Confessions of a Wall Street Insider: A Cautionary Tale of Rats, Feds, and Banksters
Michael Kimelman - 2017
He had left a cushy yet suffocating job at a law firm to try his hand at the high-risk life of a proprietary trader — and he did pretty well for himself. But it all came crashing down in the wee hours of November 5, 2009, when the Feds came to his door—almost taking the door off its hinges. While his wife and children were sequestered to a bedroom, Kimelman was marched off in embarrassment in view of his neighbors and TV crews who had been alerted in advance. He was arrested as part of a huge insider trading case, and while he was offered a “sweetheart” no-jail probation plea, he refused, maintaining his innocence.The lion’s share of
Confessions of a Wall Street Insider
was written while Kimelman was an inmate at Lewisburg Penitentiary. In nearly two years behind bars, he reflected on his experiences before incarceration—rubbing elbows and throwing back far too many cocktails with financial titans and major figures in sports and entertainment (including Leonardo DiCaprio, Alex Rodriguez, Ben Bernanke, and Alan Greenspan, to drop a few names); making and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in daily gambles on the Street; getting involved with the wrong people, who eventually turned on him; realizing that none of that mattered in the end. As he writes: “Stripped of family, friends, time, and humanity, if there’s ever a place to give one pause, it’s prison . . . Tomorrow is promised to no one.” In
Confessions of a Wall Street Insider
, he reveals the triumphs, pains, and struggles, and how, in the end, it just might have made him a better person.Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
John Lanchester - 2009
I.O.U. is the story of how we came to experience such a complete and devastating financial implosion, and how the decisions and actions of a select group of individuals had profound consequences for America, Europe, and the global economy overall. John Lanchester begins with "The ATM Moment," that seemingly magical proliferation of cheap credit that led to an explosion of lending, and then deftly outlines the global and local landscapes of banking and finance. Viewing the crisis through the lens of politics, culture, and contemporary history -- from the invention and widespread misuse of financial instruments to the culpability of subprime mortgages -- Lanchester draws perceptive conclusions on the limitations of financial and governmental regulation, capitalism's deepest flaw, and, most important, on the plain and simple facts of human nature where cash is concerned.Weaving together firsthand research and superbly written reportage, Lanchester delivers a shrewd perspective and a digestible, comprehensive analysis that connects the dots for the expert and casual reader alike. I.O.U. is an eye-opener of a book -- it may well provoke anger, amazement, or rueful disbelief -- and, as the author clearly reveals, we've only just begun to get ourselves back on track.
Option Volatility & Pricing: Advanced Trading Strategies and Techniques
Sheldon Natenberg - 1988
Drawing on his experience as a professional trader, author Sheldon Natenberg examines both the theory and reality of option trading. He presents the foundations of option theory explaining how this theory can be used to identify and exploit trading opportunities. "Option Volatility & Pricing" teaches you to use a wide variety of trading strategies and shows you how to select the strategy that best fits your view of market conditions and individual risk tolerance.New sections include: Expanded coverage of stock option Strategies for stock index futures and options A broader, more in-depth discussion volatility Analysis of volatility skews Intermarket spreading with options
Trade the Price Action - Forex Trading System
Laurentiu Damir - 2012
All a trader has to do is follow the rules of this price action system.This book contains all the information a trader will ever have to learn and master to be successful in the foreign exchange market.You do not need technical indicators,you do not need expensive robots to trade for you,all you need to be a very good trader is a simple chart and the trading system this book describes.Read it, learn it, respect its rules and you will have no problem in achieving success in the financial markets. If you require further details feel free to contact me at damirlaurentiu@yahoo.com
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.
A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp: Or What's a Heaven for
Barton Biggs - 2010
Told through the eyes of a fictional insider, this engaging story provides a detailed look at the hedge fund business in the late 1990s and through the first decade of the twenty-first century.A Tale From the Hedge Fund World chronicles the life of a poor boy who ends up amassing more wealth than he ever thought possible. From studying Wall Street charts while sitting on the sidelines of football practice to realizing how so much money can be made in a short period of time, this book provides a bird's eye view of the inner workings of Wall Street and what it takes to make it there.Puts the word of hedge funds in perspective and reveals the competitive and lucrative nature of this field Other titles by Biggs: Hedgehogging and Wealth, War & WisdomAlso describes the bursting of the mortgage bubble and the great financial crisis that followed No one knows more about the hedge fund world of the past twenty years than Barton Biggs. His new fable offers an entertaining look at this field and those who aspire to excel within it.
Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation
Edward Chancellor - 1996
A lively, original, and challenging history of stock market speculation from the 17th century to present day.Is your investment in that new Internet stock a sign of stock market savvy or an act of peculiarly American speculative folly? How has the psychology of investing changed--and not changed--over the last five hundred years? In Devil Take the Hindmost, Edward Chancellor traces the origins of the speculative spirit back to ancient Rome and chronicles its revival in the modern world: from the tulip scandal of 1630s Holland, to "stockjobbing" in London's Exchange Alley, to the infamous South Sea Bubble of 1720, which prompted Sir Isaac Newton to comment, "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."Here are brokers underwriting risks that included highway robbery and the "assurance of female chastity"; credit notes and lottery tickets circulating as money; wise and unwise investors from Alexander Pope and Benjamin Disraeli to Ivan Boesky and Hillary Rodham Clinton.From the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties, from the nineteenth century railway mania to the crash of 1929, from junk bonds and the Japanese bubble economy to the day-traders of the Information Era, Devil Take the Hindmost tells a fascinating story of human dreams and folly through the ages.
The Honest Guide to Stock Trading: Make Market-Beating Returns. Achieve Long-Term Wealth
Llewelyn James - 2014
This book is not about day-trading, it is not the ‘holy grail’ and it’s not going to make you a millionaire overnight. But if you follow the author’s exact rules and trading psychology tips, you’ll learn how to manage your trading account like a true professional. Download your copy today and discover… • How to successfully trade stocks, forex, ETFs, commodities and bonds. • How to calculate your position size for each trade. • When to enter and exit positions. • Where to put your stop-losses and profit targets. • How to cut your losing trades quickly and let your winning trades run. • How to find the most promising markets to trade in less than 20 minutes each evening. • How to combine fundamental and technical analysis to find the strongest stocks from the strongest industries. • How to find penny stocks that could make triple-digit returns, without day-trading or taking unnecessary risks. • How to define bull markets and bear markets using simple tools. • How to use correlation analysis to improve your diversification and profits, while simultaneously reducing your risk. • How to overcome the psychological barriers that prevent the majority of traders from ever making a dime. • And much more. Buy Your Copy Today and Receive 100% Free Access to The Accompanying Video Series and Exclusive Downloadable Content.
What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars
Jim Paul - 1994
In this honest, frank analysis, Paul and Brendan Moynihan revisit the events that led to Paul's disastrous decision and examine the psychological factors behind bad financial practices in several economic sectors.This book—winner of a 2014 Axiom Business Book award gold medal—begins with the unbroken string of successes that helped Paul achieve a jet-setting lifestyle and land a key spot with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It then describes the circumstances leading up to Paul's $1.6 million loss and the essential lessons he learned from it—primarily that, although there are as many ways to make money in the markets as there are people participating in them, all losses come from the same few sources.Investors lose money in the markets either because of errors in their analysis or because of psychological barriers preventing the application of analysis. While all analytical methods have some validity and make allowances for instances in which they do not work, psychological factors can keep an investor in a losing position, causing him to abandon one method for another in order to rationalize the decisions already made. Paul and Moynihan's cautionary tale includes strategies for avoiding loss tied to a simple framework for understanding, accepting, and dodging the dangers of investing, trading, and speculating.
The Secret Club That Runs the World: Inside the Fraternity of Commodities Traders
Kate Kelly - 2014
They’re highly-educated world travelers with a penchant for risk, and they’re here to bet big on the future of the raw materials that make our economies hum. They’re very wealthy, barely regulated, and can be a force for tremendous good—or ill. Now Kate Kelly, the bestselling author of Street Fighters, shines light not just on the commodities market, but also on some of its key figures. Her characters include Pierre Andurand, a hedge-fund manager who generated the winningest annual performance ever for an oil trader in 2008, and Ivan Glasenberg, whose secretive Swiss commodities giant, Glencore, has been thrown into the spotlight. Kelly paints a dramatic narrative of immense power in the hands of a few, and the so-far hapless efforts by the Obama Administration to rein in the cowboys.
Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side
Howard Marks - 2018
Confidence about where we are in a cycle comes when you learn the patterns of ups and downs that influence not just economics, markets and companies, but also human psychology and the investing behaviors that result. If you study past cycles, understand their origins and remain alert for the next one, you will become keenly attuned to the investment environment as it changes. You’ll be aware and prepared while others get blindsided by unexpected events or fall victim to emotions like fear and greed. By following Marks’s insights — drawn in part from his iconic memos over the years to Oaktree’s clients — you can master these recurring patterns to have the opportunity to improve your results.
How to Retire on Dividends: Earn a Safe 8%, Leave Your Principal Intact
Brett Owens - 2019
Your choice."--Richard Fields, Retirement Expert. Wall Street warns you to withdraw only 4% a year when retired. But Main Street retirees have an advantage. You can obtain 6%, 7% and even 8% annual dividend yields--triple or even quadruple the S&P 500's yield--without reducing principal or taking on unnecessary risk. Skip Wall Street's low-yielding, blue-chip, "dividend aristocrat" BS and learn how from Brett and Tom!
The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth
Richard Paul Evans - 2004
This book will change your life.When Richard Paul Evans was twelve, his father, a building contractor, shattered both his legs. With no insurance, no income, and eight children, the family was destitute. At that difficult time young Evans was introduced to a kind multimillionaire who taught him the five secrets of wealth. Today, Evans credits those lessons not just with bringing him wealth and success but with bringing him freedom and opportunity in a world where financial slavery is ubiquitous. In his signature motivational voice, Evans interweaves those influential lessons with personal stories from everyday people. He explains that money should not be the preoccupation of our lives. Rather, if we follow the five principles, we will be free to focus on God, family, and relationships -- the true nourishments of life. Wise and compelling, The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth can be read in a single sitting and will leave you with a new view of what it means to be rich -- and convinced that you, too, can build wealth. The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth is endorsed by financial consultants, churches, schools, and marriage counselors. You cannot afford to be without this book.
Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
Matt Taibbi - 2010
The stunning rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-and-bailout era was the coming-out party for the network of looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power. The grifter class—made up of the largest players in the financial industry and the politicians who do their bidding—has been growing in power for a generation, transferring wealth upward through increasingly complex financial mechanisms and political maneuvers. The crisis was only one terrifying manifestation of how they’ve hijacked America’s political and economic life.Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi here unravels the whole fiendish story, digging beyond the headlines to get into the deeper roots and wider implications of the rise of the grifters. He traces the movement’s origins to the cult of Ayn Rand and her most influential—and possibly weirdest—acolyte, Alan Greenspan, and offers fresh reporting on the backroom deals that decided the winners and losers in the government bailouts. He uncovers the hidden commodities bubble that transferred billions of dollars to Wall Street while creating food shortages around the world, and he shows how finance dominates politics, from the story of investment bankers auctioning off America’s infrastructure to an inside account of the high-stakes battle for health-care reform—a battle the true reformers lost. Finally, he tells the story of Goldman Sachs, the “vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” Taibbi has combined deep sources, trailblazing reportage, and provocative analysis to create the most lucid, emotionally galvanizing, and scathingly funny account yet written of the ongoing political and financial crisis in America. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the labyrinthine inner workings of politics and finance in this country, and the profound consequences for us all.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt - 2005
Wade have on violent crime? Freakonomics will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.(front flap)