Why Didn't They Teach Me This in School?


Cary Siegel - 2013
    As it developed, the author realized that personal money management skills were rarely taught in high schools, colleges and even in MBA programs. Unfortunately, books on the subject tend to be complicated, lengthy reads. The book includes eight important lessons focusing on 99 principles that will quickly and memorably enhance any individual's money management acumen. Unlike many of the personal money management books out there, this book is a quick, easily digested read that focuses more on the qualitative side than the quantitative side of personal money management. The principles are not from a text book. Rather, they are practical principles learned by the author as he navigated through his financial life. Many are unorthodox in order to be memorable and provoke deeper thought by the reader. Not only an excellent graduation gift for high school and college students but also a great read for any adult!

Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance


John Kay - 2015
    Financialization over the past three decades has created a structure that lacks resilience and supports absurd volumes of trading. The finance sector devotes too little attention to the search for new investment opportunities and the stewardship of existing ones, and far too much to secondary-market dealing in existing assets. Regulation has contributed more to the problems than the solutions.Why? What is finance for? John Kay, with wide practical and academic experience in the world of finance, understands the operation of the financial sector better than most. He believes in good banks and effective asset managers, but good banks and effective asset managers are not what he sees.In a dazzling and revelatory tour of the financial world as it has emerged from the wreckage of the 2008 crisis, Kay does not flinch in his criticism: we do need some of the things that Citigroup and Goldman Sachs do, but we do not need Citigroup and Goldman to do them. And many of the things done by Citigroup and Goldman do not need to be done at all. The finance sector needs to be reminded of its primary purpose: to manage other people's money for the benefit of businesses and households. It is an aberration when the some of the finest mathematical and scientific minds are tasked with devising algorithms for the sole purpose of exploiting the weakness of other algorithms for computerized trading in securities. To travel further down that road leads to ruin.

Liar's Poker


Michael Lewis - 1989
    The place was Wall Street. The game was called Liar’s Poker. Michael Lewis was fresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar’s Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years—a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business. From the frat-boy camaraderie of the forty-first-floor trading room to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game of bluffing and deception, here is Michael Lewis’s knowing and hilarious insider’s account of an unprecedented era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune. .

A Beginner's Guide to Short-Term Trading: Maximize Your Profits in 3 Days to 3 Weeks


Toni Turner - 2002
    You'll learn how to buy and sell stocks on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis, so you can own the right stocks at the right time. Turner's clear, common-sense advice, easy-to-follow explanations, and helpful examples will help you invest in the exciting and profitable world of short-term trading quickly and safely. In this revised edition, you'll get completely up-to-date information on: -New products such as ETFs and expanded coverage on sector investing -Resources for choosing an online broker New SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) rules and regulations -Updated charts and graphs with current examples A Beginner's Guide to Short-Term Trading is the hands-on book designed to get you actively involved in every step of the trading process. Now you can take control of your portfolio and secure the financial freedom you've always dreamed of. Start planning your trades today!

You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth


Jen Sincero - 2017
    Drawing on her own transformation—over just a few years—from a woman living in a converted garage with tumbleweeds blowing through her bank account to a woman who travels the world in style, Jen Sincero channels the inimitable sass and practicality that made You Are a Badass an indomitable bestseller. She combines hilarious personal essays with bite-size, aha concepts that unlock earning potential and get real results. Learn to: • Uncover what's holding you back from making money • Give your doubts, fears, and excuses the heave-ho • Relate to money in a new (and lucrative) way • Shake up the cocktail of creation • Tap into your natural ability to grow rich • Shape your reality—stop playing victim to circumstance • Get as wealthy as you wanna be“This book truly crystallizes the concept that financial abundance is an inside job—in that it all begins with your mindset—and Sincero gets serious (in the funniest ways possible) about helping you identify your particular limiting beliefs surrounding money.” —PopSugar

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World


Liaquat Ahamed - 2009
    In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades. In Lords of Finance, we meet the neurotic and enigmatic Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, the xenophobic and suspicious Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, the arrogant yet brilliant Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose façade of energy and drive masked a deeply wounded and overburdened man. After the First World War, these central bankers attempted to reconstruct the world of international finance. Despite their differences, they were united by a common fear—that the greatest threat to capitalism was inflation— and by a common vision that the solution was to turn back the clock and return the world to the gold standard. For a brief period in the mid-1920s they appeared to have succeeded. The world’s currencies were stabilized and capital began flowing freely across the globe. But beneath the veneer of boom-town prosperity, cracks started to appear in the financial system. The gold standard that all had believed would provide an umbrella of stability proved to be a straitjacket, and the world economy began that terrible downward spiral known as the Great Depression. As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, the Great Depression and the year 1929 remain the benchmark for true financial mayhem. Offering a new understanding of the global nature of financial crises, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, of their fallibility, and of the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.

Deep Value: Why Activist Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations


Tobias E. Carlisle - 2014
    The book combines engaging anecdotes with industry research to illustrate the principles and methods of this complex strategy, and explains the reasoning behind seemingly incomprehensible activist maneuvers. Written by an active value investor, Deep Value provides an insider's perspective on shareholder activist strategies in a format accessible to both professional investors and laypeople. The Deep Value investment philosophy as described by Graham initially identified targets by their discount to liquidation value. This approach was extremely effective, but those opportunities are few and far between in the modern market, forcing activists to adapt. Current activists assess value from a much broader palate, and exploit a much wider range of tools to achieve their goals. Deep Value enumerates and expands upon the resources and strategies available to value investors today, and describes how the economic climate is allowing value investing to re-emerge. Topics include: Target identification, and determining the most advantageous ends Strategies and tactics of effective activism Unseating management and fomenting change Eyeing conditions for the next M&A boom Activist hedge funds have been quiet since the early 2000s, but economic conditions, shareholder sentiment, and available opportunities are creating a fertile environment for another golden age of activism. Deep Value: Why Activist Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations provides the in-depth information investors need to get up to speed before getting left behind.

Entrepreneurial Leap: Do You Have What it Takes to Become an Entrepreneur?


Gino Wickman - 2019
    . . but how can you decide if you should really take the leap?There’s a lot on the line, and you have to ask yourself difficult questions: Do I have what it takes? Is it worth it? And how the hell do I do it?You need answers, not bullshit. This book has them.Entrepreneurial Leap: Do You Have What it Takes to Become an Entrepreneur? is an easy-to-use guide that will help you decide, once and for all, if entrepreneurship is right for you—because success as an entrepreneur depends on far more than just a great idea and a generous helping of luck.In this three-part book, Gino Wickman, bestselling author of Traction, reveals the six essential traits that every entrepreneur needs in order to succeed, based on real-world startups that have reached incredible heights. If these traits ring true for you, you’ll get a glimpse of what your life would look like as an entrepreneur. What’s more, Wickman will help you determine what type of business best suits your unique skill set and provide a detailed roadmap, with tools, tips, and exercises, that will accelerate your path to startup success.Packed with real-life stories and practical advice, Entrepreneurial Leap is a simple how-to manual for BIG results.Should you take the leap toward entrepreneurship? Find out today and let tomorrow be the first step in your new journey, whatever shape it may take.

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing


Jacob Goldstein - 2020
    In Money, Jacob Goldstein shows how money is a useful fiction that has shaped societies for thousands of years, from the rise of coins in ancient Greece to the first stock market in Amsterdam to the emergence of shadow banking in the 21st century.At the heart of the story are the fringe thinkers and world leaders who reimagined money. Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor, created paper money backed by nothing, centuries before it appeared in the west. John Law, a professional gambler and convicted murderer, brought modern money to France (and destroyed the country's economy). The cypherpunks, a group of radical libertarian computer programmers, paved the way for bitcoin.One thing they all realized: what counts as money (and what doesn't) is the result of choices we make, and those choices have a profound effect on who gets more stuff and who gets less, who gets to take risks when times are good, and who gets screwed when things go bad.Lively, accessible, and full of interesting details (like the 43-pound copper coins that 17th-century Swedes carried strapped to their backs), Money is the story of the choices that gave us money as we know it today. The co-host of the popular NPR podcast Planet Money provides a well-researched, entertaining, somewhat irreverent look at how money is a made-up thing that has evolved over time to suit humanity's changing needs.

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy


Alex Moazed - 2016
    Johnson tell the definitive story of what has changed, what it means for businesses today, and how managers, entrepreneurs, and business owners can adapt and thrive in this new era.What do Google, Snapchat, Tinder, Amazon, and Uber have in common, besides soaring market share? They're platforms - a new business model that has quietly become the only game in town, creating vast fortunes for its founders while dominating everyone's daily life. A platform, by definition, creates value by facilitating an exchange between two or more interdependent groups. So, rather that making things, they simply connect people.The Internet today is awash in platforms - Facebook is responsible for nearly 25 percent of total Web visits, and the Google platform crash in 2013 took about 40 percent of Internet traffic with it. Representing the ten most trafficked sites in the U.S., platforms are also prominent over the globe; in China, they hold the top eight spots in web traffic rankings.The advent of mobile computing and its ubiquitous connectivity have forever altered how we interact with each other, melding the digital and physical worlds and blurring distinctions between "offline" and "online." These platform giants are expanding their influence from the digital world to the whole economy. Yet, few people truly grasp the radical structural shifts of the last ten years.

Man vs. Markets: Economics Explained (Plain and Simple)


Paddy Hirsch - 2012
    Markets by Paddy Hirsch of NPR's "Marketplace" is economics explained, pure and simple, for the layperson who wouldn't know a "bond" from an "option," and who believes that a "future" is when we'll all have flying cars. Here is an illuminating, insightful, and wonderfully witty journey of discovery through the often confusing financial markets, offering clear, relatable explanations and definitions of the system's various instruments, yet less simplistically than the popular ...for Dummies series. Man Vs. Markets is a must-read handbook for everyday investors, serious students of finance and economics, and everyone who wants to understand what they're reading when they open their newspapers to the business section.

The Intelligent REIT Investor: How to Build Wealth with Real Estate Investment Trusts


Stephanie Krewson-Kelly - 2016
    Later this year, the REIT industry will experience a watershed event when Standard & Poors creates a new Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) sector called Real Estate. On September 1st, publicly traded equity REITs will be removed from Financials, where they have been classified since their creation in 1960, and begin trading as their own S&P Sector. This separation from banks and financial institutions already is attracting new investors, but REITs require an industry-specific knowledge that is neither intuitive or readily accessible to newcomers—until now. Using straightforward language and simple example to illustrate important concepts, this book will enable any reader to quickly learn and understand the lexicon and valuation techniques used in REIT investing, providing a wealth of practical resources that streamline the learning process. The discussion explains terminology, metrics, and other key points, while examples illustrate the calculations used to evaluate opportunities. A comprehensive list of publicly-traded REITs provides key reference, giving you access to an important resource most investors and stockbrokers lack. REITs are companies that own or finance commercial rental properties, such as malls and apartment buildings. Despite historically high total returns relative to other investments, such as the Nasdaq or S&P 500 index, most investors are unfamiliar with the REIT industry, and wary of investing without adequate background. This book gets you up to speed on the essentials of REIT investing so you can make more informed—and profitable—decisions. Understand REITs processes, mechanisms, and industry Calculate key metrics to identify suitable companies Access historical performance tables and industry-specific terminology Identify publicly-traded REITs quickly and easily REITs have consistently outperformed many more widely known investments. Over the past 15-year period, for example, REITs returned an average of 11% per year, better than all other asset classes. Since 2009, REITs have enjoyed positive returns; large cap stocks and cash are the only other classes that paralleled that record. Even in 2015, a 'year of fear' related to rising rates, REITs returned 2.4%, beating most all other asset classes. REITs have a long history (over fifty years) of performance, and are about to enter the big leagues. If you feel like you've been missing out, don't keep missing out. Prepare yourself, and your portfolio, to benefit from the demand for REITs that will follow the creation of a Real Estate GICS sector. The Intelligent REIT Investor gives you the information you need to invest wisely and manage your real estate risk effectively. By maintaining a tactical exposure in the brick and mortar asset class, investors should benefit from the information contained in The Intelligent REIT Investor. Join the REIT world and look forward to owning stocks that will help you to sleep well at night.

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money


Nathaniel Popper - 2015
    Believers from Beijing to Buenos Aires see the potential for a financial system free from banks and governments. More than just a tech industry fad, Bitcoin has threatened to decentralize some of society’s most basic institutions.An unusual tale of group invention, Digital Gold charts the rise of the Bitcoin technology through the eyes of the movement’s colorful central characters, including an Argentinian millionaire, a Chinese entrepreneur, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and Bitcoin’s elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Already, Bitcoin has led to untold riches for some, and prison terms for others.

The Rise of America: Remaking the World Order


Marin Katusa
    It has become widely accepted within the investment, political, and media sectors that America is on the decline and that China will drive the global agenda in the 21st century.To which I say, not so fast. This book carefully examines the trends and actual hard data from the economic, geopolitical, financial, and demographic spheres and comes to an inescapable conclusion: America’s future has never been brighter.Forged in the 20th century, America’s leadership role will expand in the 21st century, resulting in a substantial rise in the standard of living, not just for Americans but also across the world.

Nanban: Japanese Soul Food: A Cookbook


Tim Anderson - 2014
    The antidote to typical refined restaurant fare, this hearty comfort food has become popular in the US as street food and in ramen bars. In a unique package that includes a cool exposed binding, Nanban brings home cooks the best of these crave-inducing treats. From pungent kimchi to three types of Japanese fried chicken, and with a primer on Japanese ingredients and substitutions, Nanban is the perfect cookbook for any lover of Asian food.