The Rise of Carry: The Dangerous Consequences of Volatility Suppression and the New Financial Order of Decaying Growth and Recurring Crisis


Tim Lee - 2019
    But none has revealed just how significant a role it plays in the global economy--until now.A groundbreaking book sure to leave its mark in the canon of investing literature, The Rise of Carry explains how carry trading has virtually shaped the global economic picture--one of decaying economic growth, recurring crises, wealth disparity, and, in too many places, social and political upheaval. The authors explain how carry trades work--particularly in the currency and stock markets--and provide a compelling case for how carry trades have come to dominate the entire global business cycle. They provide thorough analyses of critical but often overlooked topics and issues, including:-The active role stock prices play in causing recessions--as opposed to the common belief that recessions cause price crashes-The real driving force behind financial asset prices-The ways that carry, volatility selling, leverage, liquidity, and profitability affect the business cycle-How positive returns to carry over time are related to market volatility--and how central bank policies have supercharged these returnsSimply put, carry trading is now the primary determinant of the global business cycle--a pattern of long, steady but unspectacular expansions punctuated by catastrophic crises.The Rise of Carry provides foundational knowledge and expert insights you need to protect yourself from what have come to be common market upheavals--as well as the next major crisis.

Irrational Exuberance


Robert J. Shiller - 2000
    The original and bestselling 2000 edition of Irrational Exuberance evoked Alan Greenspan’s infamous 1996 use of that phrase to explain the alternately soaring and declining stock market. It predicted the collapse of the tech stock bubble through an analysis of the structural, cultural, and psychological factors behind levels of price growth not reflected in any other sector of the economy. In the second edition (2005), Shiller folded real estate into his analysis of market volatility, marshalling evidence that housing prices were dangerously inflated as well, a bubble that could soon burst, leading to a “string of bankruptcies” and a “worldwide recession.” That indeed came to pass, with consequences that the 2009 preface to this edition deals with. Irrational Exuberance is more than ever a cogent, chilling, and astonishingly far-seeing analytical work that no one with any money in any market anywhere can afford not to read–and heed.

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises


Charles P. Kindleberger - 1978
    Since its introduction in 1978, this book has charted and followed this volatile world of financial markets. Charles Kindleberger's brilliant, panoramic history revealed how financial crises follow a nature-like rhythm: they peak and purge, swell and storm. Now this newly revised and expanded Fourth Edition probes the most recent "natural disasters" of the markets--from the difficulties in East Asia and the repercussions of the Mexican crisis to the 1992 Sterling crisis. His sharply drawn history confronts a host of key questions. Charles P. Kindleberger (Boston, MA) was the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT for thirty-three years. He is a financial historian and prolific writer who has published over twenty-four books.

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics


Richard H. Thaler - 2016
    Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans—predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth—and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.Traditional economics assumes rational actors. Early in his research, Thaler realized these Spock-like automatons were nothing like real people. Whether buying a clock radio, selling basketball tickets, or applying for a mortgage, we all succumb to biases and make decisions that deviate from the standards of rationality assumed by economists. In other words, we misbehave. More importantly, our misbehavior has serious consequences. Dismissed at first by economists as an amusing sideshow, the study of human miscalculations and their effects on markets now drives efforts to make better decisions in our lives, our businesses, and our governments.Coupling recent discoveries in human psychology with a practical understanding of incentives and market behavior, Thaler enlightens readers about how to make smarter decisions in an increasingly mystifying world. He reveals how behavioral economic analysis opens up new ways to look at everything from household finance to assigning faculty offices in a new building, to TV game shows, the NFL draft, and businesses like Uber.Laced with antic stories of Thaler’s spirited battles with the bastions of traditional economic thinking, Misbehaving is a singular look into profound human foibles. When economics meets psychology, the implications for individuals, managers, and policy makers are both profound and entertaining.

Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor


Tren Griffin - 2015
    His notion of "elementary, worldly wisdom"--a set of interdisciplinary mental models involving economics, business, psychology, ethics, and management--allows him to keep his emotions out of his investments and avoid the common pitfalls of bad judgment.Munger's system has steered his investments for forty years and has guided generations of successful investors. This book presents the essential steps of Munger's investing strategy, condensed here for the first time from interviews, speeches, writings, and shareholder letters, and paired with commentary from fund managers, value investors, and business-case historians. Derived from Ben Graham's value-investing system, Munger's approach is straightforward enough that ordinary investors can apply it to their portfolios. This book is not simply about investing. It is about cultivating mental models for your whole life, but especially for your investments.

The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success


William N. Thorndike Jr. - 2012
    Others might point to the qualities of today’s so-called celebrity CEOs—charisma, virtuoso communication skills, and a confident management style. But what really matters when you run an organization? What is the hallmark of exceptional CEO performance? Quite simply, it is the returns for the shareholders of that company over the long term.In this refreshing, counterintuitive book, author Will Thorndike brings to bear the analytical wisdom of a successful career in investing, closely evaluating the performance of companies and their leaders. You will meet eight individualistic CEOs whose firms’ average returns outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of twenty—in other words, an investment of $10,000 with each of these CEOs, on average, would have been worth over $1.5 million twenty-five years later. You may not know all their names, but you will recognize their companies: General Cinema, Ralston Purina, The Washington Post Company, Berkshire Hathaway, General Dynamics, Capital Cities Broadcasting, TCI, and Teledyne. In The Outsiders, you’ll learn the traits and methods—striking for their consistency and relentless rationality—that helped these unique leaders achieve such exceptional performance.Humble, unassuming, and often frugal, these "outsiders” shunned Wall Street and the press, and shied away from the hottest new management trends. Instead, they shared specific traits that put them and the companies they led on winning trajectories: a laser-sharp focus on per share value as opposed to earnings or sales growth; an exceptional talent for allocating capital and human resources; and the belief that cash flow, not reported earnings, determines a company’s long-term value.Drawing on years of research and experience, Thorndike tells eye-opening stories, extracting lessons and revealing a compelling alternative model for anyone interested in leading a company or investing in one—and reaping extraordinary returns.

Thieves of Bay Street: How Banks, Brokerages and the Wealthy Steal Billions from Canadians


Bruce Livesey - 2012
    Though no large financial institution has recently gone bust in this country, white-collar criminals, scam artists, Ponzi schemers and organized crime, from the Hells Angels to the Russian mafia, know that Canada is the place in the Western world to rip off investors. And the fraudsters do so with little fear of being caught and punished. Thieves of Bay Street investigates Canada's biggest financial scandals of recent years. Readers will learn what banks do with investors' money and what happens when they lose it. They will meet the bogus investment gurus, the brokers who lose money with both reckless abandon and impunity, the bankers who squander money in toxic investments, the lawyers who protect them and the regulators who do nothing to keep them from doing it again. And most importantly, they'll meet the victims who are demanding that our vaunted banking sector finally come clean on its dirtiest secret.

Profiting with Iron Condor Options: Strategies from the Frontline for Trading in Up or Down Markets, Audio Enhanced Edition


Michael Benklifa - 2011
    

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 Myth of the Rational Market: Wall Street's Impossible Quest for Predictable Markets


Justin Fox - 2008
    The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through the Great Depression and into the financial calamity of today. It's a tale that features professors who made and lost fortunes, battled fiercely over ideas, beat the house in blackjack, wrote bestselling books, and played major roles on the world stage. It's also a tale of Wall Street's evolution, the power of the market to generate wealth and wreak havoc, and free market capitalism's war with itself.The efficient market hypothesis--long part of academic folklore but codified in the 1960s at the University of Chicago--has evolved into a powerful myth. It has been the maker and loser of fortunes, the driver of trillions of dollars, the inspiration for index funds and vast new derivatives markets, and the guidepost for thousands of careers. The theory holds that the market is always right, and that the decisions of millions of rational investors, all acting on information to outsmart one another, always provide the best judge of a stock's value. That myth is crumbling.Celebrated journalist and columnist Fox introduces a new wave of economists and scholars who no longer teach that investors are rational or that the markets are always right. Many of them now agree with Yale professor Robert Shiller that the efficient markets theory "represents one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economic thought." Today the theory has given way to counterintuitive hypotheses about human behavior, psychological models of decision making, and the irrationality of the markets. Investors overreact, underreact, and make irrational decisions based on imperfect data. In his landmark treatment of the history of the world's markets, Fox uncovers the new ideas that may come to drive the market in the century ahead.

Your Complete Guide to Factor-Based Investing: The Way Smart Money Invests Today


Andrew L Berkin - 2016
    Berkin and Larry E. Swedroe, co-authors of The Incredible Shrinking Alpha, bring you a thorough yet still jargon-free and accessible guide to applying one of today's most valuable quantitative, evidence-based approaches to outperforming the market: factor investing. Designed for savvy investors and professional advisors alike, Your Complete Guide to Factor-Based Investing: The Way Smart Money Invests Today takes you on a journey through the land of academic research and an extensive review of its 50-year quest to uncover the secret of successful investing.Along the way, Berkin and Swedroe cite and distill more than 100 academic papers on finance and introduce five unique criteria that a factor (at its most basic, a characteristic or set of characteristics common among a broad set of securities) must meet to be considered worthy of your investment. In addition to providing explanatory power to portfolio returns and delivering a premium, Swedroe and Berkin argue a factor should be persistent, pervasive, robust, investable and intuitive.By the end, you'll have learned that, within the entire "factor zoo," only certain exhibits are worth visiting and only a handful of factors are required to invest in the same manner that made Warren Buffett a legend.Your Complete Guide to Factor-Based Investing: The Way Smart Money Invests Today offers an in-depth look at the evidence practitioners use to build portfolios and how you as an investor can benefit from that knowledge, rendering it an essential resource for making the informed and prudent investment decisions necessary to help secure your financial future.

The Aspirational Investor: Taming the Markets to Achieve Your Life's Goals


Ashvin B. Chhabra - 2015
    What is needed, argues Ashvin B. Chhabra, is a framework that shifts the focus of investment strategy from portfolios and markets to individuals and the objectives that really matter: things like protecting against unexpected financial crises, paying for education or retirement, and financing philanthropy and entrepreneurship.The Aspirational Investor is a practical, innovative approach to managing wealth based on key goals and the careful allocation of risks rather than responding to the whims of the financial markets. Chhabra introduces his “Wealth Allocation Framework,” which accommodates the three seemingly incompatible objectives that must underpin every sound wealth management plan: the need for financial security in the face of known and unknowable risks; the need to maintain current living standards over time despite inflation; and the need to pursue aspirational goals for wealth creation.Chhabra reveals some surprising facts about wealth creation, reinterprets the success formulas of investing greats like Warren Buffett, and closes the gap between theory and practice by simplifying our understanding of key asset classes and laying out a concise roadmap for identifying, prioritizing, and quantifying financial goals. Raising the bar for what we should expect from our investment portfolios—and our financial advisors—The Aspirational Investor sets us on a path to more confident and fulfilling financial lives.

Why Gold? Why Now?: The War Against Your Wealth and How to Win It


E.B. Tucker - 2020
    

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.

A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises


Ray Dalio - 2018
    This template allowed his firm, Bridgewater Associates, to anticipate events and navigate them well while others struggled badly.  As he explained in his #1 New York Times Bestseller, Principles: Life & Work, Dalio believes that most everything happens over and over again through time so that by studying their patterns one can understand the cause-effect relationships behind them and develop principles for dealing with them well. In this 3-part research series, he does that for big debt crises and shares his template in the hopes reducing the chances of big debt crises happening and helping them be better managed in the future.  The template comes in three parts provided in three books: 1) The Archetypal Big Debt Cycle (which explains the template), 2) 3 Detailed Cases (which examines in depth the 2008 financial crisis, the 1930's Great Depression, and the 1920's inflationary depression of Germany's Weimar Republic), and 3) Compendium of 48 Cases (which is a compendium of charts and brief descriptions of the worst debt crises of the last 100 years). Whether you're an investor, a policy maker, or are simply interested, the unconventional perspective of one of the few people who navigated the crises successfully, A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises will help you understand the economy and markets in revealing new ways.