm not opposed to reading multiple books (say, for multiple/different decades), it would be nice to minimize the total books needed to be read.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

west

 

[savant]

According to http://www.futureblind.com/2012/08/charlie-munger-on-business-education/, Charlie Munger said the following:

 

... if I were teaching business school I would have Value-Line-type figures that took me through the entire history of General Motors and I would try to relate the changes in the graph and data to what happened in the business.

 

I plan on doing this.  While the strategy is applicable to more than the automotive industry, I figure I might as well try it there since I'm considering investing in FIATY.

 

Getting historic Value Lines is easy enough.  My library has them going back to at least 1980, maybe earlier.

 

However, I'm not well versed with all the automotive industry/GM books out there.

 

Does anyone have any books they'd recommend?  For what it's worth, I'm thinking *decades* of history here, not just, say, the last decade or since the financial crisis.  And, while I'm not opposed to reading multiple books (say, for multiple/different decades), it would be nice to minimize the total books needed to be read.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

west

 

Alfred Sloan's autobiography is a must-read for any student of business. With a ton of quantitative data/analysis and the story behind the numbers.

[JBird]

Does he mean price graph? And financial data?

[west]

Alfred Sloan's autobiography is a must-read for any student of business. With a ton of quantitative data/analysis and the story behind the numbers.

 

Thanks!  I'll make sure to check it out.

[west]

Does he mean price graph? And financial data?

 

If you've seen a Value Line, it shows you all sorts of financial data, along with the company's price graph.  I think he's suggesting to look at Value Lines for a company while simultaneously reading about its history to better understand how the market reacted to different events related to the company.  Along with this, for cyclical companies you could see how and why the industry cycle turned in the past.  And, in theory, this could help you better see cycle changes going forward.

[Yours Truly]

Peter Lynch's Beating the Street has a section on the automotive companies as well a bunch of other industries he analyzes in the book