Book picks similar to
Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers by Jim Rogers
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The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History
David Enrich - 2017
Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled mathematician, became the lynchpin of a wild alliance that included a prickly French trader nicknamed “Gollum”; the broker “Abbo,” who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a nervous Kazakh chicken farmer known as “Derka Derka”; a broker known as “Village” (short for “Village Idiot”) who racked up huge expense account bills; an executive called “Clumpy” because of his patchwork hair loss; and a broker uncreatively nicknamed “Big Nose” who had once been a semi-professional boxer. This group generated incredible riches —until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion.With exclusive access to key characters and evidence, The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam, but also a provocative examination of a financial system that was crooked throughout.
The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs
Charles D. Ellis - 2008
What does Buffett see that we on the outside do not? It’s all about the people. Charles D. Ellis has written a landmark book that couldn’t come at a better time. The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs is the colorful and fascinating story of Goldman’s rise to power through many life-threatening changes in markets, competition, and regulation. It tells the personal history of the men and women who built the world’s leading financial powerhouse from a firm that was disgraced and nearly destroyed in 1929, limped along as a break-even operation through the Depression and WWII, and, with only one special service and one improbable banker, began the rise that, in half a century, took Goldman Sachs to global leadership. A conversation with Charles Ellis: * Is Goldman Sachs really a lot better than other firms at managing risk? The big difference is in the cumulative power of many “small” details. The difference in the speed, accuracy, and extent of communication inside the firm; the difference in intensity, focus, and disciplined toughness of the men and women hand selected to work there and real difference in recruiting, training, and compensation. All add up to a decisive advantage in management. Leaders and co-leaders manage Goldman’s many business units with rigor and drive; risk management is the envy of other banks; and coordination is powerful across business units and markets around the world. As every Olympic athlete knows, such small differences make all the difference between gold, silver or bronze – or no medal at all. In the current, very difficult test, Goldman Sachs has come in 1st – again. * Goldman Sachs is often described as the best managed Wall Street firm. Is that true? Yes, it is true. Goldman Sachs is the best managed “Wall Street” firm – and the best led. Management is why Goldman Sachs is consistently rated the best firm to work for and gets top ratings from clients all over the world. Superior management is why the firm earns more profit, develops more effective people, has made itself the market leader in the U.S., U.K, Germany, France, China, Japan, and in most major lines of banking business. No other firm comes close. One of the things you will learn in The Partnership is just how Goldman succeeded in making themselves different from any other Wall Street firm. They learned early on that in order to survive, they had to not only make money, but create a culture that was universal, that demanded absolutely loyalty and, most importantly, act as one organism. * Why does Goldman Sachs put so much weight on its “culture”? Goldman Sachs culture works. In the complex, fast-changing, global, 24/7 securities business almost all the important decisions are made in highly specific and complex settings under great time pressure. These decisions cannot be made by headquarters and they cannot be deferred. They must be made locally by local market and business experts thousands of times every day. Rules won’t work. If rules were written for every type of decision in all those different businesses in all the world’s different markets in all the different cultures, the resulting Rule Book would be far too large and complex to read or use. Culture – its way of working – is the universal “stem cell” that enables Goldman Sachs to operate so forcefully in so many different national markets and in so many different businesses. * With all its different business activities all over the world, doesn’t Goldman Sachs have problems with conflicts of interest? Yes! The firm certainly has many, many conflicts of interest. While it could take a defensive approach and try to avoid or minimize those risks of conflicts, the firm believes the more realistic and effective approach is to recognize those risks, be candid about them with clients and counterparties, and actively manage the conflicts. The firm strives to deal with each of them in such thoughtful and effective ways that clients and customers will know Goldman Sachs can be trusted to manage conflicts better than any other firm. This is, of course, an assumption of enormous responsibility – particularly on the scale on which Goldman Sachs operates – so it raises the obvious next question: Who will watch the watcher?
Confessions of a Street Addict
James J. Cramer - 2002
In the most candid and outrageous look at Wall Street since Liar's Poker, Cramer, co-founder of TheStreet.com, radio and television commentator, and for years a premier money manager, takes readers on the wild ride that is Wall Street -- revealing how the game is played, who breaks the rules, and who gets hurt. Confessions of a Street Addict takes us from Cramer's roots in the middle-class Philadelphia suburbs to Harvard, where he began managing money, and then to Goldman Sachs, where he went into business with his wife -- Karen, the "Trading Goddess" -- as his partner. He brilliantly describes the life of a money manager: the frenetic pace, the constant pressure to outperform the market and other fund managers, and the sharklike attacks fund managers make as they circle a fund perceived to be in trouble. Throughout the book Cramer is characteristically outspoken, offering his hard-won insights about the market and everyone in it, himself included. There has never been a more eloquent market insider than Cramer, nor a more high-octane book about Wall Street.
Jack: Straight from the Gut
Jack Welch - 2001
"Congratulations, Mr. Chairman", said Reg. It was a defining moment for American business. So begins the story of a self-made man and a self-described rebel who thrived in one of the most volatile and economically robust eras in U.S. history, while managing to maintain a unique leadership style. In what is the most anticipated book on business management for our time, Jack Welch surveys the landscape of his career running one of the world's largest and most successful corporations.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - 2001
The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile,and The Bed of Procrustes.
The Little Book of Valuation: How to Value a Company, Pick a Stock and Profit
Aswath Damodaran - 2011
In The Little Book of Valuation, expert Aswath Damodaran explains the techniques in language that any investors can understand, so you can make better investment decisions when reviewing stock research reports and engaging in independent efforts to value and pick stocks.Page by page, Damodaran distills the fundamentals of valuation, without glossing over or ignoring key concepts, and develops models that you can easily understand and use. Along the way, he covers various valuation approaches from intrinsic or discounted cash flow valuation and multiples or relative valuation to some elements of real option valuation.Includes case studies and examples that will help build your valuation skills Written by Aswath Damodaran, one of today's most respected valuation experts Includes an accompanying iPhone application (iVal) that makes the lessons of the book immediately useable Written with the individual investor in mind, this reliable guide will not only help you value a company quickly, but will also help you make sense of valuations done by others or found in comprehensive equity research reports.
Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups—Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000
Jason Calacanis - 2017
Now, in this enlightening guide that is sure to become the bible for twenty-first century investors, Calacanis takes potential angels step-by-step through his proven method of creating massive wealth: startups.As Calacanis makes clear, you can get rich—even if you came from humble beginnings (his dad was a bartender, his mom a nurse), didn’t go to the right schools, and weren’t a top student. The trick is learning how angel investors think. Calacanis takes you inside the minds of these successful moneymen, helping you understand how they prioritize and make the decisions that have resulted in phenomenal profits. He guides you step by step through the process, revealing how leading investors evaluate new ventures, calculating the risks and rewards, and explains how the best startups leverage relationships with angel investors for the best results.Whether you’re an aspiring investor or a budding entrepreneur, Angel will inspire and educate you on all the ins of outs. Buckle up for a wild ride into the world of angel investing!
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.
The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing
Jason Kelly - 1998
Since the dot.com crash and ensuing bear market, significant changes have come about in the investing world, and The Neatest Little Guide takes this into account. In this revised edition, readers will learn: € Strategies on how to double the Dow with one simple investment and the latest products required for this approach € Methods investors can use to avoid disasters such as Enron and WorldCom € Thoroughly updated reference lists, including new websites, new software, new brokers, and new publications With the right information for investors to keep pace, and rooted in the principles that made it invaluable from the start, The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing is a resource that no serious investor can be without.
The Manual of Ideas: The Proven Framework for Finding the Best Value Investments
John Mihaljevic - 2013
Written by that publication's managing editor and inspired by its mission to serve as an "idea funnel" for the world's top money managers, this book introduces you to a proven, proprietary framework for finding, researching, analyzing, and implementing the best value investing opportunities. The next best thing to taking a peek under the hoods of some of the most prodigious brains in the business, it gives you uniquely direct access to the thought processes and investment strategies of such super value investors as Warren Buffett, Seth Klarman, Glenn Greenberg, Guy Spier and Joel Greenblatt.Written by the team behind one of the most read and talked-about sources of research and value investing ideas Reviews more than twenty pre-qualified investment ideas and provides an original ranking methodology to help you zero-in on the three to five most compelling investments Delivers a finely-tuned, proprietary investment framework, previously available only to an elite group of TMI subscribers Step-by-step, it walks you through a proven, rigorous approach to finding, researching, analyzing, and implementing worthy ideas
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
Niall Ferguson - 2007
Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it’s the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it’s the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history. With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What’s the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do? This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can’t provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.
The 16% Solution: How to Get High Interest Rates in a Low-Interest World with Tax Lien Certificates
Joel S. Moskowitz - 1994
50,000 first printin
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
A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation
Richard Bookstaber - 2007
The very things done to make markets safer, have, in fact, created a world that is far more dangerous. From the 1987 crash to Citigroup closing the Salomon Arb unit, from staggering losses at UBS to the demise of Long-Term Capital Management, Bookstaber gives readers a front row seat to the management decisions made by some of the most powerful financial figures in the world that led to catastrophe, and describes the impact of his own activities on markets and market crashes. Much of the innovation of the last 30 years has wreaked havoc on the markets and cost trillions of dollars. A Demon of Our Own Design tells the story of man's attempt to manage market risk and what it has wrought. In the process of showing what we have done, Bookstaber shines a light on what the future holds for a world where capital and power have moved from Wall Street institutions to elite and highly leveraged hedge funds.
Bull!: A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982-2004
Maggie Mahar - 2003
Then, the market rose and rapidly gained speed until it peaked above 11,000. Noted journalist and financial reporter Maggie Mahar has written the first book on the remarkable bull market that began in 1982 and ended just in the early 2000s. For almost two decades, a colorful cast of characters such as Abby Joseph Cohen, Mary Meeker, Henry Blodget, and Alan Greenspan came to dominate the market news.This inside look at that 17-year cycle of growth, built upon interviews and unparalleled access to the most important analysts, market observers, and fund managers who eagerly tell the tales of excesses, presents the period with a historical perspective and explains what really happened and why.