Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship


M.J. DeMarco - 2017
    UNLEASH YOUR DREAM.Tired of sleepwalking through a mediocre life bribed by mindless video-gaming, redemptive weekends, and a scant paycheck from a soul-suffocating job? Welcome to the SCRIPTED club-- where membership is neither perceived or consented.The fact is, ever since you've been old enough to sit obediently in a classroom, you have been culturally engineered for servitude, unwittingly enslaved into a Machiavellian system where illusionary rules go unchallenged, sanctified traditions go unquestioned, and lifelong dreams go unfulfilled. As a result, your life is hijacked and marginalised into debt, despair, and dependence. Life's death sentence becomes the daily curse of the trivial and mundane. Fun fades. Dreams die. Don't let life's consolation prize become a car and a weekend.Recapture what is yours and make a revolutionary repossession of life-and-liberty through the pursuit of entrepreneurship. A paradigm shift isn't needed--the damn paradigm needs to be thrown-out altogether.The truth is, if you blindly follow conventional wisdom pushed by conventional people living conventional lives, can you expect to be anything but conventional? Rewrite life's script: ditch the job, give Wall Street the bird, and escape the insanity of trading your life away for a paycheck and an elderly promise called retirement. UNSCRIPT today and start leading life-- instead of life leading you.

Gurus of Chaos: Modern India's Money Masters


Saurabh Mukherjea - 2014
    The Indian stock market is many things to many people. Some are drawn to its thrill and promise but, more often than not, they fail to recognize the risk that accompanies the reward of a great ride. For many, the market and its workings defy logic and mastery. However, within the universe of market watchers in India, there is a small group that has managed to build a fine set of navigation tools and develop a unique perspective and approach towards the market. They have created and institutionalized investment strategies based on their experiences and philosophies. Saurabh Mukherjea delves into the minds of seven such individuals asking them to elaborate on the tools they use and how these work. He traces their journey from being novices to successful long-term investors. Using their insights and his own experience of working in the market for nearly a decade, Mukherjea provides an essential and indispensable framework for operating in the Indian stock market.The interviews with prominent fund managers in the book are:Sanjoy BhattacharyaAlroy LoboAkash PrakashSankaran NarenSashi ReddyB.N. ManjunathOne who prefers to remain anonymous

The Great Depression: A Diary


Benjamin Roth - 2009
    Book by Roth, Benjamin

Common Stocks and Common Sense: The Strategies, Analyses, Decisions, and Emotions of a Particularly Successful Value Investor


Edgar Wachenheim - 2016
    Author Edgar Wachenheim is the 28-year CEO of Greenhaven Associates, boasting an average annual portfolio comparable to Warren Buffet's. In this book, he shares his knowledge and experiences by providing detailed analyses of actual investments made by himself and other investors. The discussion covers the entire investment process, including the softer, human side, with candid insight into the joys and frustrations, intensities and pressures, and risks and uncertainties. The unique emphasis on behavioral economics and real-world cases set this book apart from the herd--but it's Wachenheim himself and his deeply-examined perspective that elevates the book beyond a mere investing guide.Between 1990 and 2014, a typical portfolio managed by Wachenheim enjoyed an average annual return in excess of 18%, achieved using relatively conservative stocks and no financial leverage. As a proponent of evidence and example, his analysis of real cases serve as a valuable education for anyone looking to improve their own investment practices.Understand investment through the lens of a Wall Street leaderDig into the details of real-world common stock investingLearn how to invest creatively and minimize riskGo beyond theory to study strategy on a case-by-case basisInvestment principles and strategies are easy to find--entire libraries have been written about theories and methods and what 'should' happen. But this book goes beyond the typical guide to show you how these ideas are applied in the real world--and what actually happened. Investors seeking real insight, real expertise, and a proven track record will find Common Stocks and Common Sense a uniquely useful resource.

Safe Haven Investing: How to Take Cover from Financial Storms


Mark Spitznagel - 2018
    Mark will work through other areas that are typically considered safe, like farmland and real estate, before showing the reader how to align his/her portfolio to withstand a potential crash. Topics covered include: What is a safe haven investment and how do they fit in a portfolio? Silver and gold Real Estate, Art, & Farmland Dividends & Hedge Funds Derivatives & Tail Hedging What you, as an investor, should ultimately do

Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers


Jared Dillian - 2011
    Like Michael Lewis’s classic Liar’s Poker, Jared Dillian’s Street Freak takes readers behind the scenes of the legendary Lehman Brothers, exposing its outrageous and often hilarious corporate culture. In this ultracompetitive Ivy League world where men would flip over each other’s ties to check out the labels (also known as the “Lehman Handshake”), Dillian was an outsider as an ex-military, working-class guy in a Men’s Wearhouse suit. But he was scrappy and determined; in interviews he told potential managers that, “Nobody can work harder than me. Nobody is willing to put in the hours I will put in. I am insane.” As it turned out, on Wall Street insanity is not an undesirable quality. Dillian rose from green associate, checking IDs at the entrance to the trading floor in the paranoid days following 9/11, to become an integral part of Lehman’s culture in its final years as the firm’s head Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) trader. More than $1 trillion in wealth passed through his hands, but at the cost of an untold number of smashed telephones and tape dispensers. Over time, the exhilarating and explosively stressful job took its toll on him. The extreme highs and lows of the trading floor masked and exacerbated the symptoms of Dillian’s undiagnosed bipolar and obsessive compulsive disorders, leading to a downward spiral that eventually landed him in a psychiatric ward. Dillian put his life back together, returning to work healthier than ever before, but Lehman itself had seemingly gone mad, having made outrageous bets on commercial real estate, and was quickly headed for self-destruction. A raucous account of the final years of Lehman Brothers, from 9/11 at its World Financial Center offices through the firm’s bankruptcy, including vivid portraits of trading-floor culture, the financial meltdown, and the company’s ultimate collapse, Street Freak is a raw, visceral, and wholly original memoir of life inside the belly of the beast during the most tumultuous time in financial history. In his electrifying and fresh voice, Dillian takes readers on a wild ride through madness and back, both inside Lehman Brothers and himself.

Bitcoin: Hard Money You Can't F*ck With: Why bitcoin will be the next global reserve currency


Jason A. Williams - 2020
    No governments, no companies, no central banks, no money printing. It’s a revolution as big as the internet. And it’s never been hacked.Entrepreneur and investor Jason A. Williams is the first author to put bitcoin in context of the 2020 crisis - a year of financial disaster and unprecedented money creation (money printer go brrr!)Not only was bitcoin the best-performing asset on the planet in 2020, it quietly established itself as the next global reserve currency as central banks around the world desperately printed their money into oblivion.Hard Money You Can’t F*ck With explains bitcoin in simple, readable terms and maps out how this ‘magic internet money’ will grow into the best form of money we’ve ever had.What’s inside?Part 1: Why Bitcoin Matters Now- What is bitcoin?- Who created it?- Why bitcoin is ‘money you can’t f*ck with’- How bitcoin emerged out of the 2008 banking crisis.- Why money printing slowly destroys your wealth.Part 2: A brief history of money (and money printing)- Take a step back and learn ‘what exactly is money?’- Why ‘printing cash’ has always led to the death of currency.- Why bitcoin is the best form of money ever created.Part 3: How bitcoin becomes the next global reserve currency- A deep dive into the 2020 financial crisis and how bitcoin emerged strongest- The emergence of national digital currencies to compete.- Why some nation states are now holding and trading in bitcoin.

Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons


Edward J. Renehan Jr. - 2005
    Gould was the robber baron's robber baron, the most astute financial and business strategist of his time and also the most widely hated. In Dark Genius of Wall Street, acclaimed biographer Edward J. Renehan, Jr., combines lively anecdotes with the rich social tapestry of the Gilded Age to paint the portrait of the most talented financial buccaneer of his generation -- and one of the inventors of modern business.

Fail-Safe Investing: Lifelong Financial Security in 30 Minutes


Harry Browne - 1999
    You don't have to become an investment genius to protect your savings. Distilling the wisdom of his thirty years' experience into lessons that can be applied in thirty minutes, Harry Browne shows you what you need to know to make your savings and investments safe and profitable, no matter what the economy and the investment markets do. There are no secret trading systems here, no jargon to learn. Instead, Harry Browne teaches you in simple terms to, among other things:-Build your wealth on your career-Make your own decisions-Build a bulletproof portfolio for protection-Take advantage of tax-reduction plans-Enjoy yourself with a budge for pleasure

Dream Big: Let Your Financial Plan Make Your Dreams Come True


Mukesh Jindal - 2017
    Today, he is the owner of a flourishing taxi service business and is scouting around to buy a Mercedes Benz...not on a loan but with the wealth he has amassed over the years! How did he get from being a driver to a millionaire? Three simple secrets - he had the courage to dream big, learn about financial planning and implement what he learnt. Now, while you don't need anyone to help you to dream big, here is a book that will teach you everything that Vaibhav learnt. All you have to do is find the tenacity to implement it. Everything, from the importance of saving and investing and the need for life and health insurance to various investment products like mutual funds, SIP, PPF etc. that can enable you to build wealth, is explained in this book in simple and jargon free language. It helps you to choose instruments that are most suitable for you and explains why you would be better off without others. Dream Big simplifies and breaks down common financial planning principles such as risk profiling, asset allocation, portfolio construction, rebalancing etc. and explains the tax implications of various investment decisions. It also contains sections on planning for retirement and a legacy, and financial planning for women, divorced individuals, defence employees, senior citizens, etc.

The Psychology of Money


Morgan Housel - 2020
    It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. How to manage money, invest it, and make business decisions are typically considered to involve a lot of mathematical calculations, where data and formulae tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world, people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In the psychology of money, the author shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important matters.

The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return


Mihir Desai - 2017
    . . the noblest and the most infamous in the world, the finest and most vulgar on earth.” The characterization of finance as deceitful, infamous, and vulgar still rings true today – particularly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But, what happened to the fairest, noblest, and finest profession that de la Vega saw?  De la Vega hit on an essential truth that has been forgotten: finance can be just as principled, life-affirming, and worthy as it can be fraught with questionable practices.  Today, finance is shrouded in mystery for outsiders, while many insiders are uneasy with the disrepute of their profession.  How can finance become more accessible and also recover its nobility? Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai, in his “last lecture” to the graduating Harvard MBA class of 2015, took up the cause of restoring humanity to finance. With incisive wit and irony, his lecture drew upon a rich knowledge of literature, film, history, and philosophy to explain the inner workings of finance in a manner that has never been seen before. This book captures Desai’s lucid exploration of the ideas of finance as seen through the unusual prism of the humanities. Through this novel, creative approach, Desai shows that outsiders can access the underlying ideas easily and insiders can reacquaint themselves with the core humanity of their profession. The mix of finance and the humanities creates unusual pairings: Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope are guides to risk management; Jeff Koons becomes an advocate of leverage; and Mel Brooks’s The Producers teaches us about fiduciary responsibility. In Desai’s vision, the principles of finance also provide answers to critical questions in our lives. Among many surprising parallels, bankruptcy teaches us how to react to failure, the lessons of mergers apply to marriages, and the Capital Asset Pricing Model demonstrates the true value of relationships. THE WISDOM OF FINANCE is a wholly unique book, offering a refreshing new perspective on one of the world’s most complex and misunderstood professions.

The Little Book of Market Myths: How to Profit by Avoiding the Investing Mistakes Everyone Else Makes


Kenneth L. Fisher - 2013
    Ken exposes some of the most common--and deadly--myths investors swear by, and he demonstrates why the rules-of-thumb approach to investing may be robbing you of the kinds returns you hope for.Dubbed by "Investment Advisor" magazine one of the 30 most influential individuals of the last three decades, Fisher is Chairman, and CEO of a global money management firm with over $32 billion under managementFisher's "Forbes" column, "Portfolio Strategy," has been an extremely popular fixture in Forbes for more than a quarter century thanks to his many high-profile callsBrings together the best "bunks" by Wall Street's Master Debunker in a fun, easy-to-digest, bite-size formatMore than just a list of myths, Fisher meticulously explains of why each commonly held belief or strategy is dead wrong and how damaging it can be to your financial healthArmed with this book, investors can immediately identify major errors they may be committing and adjust their strategies for greater investing success

Hedge Hogs: A Cautionary Tale


Barbara T. Dreyfuss - 2013
    A few weeks later it had completely collapsed. The disaster was mostly the responsibility of a 32-year-old trader named Brian Hunter, whose high-risk bets on natural gas prices bankrupted his firm and destroyed his career. Meanwhile, his rival at competitor fund Centaurus, John Arnold, emerged as the highest-paid trader on Wall Street and America's youngest billionaire. Meticulously researched and character driven, Hedge Hogs is a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the largest hedge-fund collapse in history: a blistering tale of the recent past that explains our precarious present and may predict our future.Through emails, instant messages, court testimony, and exclusive interviews, Hedge Hogs charts the colliding paths of two charismatic traders who dominated the speculative energy trading market. It follows Hunter, the Canadian farm boy and elbows-out high school basketball star, as he achieved phenomenal early success, only to see his ambition, greed, and hubris precipitate his downfall. At the center of Hunter's misfortune is Arnold, whose mild manner, sophisticated tastes, and low profile belie his own ferocious competitive streak. As the two clash, billions of dollars -- much of it in the form of pension and endowment money -- vanished.Hedge Hogs takes you behind closed doors into the shadowy world of hedge funds, the wild, unregulated frontier of finance, complete with lavish perks and over-the-top parties, where a tiny elite controls trillions of dollars of other people's money. The book traces the rise of this freewheeling industry while detailing the decades of deregulation -- of banks, of investment funds and of commodity trading -- that turned Wall Street into a casino for speculators.A gripping saga peppered with tales of fast money, vivid characters, and high drama, Hedge Hogs is also a cautionary tale that describes a financial system jeopardized by reckless practices, watered-down regulation, and regulatory loopholes, just waiting for the next bust.

Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School


Andrew Hallam - 2011
    But Andrew Hallam did so, long before the typical retirement age. And now, with Millionaire Teacher, he wants to show you how to follow in his footsteps. With lively humor and the simple clarity you'd expect from a gifted educator, Hallam demonstrates how average people can build wealth in the stock market by shunning the investment products peddled by most financial advisors and avoiding the get-rich-quicker products concocted by an ever widening, self-serving industry.Using low cost index funds, coupled with a philosophy in line with the one that made Warren Buffett a multi-billionaire, Hallam guides readers to understand how the stock and bond markets really work, arming you with a psychological advantage for when markets fall.Shows why young investors should hope for stock market crashes if they want to get rich Explains how you can spend just 60 minutes a year on your investments, never open a financial paper, avoid investment news, and still leave most professional investors in the dust Promotes a unique new investment methodology that combines low cost index funds and a Warren Buffett-esque investment philosophy Millionaire Teacher explains how any middle-income individual can learn can learn the ABCs of personal finance and become a multi-millionaire, from a schoolteacher who has been there and done that.