Stocks for the Long Run


Jeremy J. Siegel - 1994
    Provides a portrait of the stock market with the strategies, tools, and techniques investors need to maintain their focus and achieve meaningful stock returns over time.

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist


Roger Lowenstein - 1995
    His awesome investment record has made him a cult figure popularly known for his seeming contradictions: a billionaire who has a modest lifestyle, a phenomenally successful investor who eschews the revolving-door trading of modern Wall Street, a brilliant dealmaker who cultivates a homespun aura.Journalist Roger Lowenstein draws on three years of unprecedented access to Buffett’s family, friends, and colleagues to provide the first definitive, inside account of the life and career of this American original. Buffett explains Buffett’s investment strategy—a long-term philosophy grounded in buying stock in companies that are undervalued on the market and hanging on until their worth invariably surfaces—and shows how it is a reflection of his inner self.

Everyone Believes It; Most Will Be Wrong: Motley Thoughts on Investing and the Economy


Morgan Housel - 2011
    Why are experts so bad at making predictions? Why do rich people take outsized risks to reach for money they don't need? Is America's manufacturing base really dwindling? What did we learn about risk after 9/11? Those questions and many more are tackled in these 21 irreverent and contrarian essays, which will have readers thinking differently about the conventional wisdom.

The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns


Mohnish Pabrai - 2007
    Written with the intelligent individual investor in mind, this comprehensive guide distills the Dhandho capital allocation framework of the business savvy Patels from India and presents how they can be applied successfully to the stock market. The Dhandho method expands on the groundbreaking principles of value investing expounded by Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger. Readers will be introduced to important value investing concepts such as Heads, I win! Tails, I don't lose that much!, Few Bets, Big Bets, Infrequent Bets, Abhimanyu's dilemma, and a detailed treatise on using the Kelly Formula to invest in undervalued stocks. Using a light, entertaining style, Pabrai lays out the Dhandho framework in an easy-to-use format. Any investor who adopts the framework is bound to improve on results and soundly beat the markets and most professionals.

Market Wizards


Jack D. Schwager - 1989
    What separates the world's top traders from the vast majority of unsuccessful investors? Jack Schwager sets out to answer tis question in his interviews with superstar money-makers including Bruce Kovner, Richard Dennis, Paul Tudor Jones, Michel Steinhardt, Ed Seykota, Marty Schwartz, Tom Baldwin, and more in "Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders," now in paperback and ebook.This classic interview-style investment text from a financial expert is a must-read for traders and professional financiers alike, as well as anyone interested in gaining insight into how the world of finance really works.Filled with anecdotes about market experiences, including the story of a trader who after wiping out several times, turned $30,000 into $80 million and an electrical engineer from MIT whose computerized trading has earned returns of 250,000 percent over sixteen yearsIdentifies the factors that define a successful traderNow availabe as in digital formats.One of the most insightful, bestselling trading books of all time.

Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor


Seth A. Klarman - 1991
    The myriad approaches they adopt offer little or no real prospect for long-term success and invariably run the risk of considerable economic loss - they resemble speculation or outright gambling, not a coherent investment program. But value investing - the strategy of investing in securities trading at an appreciable discount from underlying value - has a long history - has a long history of delivering excellent investment results with limited downside risk. Taking its title from Benjamin Graham's often-repeated admonition to invest always with a margin of safety, Klarman's 'Margin of Safety' explains the philosophy of value investing, and perhaps more importantly, the logic behind it, demonstrating why it succeeds while other approaches fail. The blueprint that Klarman offers, if carefully followed, offers the investor the strong possibility of investment success with limited risk. 'Margin of Safety' shows you not just how to invest but how to think deeply about investing - to understand the rationale behind the rules to appreciate why they work when they work, and why they don't when they don't.

Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook


Anthony Robbins - 2017
    There have been 30 such corrections in the past 30 years, yet there's never been an action plan for how not only to survive, but thrive through each change in the stock market. Building upon the principles in Money: Master the Game, Robbins offers the reader specific steps they can implement to protect their investments while maximizing their wealth. It's a detailed guide designed for investors, articulated in the common-sense, practical manner that the millions of loyal Robbins fans and students have come to expect and rely upon. Few have navigated the turbulence of the stock market as adeptly and successfully as Tony Robbins. His proven, consistent success over decades makes him singularly qualified to help investors (both seasoned and first-timers alike) preserve and add to their investments.

The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment


Guy Spier - 2014
    In this fascinating inside story, Guy Spier details his career from Harvard MBA to hedge fund manager. But the path was not so straightforward. Spier reveals his transformation from a Gordon Gekko wannabe, driven by greed, to a sophisticated investor who enjoys success without selling his soul to the highest bidder. Spier's journey is similar to the thousands that flock to Wall Street every year with their shiny new diplomas, aiming to be King of Wall Street. Yet what Guy realized just in the nick of time was that the King really lived 1,500 miles away in Omaha, Nebraska. Spier determinedly set out to create a new career in his own way. Along the way he learned some powerful lessons which include: why the right mentors and partners are critical to long term success on Wall Street; why a topnotch education can sometimes get in the way of your success; that real learning doesn't begin until you are on your own; and how the best lessons from Warren Buffett have less to do with investing and more to do with being true to yourself. Spier also reveals some of his own winning investment strategies, detailing deals that were winners but also what he learned from deals that went south. Part memoir, part Wall Street advice, and part how-to, Guy Spier takes readers on a ride through Wall Street but more importantly provides those that want to take a different path with the insight, guidance, and inspiration they need to carve out their own definition of success.

The Four Pillars of Investing


William J. Bernstein - 2002
    Explains how independent investors can construct a superior investment portfolio by learning the four essentials of investing.

Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor


John C. Bogle - 1999
    Buffett Praise for Common Sense on Mutual Funds "Invoking both Thomas Paine and Benjamin Graham, Jack Bogle outlines a supremely logical plan not only to better investors' returns, but to improve the whole fund industry. This isn't just the best book yet by Bogle, it may well be the best book ever on mutual funds." -DON PHILLIPS, President & CEO, Morningstar, Inc. "Buffett cannot teach you or me how to become a Warren Buffett. Bogle's reasoned precepts can enable a few million of us savers to become in twenty years the envy of our suburban neighbors-while at the same time we have slept well in these eventful times."-PAUL A. SAMUELSON, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Economics "After a lifetime of picking stocks, I have to admit that Bogle's arguments in favor of the index fund have me thinking of joining him rather than trying to beat him. Bogle's wisdom and his commonsense way of explaining things make this book indispensable reading for anyone trying to figure out how to invest in this crazy stock market."-JAMES J. CRAMER, Money Manager and Senior Columnist for TheStreet.com "Written in his characteristic forthright and visionary style, Bogle penetrates the myths and jargon to shed a powerful light on the central issues that confront every investor, no matter what their level of experience or sophistication." -MARTIN L. LEIBOWITZ, Vice Chairman and Chief Investment Officer, TIAA-CREF "Jack Bogle is one of the great pioneer/visionaries of the investment business. In this book, he shares his knowledge, experience, and judgment to enable us to become better investors. The final philosophical chapters provide insights that may help some of us become better people." -BYRON R. WIEN, Chief U.S. Investment Strategist Morgan Stanley Dean Witter

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk


Peter L. Bernstein - 1996
    Peter Bernstein has written a comprehensive history of man's efforts to understand risk and probability, beginning with early gamblers in ancient Greece, continuing through the 17th-century French mathematicians Pascal and Fermat and up to modern chaos theory. Along the way he demonstrates that understanding risk underlies everything from game theory to bridge-building to winemaking.

The (Mis)Behavior of Markets


Benoît B. Mandelbrot - 1997
    Mandelbrot, one of the century's most influential mathematicians, is world-famous for making mathematical sense of a fact everybody knows but that geometers from Euclid on down had never assimilated: Clouds are not round, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not smooth. To these classic lines we can now add another example: Markets are not the safe bet your broker may claim. In his first book for a general audience, Mandelbrot, with co-author Richard L. Hudson, shows how the dominant way of thinking about the behavior of markets-a set of mathematical assumptions a century old and still learned by every MBA and financier in the world-simply does not work. As he did for the physical world in his classic The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Mandelbrot here uses fractal geometry to propose a new, more accurate way of describing market behavior. The complex gyrations of IBM's stock price and the dollar-euro exchange rate can now be reduced to straightforward formulae that yield a far better model of how risky they are. With his fractal tools, Mandelbrot has gotten to the bottom of how financial markets really work, and in doing so, he describes the volatile, dangerous (and strangely beautiful) properties that financial experts have never before accounted for. The result is no less than the foundation for a new science of finance.

How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times or Bad


William J. O'Neil - 1988
    It offers guidance for those who want to make smart investments - even if they've never owned stocks before. This updated edition includes new concepts, improved chart graphics and new research tools. Key issues include: making money reading the daily financial pages; picking the best industry groups in the market; reading charts to improve stock selection and timing; reducing losses and mistakes; and turning a profit from reading and analyzing the news.

Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2012


Carol J. Loomis - 2011
    As Buf­fett’s fortune and reputation grew over time, Loomis used her unique insight into Buffett’s thinking to chronicle his work for Fortune, writ­ing and proposing scores of stories that tracked his many accomplishments—and also his occa­sional mistakes. Now Loomis has collected and updated the best Buffett articles Fortune published between 1966 and 2012, including thirteen cover stories and a dozen pieces authored by Buffett himself. Loomis has provided commentary about each major arti­cle that supplies context and her own informed point of view. Readers will gain fresh insights into Buffett’s investment strategies and his thinking on management, philanthropy, public policy, and even parenting. Some of the highlights include:The 1966 A. W. Jones story in which Fortune first mentioned Buffett. The first piece Buffett wrote for the magazine, 1977’s “How Inf lation Swindles the Equity Investor.” Andrew Tobias’s 1983 article “Letters from Chairman Buffett,” the first review of his Berk­shire Hathaway shareholder letters. Buffett’s stunningly prescient 2003 piece about derivatives, “Avoiding a Mega-Catastrophe.” His unconventional thoughts on inheritance and philanthropy, including his intention to leave his kids “enough money so they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.” Bill Gates’s 1996 article describing his early impressions of Buffett as they struck up their close friendship. Scores of Buffett books have been written, but none can claim this work’s combination of trust between two friends, the writer’s deep under­standing of Buffett’s world, and a very long-term perspective.

The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail


Ray Dalio - 2021
    A few years ago, renowned investor Ray Dalio began noticing a confluence of political and economic conditions he hadn’t encountered before in his fifty-year career. They included large debts and zero or near-zero interest rates in the world’s three major reserve currencies; significant wealth, political, and values divisions within countries; and emerging conflict between a rising world power (China) and the existing one (US). Seeking to explain the cause-effect relationships behind these conditions, he began a study of analogous historical times and discovered that such combinations of conditions were characteristic of periods of transition, such as the years between 1930 and 1945, in which wealth and power shifted in ways that reshaped the world order. Looking back across five hundred years of history and nine major empires—including the Dutch, the British, and the American—The Changing World Order puts into perspective the cycles and forces that have driven the successes and failures of all the world’s major countries throughout history. Dalio reveals the timeless and universal dynamics that were behind these shifts, while also offering practical principles for policymakers, business leaders, investors, and others operating in this environment.