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.

The Great Investors: Lessons on Investing from Master Traders


Glen Arnold - 2010
    The Great Investors will have a permanent place on my desk.'Mark Sheridan, Executive Director, Nomura International PLCLeading investors such as Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Sir John Templeton, George Soros and Anthony Bolton are known throughout the world. How did these people come to be so successful? Which strategies have they used to make their fortunes? And what can you learn from their techniques?In The Great Investors, Glen Arnold succinctly and accurately describes the investment philosophies of the world's greatest investors. He explains why they are the best, gives details of their tactics for accumulating wealth, captures the key elements that led to their market-beating successes and teaches you key lessons that you can apply to your own investing strategies.From the foreword:'There are some very special people who seem to possess an exceptional talent for acquiring wealth. I want to explore not just the past triumphs of these masters, but also the key factors they look for as well as the personality traits that allow them to control emotion and think rationally about where to place funds. How does a master of investment hone skills through bitter experience and triumph to develop their approach to accumulating wealth?'Glen Arnold The Great Investors is the story of a number of remarkable men: John Templeton, George Soros, Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Philip Fisher, Peter Lynch, Anthony Bolton and John Neff. Whether you're new to investing, have had success in the markets, or you're a professional investor or fund manger, you'll benefit from reading about their proven, and successful, trading philosophies.The Great Investorswill show you how to:- Be a business analyst rather than a security analyst- Do your homework and develop a broad social, economic and political awareness- Control emotion so as not to get swept away by the market- Be consistent in your approach, even when you have bad years- See the wood for the trees and not over complicate your portfolio- Learn from your investing- Be self reliant, stand aside from the crowd and follow your own logic- Take reasonable risk

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World


Adam Tooze - 2018
    In fact it was a dramatic caesura of global significance that spiraled around the world, from the financial markets of the UK and Europe to the factories and dockyards of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, forcing a rearrangement of global governance. In the United States and Europe, it caused a fundamental reconsideration of capitalist democracy, eventually leading to the war in the Ukraine, the chaos of Greece, Brexit, and Trump.It was the greatest crisis to have struck Western societies since the end of the Cold War, but was it inevitable? And is it over? Crashed is a dramatic new narrative resting on original themes: the haphazard nature of economic development and the erratic path of debt around the world; the unseen way individual countries and regions are linked together in deeply unequal relationships through financial interdependence, investment, politics, and force; the ways the financial crisis interacted with the spectacular rise of social media, the crisis of middle-class America, the rise of China, and global struggles over fossil fuels.Finally, Tooze asks, given this history, what now are the prospects for a liberal, stable, and coherent world order?

The Options Playbook: Featuring 40 strategies for bulls, bears, rookies, all-stars and everyone in between.


Brian Overby - 2009
    No confusing jargon. No unnecessary mumbo-jumbo. Just clear, easy-to-understand explanations of more than 40 of the most popular option strategies broken down into a play-by-play format including: Play Name: Long Call, Short Call Spread, Iron Condor, etc. The Setup: The goals and reasons to run each play Who Should Run It: Rookies, Veterans or All-Stars, based on degree of difficulty When To Run It: Describes each play as bullish, bearish or neutral The Strategy: A detailed overview of each strategy, their risks and the specific costs associated with multi-leg strategies. description For the first-time option trader The Options Playbook features a "Rookie's Corner," addressing the basic definitions and concepts you need to understand this market, tips to avoid common beginner's mistakes, and suggested strategies to "get your feet wet." For more experienced option traders, an expanded section on implied volatility explains how this handy variable can be used to find the potential range of the stock over the options life. A detailed section on pricing variables (Greeks) helps you understand how an option's price is affected by changes in market conditions. You will also learn how time decay and a change in implied volatility can affect your trade after it's in place and how to recover if things don't go according to plan. The Options Playbook features Options Guy Tips from TradeKing Senior Analyst Brian Overby. Like any good coach, Overby's handy insights help you put theory into successful real-world trading. This expanded 2nd edition includes 10 new plays and 56 new pages of handy content describing a brief history of options, five common mistakes options traders make and how to avoid them, an expanded glossary, how to manage option positions by rolling to a different month and strike, to explaining the difference between index and stock options, managing early exercise and assignment and how to calculate position delta and use it to manage overall position risk of a multi-leg option strategy. Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. It is possible to lose more money than invested. Before making any investment decisions, please read Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options that accompanies The Options Playbook and available at: tradeking.com/ODD. (c) 2015 TradeKing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Securities offered through TradeKing, LLC, member FINRA and SIPC.

Trade Like an O'Neil Disciple: How We Made Over 18,000% in the Stock Market


Gil Morales - 2010
    O'Neil + Company made mad money using O'Neil's trading strategies, and how you can, too From the successes and failures of two William O'Neil insiders, Trade Like an O'Neil Disciple: How We Made Over 18,000% in the Stock Market in 7 Years is a detailed look at how to trade using William O'Neil's proven strategies and what it was like working side-by-side with Bill O'Neil. Under various market conditions, the authors document their trades, including the set ups, buy, add, and sell points for their winners. Then, they turn the magnifying glass on themselves to analyze their mistakes, including how much they cost them, how they reacted, and what they learned.Presents sub-strategies for buying pocket pivots and gap-ups Includes a market direction timing model, as well as updated tools for selling stocks short Provides an inside view of the authors' experiences as proprietary, internal portfolio managers at William O'Neil + Company, Inc. from 1997-2005 Detailing technical information and the trading psychology that has worked so well for them, Trade Like an O'Neil Disciple breaks down what every savvy money manager, trader and investor needs to know to profit enormously in today's stock market.

MONEY WISE: Timeless Lessons on Building Wealth


Deepak Shenoy - 2021
    Money Wise shows you the way. It cuts through the clutter of jargon and technical terms, leading you step by step on how to grow wealthy. In it, you will learn: Ways of allocating your income The only mutual funds hack worth knowing Why you should be watching not what Warren Buffett says but what he does Written in Shenoy’s trademark style, Money Wise is a book as much fun to read as it is informative. If you want to start investing, this is the book for you. If you have already started, then read this and up your game.

Den of Thieves


James B. Stewart - 1991
    Stewart shows for the first time how four of the eighties’ biggest names on Wall Street—Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine —created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions, until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America’s most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice. Based on secret grand jury transcripts, interviews, and actual trading records, and containing explosive new revelations about Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky written especially for this paperback edition, Den of Thieves weaves all the facts into an unforgettable narrative—a portrait of human nature, big business, and crime of unparalleled proportions.

Warren Buffett Invests Like a Girl: And Why You Should, Too


Louann Lofton - 2011
    An indispensiblenew volume from the multimedia financial education company Motley Fool, WarrenBuffett Invests Like a Girl offers essential advice for every investorhoping to turn today’s savings into wealth for a better tomorrow.

Bad with Money: The Imperfect Art of Getting Your Financial Sh*t Together


Gaby Dunn - 2019
    In the first episode of her “Bad With Money” podcast, Gaby Dunn asked random people at a coffee shop two questions: First, what’s your favorite sex position? Everyone was game to answer, even the barista. No holds barred. Then, she asked them how much money was in their bank accounts. Deathly silence. People were aghast. “That’s a very personal question!” they cried. And therein lies the problem.Gaby argues that our inability to speak honestly about money is our #1 barrier to understanding it, nurturing a stigma that leads to our shame, embarrassment, and anxiety, which in turn prevents us from taking ownership over this important part of our lives. She wants you to know that there are real reasons to feel helpless when it comes to managing your money, and that the patronizing know-it-alls on TV who blow air horns in your face and charge you up the wazoo for their self-help seminars do not have the answers.But despair not, there is a light at the end of this dark, moneyless tunnel. Through her own journey toward “financial literacy,” Gaby uncovers the real reasons that we feel so disempowered when it comes to finance—deeply rooted habits we inherited from our families, systemic imbalances, and intentionally-complicated terminology that makes it impossible for regular people to feel competent. Bad With Money isn’t going to tell you how to get rich or erase your debt, nor will it offer up a litany of humiliating confessions about horrible financial decisions that Gaby has made (okay, maybe some): it is an invitation from a friend who is just as clueless as you are. Equal parts memoir and journalistic investigation, Gaby covers topics like the financial dynamics of dating, the costs of mental health, and how to maintain your self-respect as a freelancer. In addition to debunking the “entitled millennial” stereotype, Gaby reveals essential truths like how “401K” is not the name of a sci-fi movie, why it feels like your bank teller is speaking a foreign language, and how to decide whether to take an unpaid internship.Weaving her own stories with the perspectives of various researchers, artists, students, her parents, a financial psychologist, her exes, and more, she reveals the ways that money makes us feel confused, hopeless, and terrified, and what it might look like to start taking control of our financial futures.

End This Depression Now!


Paul Krugman - 2012
    The Great Recession is more than four years old, and counting. Yet, as Paul Krugman points out in this powerful volley, "Nations rich in resources, talent, and knowledge, all the ingredients for prosperity and a decent standard of living for all, remain in a state of intense pain." How bad have things gotten? How did we get stuck in what now can only be called a depression? And above all, how do we free ourselves? Krugman pursues these questions with his characteristic lucidity and insight. He has a powerful message for anyone who has suffered over these past four years: a quick, strong recovery is just one step away, if our leaders can find the "intellectual clarity and political will" to end this depression now.

The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking


Saifedean Ammous - 2018
    Can this young upstart money challenge the global monetary order? Economist Saifedean Ammous traces the history of the technologies of money to seashells, limestones, cattle, salt, beads, metals, and government debt, explaining what gave these technologies their monetary role, what makes for sound money, and the benefits of a sound monetary regime to economic growth, innovation, culture, trade, individual freedom, and international peace.The monetary and historical analysis sets the stage for understanding the mechanics of the operation of Bitcoin, the reasons for its initial success, and the role it could play in an information economy. Rather than serving as a currency and network for consumer purchases, the author argues Bitcoin is better suited as a store of value and network for settlement between large financial institutions. With an automated and perfectly predictable monetary policy, and the ability to perform final settlement of large sums across the world in a matter of minutes, Bitcoin's true importance may just lie in providing a decentralized, neutral, free-market alternative to national central banks.

Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design


Alvin E. Roth - 2014
    If you’ve ever sought a job or hired someone, applied to college or guided your child into a good kindergarten, asked someone out on a date or been asked out, you’ve participated in a kind of market. Most of the study of economics deals with commodity markets, where the price of a good connects sellers and buyers. But what about other kinds of “goods,” like a spot in the Yale freshman class or a position at Google? This is the territory of matching markets, where “sellers” and “buyers” must choose each other, and price isn’t the only factor determining who gets what.Alvin E. Roth is one of the world’s leading experts on matching markets. He has even designed several of them, including the exchange that places medical students in residencies and the system that increases the number of kidney transplants by better matching donors to patients. In Who Gets What — And Why, Roth reveals the matching markets hidden around us and shows how to recognize a good match and make smarter, more confident decisions.

The Only Three Questions That Count: Investing by Knowing What Others Don't


Kenneth L. Fisher - 2006
    The only way to consistently beat the markets is by knowing something others don't know. This book will show you how to do just that by using three simple questions. You'll see why CNBC's Mad Money host and money manager James J. Cramer says, "I believe that reading his book may be the single best thing you could do this year to make yourself a better investor. In The Only Three Questions That Count, Ken Fisher challenges the conventional wisdoms of investing, overturns glib theories with hard facts, and blows up complacent beliefs about money and the markets. Ultimately, he says, the key to successful investing is daring to challenge yourself and whatever you believe to be true. Packed with more than 100 visuals, usable tools, and a glossary, The Only Three Questions That Count is an entertaining and educational experience in the markets unlike any other, giving you an opportunity to reap the huge rewards that only the markets can offer.

The White Coat Investor: A Doctor's Guide To Personal Finance And Investing


James M. Dahle - 2014
    Doctors are highly-educated and extensively trained at making difficult diagnoses and performing life saving procedures. However, they receive little to no training in business, personal finance, investing, insurance, taxes, estate planning, and asset protection.      This book fills in the gaps and will teach you to use your high income to escape from your student loans, provide for your family, build wealth, and stop getting ripped off by unscrupulous financial professionals. Straight talk and clear explanations allow the book to be easily digested by a novice to the subject matter yet the book also contains advanced concepts specific to physicians you won’t find in other financial books. This book will teach you how to: Graduate from medical school with as little debt as possible Escape from student loans within two to five years of residency graduation Purchase the right types and amounts of insurance Decide when to buy a house and how much to spend on it Learn to invest in a sensible, low-cost and effective manner with or without the assistance of an advisor Avoid investments which are designed to be sold, not bought Select advisors who give great service and advice at a fair price Become a millionaire within five to ten years of residency graduation Use a “Backdoor Roth IRA” and “Stealth IRA” to boost your retirement funds and decrease your taxes Protect your hard-won assets from professional and personal lawsuits Avoid estate taxes, avoid probate, and ensure your children and your money go where you want when you die Minimize your tax burden, keeping more of your hard-earned money Decide between an employee job and an independent contractor job Choose between sole proprietorship, Limited Liability Company, S Corporation, and C Corporation Take a look at the first pages of the book by clicking on the Look Inside feature Praise For The White Coat Investor “Much of my financial planning practice is helping doctors to correct mistakes that reading this book would have avoided in the first place.” – Allan S. Roth, MBA, CPA, CFP®, Author of How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street “Jim Dahle has done a lot of thinking about the peculiar financial problems facing physicians, and you, lucky reader, are about to reap the bounty of both his experience and his research.” – William J. Bernstein, MD, Author of The Investor’s Manifesto and seven other investing books “This book should be in every career counselor’s office and delivered with every medical degree.

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


E.B. Tucker - 2020