Book picks similar to
Narrative and Numbers: The Value of Stories in Business by Aswath Damodaran
business
finance
investing
non-fiction
The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing
Taylor Larimore - 2006
The book offers sound, practical advice, no matter what your age or net worth. Bottomline, become a Boglehead and prosper! Originally just the chat-line ruminations of Boglehead founder Taylor Larimore, and Morningstar forum leading cohorts Mel Lindauer and Michael LeBoeuf, their trusted advice has been brewed and distilled into an easy-to-use, need-to-know, no frills guide to building up your own financial well-being - so you can worry less and profit more from the investments you make. Invest like a Boglehead, and let their grassroots investment wisdom guide you down the path of long-term wealth creation and happiness, without all the worries and fuss of stock pickers and day traders. If you face a financial crisis or problem, or simply want to know what is prudent to do with the money you save, the Bogleheads will have the answers you need to help you gain your financial footing and keep it.
More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places
Michael J. Mauboussin - 2006
Michael Mauboussin, one of Wall Street's most creative and influential minds offers provocative new ways of thinking about the stock market, investing, and how we make decisions.
MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom
Anthony Robbins - 2014
More than 4 million people have attended his live events. Oprah Winfrey calls him super-human. Now for the first time - in his first book in two decades - he's turned to the topic that vexes us all: How to secure financial freedom for ourselves and our families. Based on extensive research and one-on-one interviews with more than 50 of the most legendary financial experts in the world - from Carl Icahn and Warren Buffett, to Ray Dalio and Steve Forbes - Tony Robbins has created a simple 7-step blueprint that anyone can use for financial freedom.Robbins has a brilliant way of using metaphor and story to illustrate even the most complex financial concepts - making them simple and actionable. With expert advice on our most important financial decisions, Robbins is an advocate for the reader, dispelling the myths that often rob people of their financial dreams.Tony Robbins walks readers of every income level through the steps to become financially free by creating a lifetime income plan. This book delivers invaluable information and essential practices for getting your financial house in order. MONEY: Master the Game is the book millions of people have been waiting for.
Financial Statements: A Step-by-step Guide to Understanding and Creating Financial Reports
Thomas R. Ittelson - 1998
Explains how to read the three basic types of financial statements--the balance sheet, the income statement, and the cash flow--and uses this foundation to explain the flow of cash and product.
Warren Buffett's Ground Rules: Words of Wisdom from the Partnership Letters of the World's Greatest Investor
Jeremy Miller - 2016
Over the course of that time—a period in which he experienced an unprecedented record of success—Buffett wrote semiannual letters to his small but growing group of partners, sharing his thoughts, approaches, and reflections.Compiled for the first time and with Buffett’s permission, the letters spotlight his contrarian diversification strategy, his almost religious celebration of compounding interest, his preference for conservative rather than conventional decision making, and his goal and tactics for bettering market results by at least 10% annually. Demonstrating Buffett’s intellectual rigor, they provide a framework to the craft of investing that had not existed before: Buffett built upon the quantitative contributions made by his famous teacher, Benjamin Graham, demonstrating how they could be applied and improved.Jeremy Miller reveals how these letters offer us a rare look into Buffett’s mind and offer accessible lessons in control and discipline—effective in bull and bear markets alike, and in all types of investing climates—that are the bedrock of his success. Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules paints a portrait of the sage as a young investor during a time when he developed the long-term value-oriented strategy that helped him build the foundation of his wealth—rules for success every investor needs today.
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.
Quality Investing: Owning the Best Companies for the Long Term
Lawrence A. Cunningham - 2016
People make judgments about it every day. Yet articulating a clear definition of quality is challenging.The best companies often appear to be characterized by an ineffable something, much like that of people who seem graced by a lucky gene. Think about those of your peers who seem a lot like you but somehow always catch a break. They are not obviously smarter, smoother, richer, or better-looking than you, yet they are admitted to their university of choice, get their dream job, and earn considerable wealth. Try to discern what they have that you don't, and you are stumped. Chalk it up to fate or plain dumb luck.Businesses can be similar. For reasons that are not always evident, some end up doing the right things with better results than average. They may not appear to be savvier acquirers, more adept marketers, or bolder pioneers, yet they integrate new businesses better, launch products more successfully, and open new markets with fewer mishaps. Perhaps through some combination of vision, scale, or business philosophy, these companies uncannily come out ahead.In our view, three characteristics indicate quality. These are strong, predictable cash generation; sustainably high returns on capital; and attractive growth opportunities. "Investing is a continuous process of learning, and it will be a rare investor who does not glean substantive lessons from the notable AKO story of quality investing." - Stephen Blyth, President and CEO, Harvard Management Company, Professor of the Practice of Statistics, Harvard University
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
Alice Schroeder - 2008
The legendary Omaha investor has never written a memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore directly with him and with those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies, and wisdom. The result is the personally revealing and complete biography of the man known everywhere as “The Oracle of Omaha.”Although the media track him constantly, Buffett himself has never told his full life story. His reality is private, especially by celebrity standards. Indeed, while the homespun persona that the public sees is true as far as it goes, it goes only so far. Warren Buffett is an array of paradoxes. He set out to prove that nice guys can finish first. Over the years he treated his investors as partners, acted as their steward, and championed honesty as an investor, CEO, board member, essayist, and speaker. At the same time he became the world’s richest man, all from the modest Omaha headquarters of his company Berkshire Hathaway. None of this fits the term “simple.”When Alice Schroeder met Warren Buffett she was an insurance industry analyst and a gifted writer known for her keen perception and business acumen. Her writings on finance impressed him, and as she came to know him she realized that while much had been written on the subject of his investing style, no one had moved beyond that to explore his larger philosophy, which is bound up in a complex personality and the details of his life. Out of this came his decision to cooperate with her on the book about himself that he would never write.Never before has Buffett spent countless hours responding to a writer’s questions, talking, giving complete access to his wife, children, friends, and business associates—opening his files, recalling his childhood. It was an act of courage, as The Snowball makes immensely clear. Being human, his own life, like most lives, has been a mix of strengths and frailties. Yet notable though his wealth may be, Buffett’s legacy will not be his ranking on the scorecard of wealth; it will be his principles and ideas that have enriched people’s lives. This book tells you why Warren Buffett is the most fascinating American success story of our time.
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution
Gregory Zuckerman - 2019
No other investor--Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, or George Soros--can touch his record. Since 1988, Renaissance's signature Medallion fund has generated average annual returns of 66 percent. The firm has earned profits of more than $100 billion; Simons is worth twenty-three billion dollars.Drawing on unprecedented access to Simons and dozens of current and former employees, Zuckerman, a veteran Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, tells the gripping story of how a world-class mathematician and former code breaker mastered the market. Simons pioneered a data-driven, algorithmic approach that's sweeping the world.As Renaissance became a market force, its executives began influencing the world beyond finance. Simons became a major figure in scientific research, education, and liberal politics. Senior executive Robert Mercer is more responsible than anyone else for the Trump presidency, placing Steve Bannon in the campaign and funding Trump's victorious 2016 effort. Mercer also impacted the campaign behind Brexit.The Man Who Solved the Market is a portrait of a modern-day Midas who remade markets in his own image, but failed to anticipate how his success would impact his firm and his country. It's also a story of what Simons's revolution means for the rest of us.
The Unusual Billionaires
Saurabh Mukherjea - 2016
This book tells the story of these seven companies, handpicked out of 5000 listed on the stock exchange. Built by visionary business leaders, they have delivered outstanding results for a decade and more.Saurabh Mukherjea tells you why focusing on the core business is central to corporate success and how a promoter giving up control to the top management could be a boon. He also explains how investors can generate market-beating investment returns from identifying companies such as these using a simple set of metrics.
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. .
The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life
J.L. Collins - 2016
You'll never find a wiser advisor with a bigger heart.” -- Malachi Rempen: Filmmaker, cartoonist, author and self-described ruffian This book grew out of a series of letters to my daughter concerning various things—mostly about money and investing—she was not yet quite ready to hear. Since money is the single most powerful tool we have for navigating this complex world we’ve created, understanding it is critical. “But Dad,” she once said, “I know money is important. I just don’t want to spend my life thinking about it.” This was eye-opening. I love this stuff. But most people have better things to do with their precious time. Bridges to build, diseases to cure, treaties to negotiate, mountains to climb, technologies to create, children to teach, businesses to run. Unfortunately, benign neglect of things financial leaves you open to the charlatans of the financial world. The people who make investing endlessly complex, because if it can be made complex it becomes more profitable for them, more expensive for us, and we are forced into their waiting arms. Here’s an important truth: Complex investments exist only to profit those who create and sell them. Not only are they more costly to the investor, they are less effective. The simple approach I created for her and present now to you, is not only easy to understand and implement, it is more powerful than any other. Together we’ll explore: Debt: Why you must avoid it and what to do if you have it. The importance of having F-you Money. How to think about money, and the unique way understanding this is key to building your wealth. Where traditional investing advice goes wrong and what actually works. What the stock market really is and how it really works. Why the stock market always goes up and why most people still lose money investing in it. How to invest in a raging bull, or bear, market. Specific investments to implement these strategies. The Wealth Building and Wealth Preservation phases of your investing life and why they are not always tied to your age. How your asset allocation is tied to those phases and how to choose it. How to simplify the sometimes confusing world of 401(k), 403(b), TSP, IRA and Roth accounts. TRFs (Target Retirement Funds), HSAs (Health Savings Accounts) and RMDs (Required Minimum Distributions). What investment firm to use and why the one I recommend is so far superior to the competition. Why you should be very cautious when engaging an investment advisor and whether you need to at all. Why and how you can be conned, and how to avoid becoming prey. Why I don’t recommend dollar cost averaging. What financial independence looks like and how to have your money support you. What the 4% rule is and how to use it to safely spend your wealth. The truth behind Social Security.
The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning
Gautam Baid - 2019
Distilling generations of investment and life lessons and compiling it with his personal experiences into a comprehensive guide on value investing, Baid demonstrates their practical applications in the areas of business, investing, and decision making.The Joys Of Compounding is a celebration of the value investing discipline. It takes investors beyond stocks and business fundamentals to give them a valuable and compelling life philosophy. All lifelong learners will find this book immensely useful as a timeless source of insight and inspiration.
The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing: Morningstar's Guide to Building Wealth and Winning in the Market
Pat Dorsey - 2003
His methodology is sound, his examples clear, and his approach timeless. --Christopher C. Davis Portfolio Manager and Chairman, Davis Advisors Over the years, people from around the world have turned to Morningstar for strong, independent, and reliable advice. The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing provides the kind of savvy financial guidance only a company like Morningstar could offer. Based on the philosophy that investing should be fun, but not a game, this comprehensive guide will put even the most cautious investors back on the right track by helping them pick the right stocks, find great companies, and understand the driving forces behind different industries--without paying too much for their investments. Written by Morningstar's Director of Stock Analysis, Pat Dorsey, The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing includes unparalleled stock research and investment strategies covering a wide range of stock-related topics. Investors will profit from such tips as: * How to dig into a financial statement and find hidden gold . . . and deception * How to find great companies that will create shareholder wealth * How to analyze every corner of the market, from banks to health care Informative and highly accessible, The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing should be required reading for anyone looking for the right investment opportunities in today's ever-changing market.
Quality of Earnings
Thornton L. O'glove - 1987
An indispensable guide to determining how much money a company is really making and for buying and selling stocks without making costly blunders.