. . the noblest and the most infamous in the world, the finest and most vulgar on earth.” The characterization of finance as deceitful, infamous, and vulgar still rings true today – particularly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But, what happened to the fairest, noblest, and finest profession that de la Vega saw?  De la Vega hit on an essential truth that has been forgotten: finance can be just as principled, life-affirming, and worthy as it can be fraught with questionable practices.  Today, finance is shrouded in mystery for outsiders, while many insiders are uneasy with the disrepute of their profession.  How can finance become more accessible and also recover its nobility? Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai, in his “last lecture” to the graduating Harvard MBA class of 2015, took up the cause of restoring humanity to finance. With incisive wit and irony, his lecture drew upon a rich knowledge of literature, film, history, and philosophy to explain the inner workings of finance in a manner that has never been seen before. This book captures Desai’s lucid exploration of the ideas of finance as seen through the unusual prism of the humanities. Through this novel, creative approach, Desai shows that outsiders can access the underlying ideas easily and insiders can reacquaint themselves with the core humanity of their profession. The mix of finance and the humanities creates unusual pairings: Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope are guides to risk management; Jeff Koons becomes an advocate of leverage; and Mel Brooks’s The Producers teaches us about fiduciary responsibility. In Desai’s vision, the principles of finance also provide answers to critical questions in our lives. Among many surprising parallels, bankruptcy teaches us how to react to failure, the lessons of mergers apply to marriages, and the Capital Asset Pricing Model demonstrates the true value of relationships. THE WISDOM OF FINANCE is a wholly unique book, offering a refreshing new perspective on one of the world’s most complex and misunderstood professions.

    From central banks to brokerages to multinationals, institutional investors are flocking to a new generation of exotic and complex options contracts and derivatives. But the promise of ever larger profits also creates the potential for catastrophic trading losses. Now more than ever, the key to trading derivatives lies in implementing preventive risk management techniques that plan for and avoid these appalling downturns. Unlike other books that offer risk management for corporate treasurers, Dynamic Hedging targets the real-world needs of professional traders and money managers. Written by a leading options trader and derivatives risk advisor to global banks and exchanges, this book provides a practical, real-world methodology for monitoring and managing all the risks associated with portfolio management. Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the founder of Empirica Capital LLC, a hedge fund operator, and a fellow at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. He has held a variety of senior derivative trading positions in New York and London and worked as an independent floor trader in Chicago. Dr. Taleb was inducted in February 2001 in the Derivatives Strategy Hall of Fame. He received an MBA from the Wharton School and a Ph.D. from University Paris-Dauphine.

    His instructions were simple. There was only one rule. They could only invest in their ten best ideas to make money.It seemed like a foolproof plan to make a lot of money. What could possibly go wrong? These were some of the greatest minds at work in the markets today - from top European hedge fund managers to Wall Street legends.But most of the investors' great ideas actually lost money. Shockingly, a toss of a coin would have been a better method of choosing whether or not to invest in a stock.Nevertheless, despite being wrong most of the time, many of these investors still ended up making a lot of money.How could they be wrong most of the time and still be profitable? The answer lay in their hidden habits of execution, which until now have only been guessed at from the outside world.This book lays bare those secret habits for the first time, explaining them with real-life data, case studies and stories taken from Freeman-Shor's unique position of managing these investors on a day-to-day basis.A riveting read for investors of every level, this book shows you exactly what to do and what not to do when your big idea is losing or winning - and demonstrates conclusively why the most important thing about investing is always the art of execution.

    Unlike the short-term trading trends that are popular today, Phelps's highly logical, yet radical approach focuses on identifying compounding machines in public markets, buying their stocks, and holding these investments long term for at least ten years. In this indispensable guide, Phelps analyzes what made the big companies of his day so profitable for the diligent, long-term investor. You will learn how to identify and invest in profitable business models without visible growth ceilings that will quickly increase your earnings. Worth its weight in gold (and then some), 100 to 1 in the Stock Market illuminates the way to the path of long-term wealth for you and your heirs. With this classic, yet highly relevant approach, you will pick companies wisely and watch your investments soar! Thomas William Phelps (1902-1992) spent over 40 years in the investing world working as a private investor, columnist, analyst, and financial advisor. His illustrious investing career began just before the stock market crash in 1929 and lasted into the 1970s. In 1927, he began his career with The Wall Street Journal where he was a reporter, news editor, and chief. Beginning in 1936, he edited Barron's National Financial Weekly. From 1949 to 1960, he served as an assistant to the chairman and manager of the economics department at Socony Mobil Oil. Following this venture, he was a partner in the investment firm of Scudder, Stevens & Clark until his retirement in 1970. "One of the five greatest investment books you've never heard of"-- The Daily Reckoning "Of all the books on investing that I've read over the years, 100 to 1 in the stock market one was at once, the most pleasurable and most challenging to my own beliefs."-- Value Walk (ValueWalk.com) "For years we handed out copies of Mr. Phelps book as bonuses."-- Timothy Lutts, Cabot Investing Advice, one of the largest investment advisories and newsletters in the country since 1970

     They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with million-dollar stakes, but those numbers meant nothing to them.  They were accustomed to risking billions.     At the card table that night was Peter Muller, an eccentric, whip-smart whiz kid who’d studied theoretical mathematics at Princeton and now managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDT…when he wasn’t playing his keyboard for morning commuters on the New York subway.  With him was Ken Griffin, who as an undergraduate trading convertible bonds out of his Harvard dorm room had outsmarted the Wall Street pros and made money in one of the worst bear markets of all time.  Now he was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Investment Group, one of the most powerful money machines on earth. There too were Cliff Asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund AQR, a man as famous for his computer-smashing rages as for his brilliance, and Boaz Weinstein, chess life-master and king of the credit default swap, who while juggling $30 billion worth of positions for Deutsche Bank found time for frequent visits to Las Vegas with the famed MIT card-counting team.     On that night in 2006, these four men and their cohorts were the new kings of Wall Street.  Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a  new breed, the quants.  Over the prior twenty years, this species of math whiz --technocrats who make billions not with gut calls or fundamental analysis but with formulas and high-speed computers-- had usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk-takers who’d long been the alpha males the world’s largest casino.  The quants believed that a dizzying, indecipherable-to-mere-mortals cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets.  And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift billions around the globe with the click of a mouse.     Few realized that night, though, that in creating this unprecedented machine, men like Muller, Griffin, Asness and Weinstein had sowed the seeds for history’s greatest financial disaster.     Drawing on unprecedented access to these four number-crunching titans, The Quants tells the inside story of what they thought and felt in the days and weeks when they helplessly watched much of their net worth vaporize – and wondered just how their mind-bending formulas and genius-level IQ’s had led them so wrong, so fast.  Had their years of success been dumb luck, fool’s gold, a good run that could come to an end on any given day?  What if The Truth they sought -- the secret of the markets -- wasn’t knowable? Worse, what if there wasn’t any Truth?   In The Quants, Scott Patterson tells the story not just of these men, but of Jim Simons, the reclusive founder of the most successful hedge fund in history; Aaron Brown, the quant who used his math skills to humiliate Wall Street’s old guard at their trademark game of Liar’s Poker, and years later found himself with a front-row seat to the rapid emergence of mortgage-backed securities; and gadflies and dissenters such as Paul Wilmott, Nassim Taleb, and Benoit Mandelbrot.     With the immediacy of today’s NASDAQ close and the timeless power of a Greek tragedy, The Quants is at once a masterpiece of explanatory journalism, a gripping tale of ambition and hubris…and an ominous warning about Wall Street’s future.

    Short sell Allied Capital. At the time, Allied was a leader in the private financing industry. Einhorn claimed Allied was using questionable accounting practices to prop itself up. Sound familiar? At the time of the original version of "Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story" the outcome of his advice was unknown. Now, the story is complete and we know Einhorn was right. In 2008, Einhorn advised the same conference to short sell Lehman Brothers. And had the market been more open to his warnings, yes, the market meltdown might have been avoided, or at least minimized.Details the gripping battle between Allied Capital and Einhorn's Greenlight CapitalIlluminates how questionable company practices are maintained and, at times, even protected by Wall StreetDescribes the failings of investment banks, analysts, journalists, and government regulatorsDescribes how many parts of the Allied Capital story were replayed in the debate over Lehman Brothers"Fooling Some of the People All of the Time" is an important call for effective government regulation, free speech, and fair play.

    Why? BECAUSE THAT'S HOW WALL STREET WANTS IT"[T]he always irreverent author of the Reformed Broker blog has written an excellent narrative that shares all of your broker's dirty little secrets. Much like Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker captured the essence of 1980s institutional Wall Street, Brown's Backstage Wall Street recreates the boiler room retail brokerage culture of the 1990s and early 2000s in vivid color." --FORBES "With a smirk, a lashing wit, and an appropriate irreverence, Joshua Brown gives voice to what all investment professionals are--or should be--secretly thinking."--MICHAEL SANTOLI, Barron's columnist"The pages of this book are filled with colorful expos�s of misconduct in the way Wall Street presents and sells itself (and its financial products offerings!). . . . Run don't walk to read Brown's chronicles of deception [perpetrated by] those wonderful folks on Wall Street, who nearly bankrupted the world's fi nancial system a few short years ago."--DOUGLAS A. KASS, Seabreeze Partners Management, Inc."Everything you've ever read about Wall Street is a total lie. Everyone is lying to you every day. Until you read this book."--JAMES ALTUCHER, Formula Capital and author of I Was Blind but Now I See"Joshua wants Wall Street to be awesome. You can feel it every day on his amazing blog and in this great book. He is happy to shout when Wall Street drives him crazy. I guarantee you will enjoy this book that describes the action behind the business of Wall Street and his own experiences along the way."--HOWARD LINDZON, Lindzon Capital and founder of StockTwitsJoshua Brown may be the funniest writer on finance today, but Backstage Wall Street could make you cry more than laugh. The buffoons, manipulators, and incompetents Brown parades before us are the stewards of our retirement accounts....What's important is that investors understand the choices before them. Backstage Wall Street goes a long way to taking us backstage, while making us laugh in the process.--BARRON'SAbout the Book: Wall Street is very good at one thing: convincing you to act against your own interests. And there's no one out there better equipped with the knowledge and moxie to explain how it all works than Josh Brown. A man The New York Times referred to as "the Merchant of Snark" and Barron's called "pot-stirring and provocative," Brown worked for 10 years in the industry, a time during which he learned some hard truths about how clients are routinely treated--and how their money is sent on a one-way trip to Wall Street's coffers.Backstage Wall Street reveals the inner workings of the world's biggest money machine and explains how a relatively small confederation of brilliant, sometimes ill-intentioned people fuel it, operate it, and repair it when necessary--none of which is for the good of the average investor.Offering a look that only a long-term insider could provide (and that only a "reformed" insider would want to provide), Brown describes:THE PEOPLE--Why retail brokers always profit--even if you don't THE PRODUCTS--How funds, ETFs, and other products are invented as failsafe profit generators--for the inventors alone THE PITCH--The marketing schemes designed for one thing and one thing only: to separate you from your moneyIt's that bad . . . but there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Brown gives you the knowledge you need to make the right decisions at the right time.Backstage Wall Street is about seeing reality for what it is and adjusting your actions accordingly. It's about learning who and what to steer clear of at all times. And it's about setting the stage for a bright financial future--your own way.

    Samuelson, First American Nobel Prize Winner in Economics "The best book there is about the stock market and all that goes with it." —The New York Times Book Review "Anyone whose orientation is toward where the action is, where the happenings happen, should buy a copy of The Money Game and read it with due diligence." —Book World " 'Adam Smith' is a veteran observer and commentator on the events and people of Wall Street.... His thorough knowledge of financial affairs gives his observations a great degree of authenticity. But the joy of reading this book comes from his delightful sense of humor. He is a lively and ingeniously witty writer who never stoops to acerbity. None of the solemn, sacred cows of Wall Street escapes debunking." —Library Journal

    At the same time, many have lost their hard-earned money trying to invest in financial assets, including debt and equities. Such losses have occurred due to many reasons, such as corporate frauds, weak business models and misallocation of capital by the companies in whose shares unsuspecting investors parked their savings. What options do Indian savers then have to invest in, and build their wealth?Diamonds in the Dust offers Indian savers a simple, yet highly effective, investment technique to identify clean, well-managed Indian companies that have consistently generated outsized returns for investors. Based on in-depth research conducted by the award-winning team at Marcellus Investment Managers, it uses case studies and charts to help readers learn the art and science of investing in the US$3 trillion Indian stock market. The book also debunks many notions of investing that have emerged from the misguided application of Western investment theories in the Indian context. Vital and indispensable, this book will serve as the ultimate manual on investing and provide practical counsel to readers to achieve their financial goals.

    Trading for a Living helps you master all of those three areas: * How to become a cool, calm, and collected trader * How to profit from reading the behavior of the market crowd * How to use a computer to find good trades * How to develop a powerful trading system * How to find the trades with the best odds of success * How to find entry and exit points, set stops, and take profits Trading for a Living helps you discipline your Mind, shows you the Methods for trading the markets, and shows you how to manage Money in your trading accounts so that no string of losses can kick you out of the game. To help you profit even more from the ideas in Trading for a Living, look for the companion volume--Study Guide for Trading for a Living. It asks over 200 multiple-choice questions, with answers and 11 rating scales for sharpening your trading skills. For example: Question Markets rise when * there are more buyers than sellers * buyers are more aggressive than sellers * sellers are afraid and demand a premium * more shares or contracts are bought than sold* I and II * II and III * II and IV * III and IV Answer B. II and III. Every change in price reflects what happens in the battle between bulls and bears. Markets rise when bulls feel more strongly than bears. They rally when buyers are confident and sellers demand a premium for participating in the game that is going against them. There is a buyer and a seller behind every transaction. The number of stocks or futures bought and sold is equal by definition.

    In a seamlessly assembled narrative drawn from interviews, speeches, and exclusive access to the daily journal Cundill kept for forty-five years, Christopher Risso-Gill outlines Cundill's investment approach and provides accounts of his investments and the analytical process that led to their selection. A book for everyday investors as much as professional investors and investment gurus, There's Always Something to Do offers a compelling perspective on global financial markets and on how we can avoid their worst pitfalls and grow our hard-earned capital.

    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!

    Billionaire investors. If we think of them, it’s with a mixture of awe and suspicion. Clearly, they possess a kind of genius—the proverbial Midas Touch. But are the skills they possess transferable? And do they have anything to teach us besides making money? In Richer, Wiser, Happier, William Green draws on interviews that he’s conducted over twenty-five years with many of the world’s greatest investors. As he discovered, their talents extend well beyond the financial realm. The most successful investors are mavericks and iconoclasts who question conventional wisdom and profit vastly from their ability to think more rationally, rigorously, and objectively. They are master game players who consciously maximize their odds of long-term success in markets and life, while also minimizing any risk of catastrophe. They draw powerful insights from many different fields, are remarkably intuitive about trends, practice fanatical discipline, and have developed a high tolerance for pain. As Green explains, the best investors can teach us not only how to become rich, but how to improve the way we think, reach decisions, assess risk, avoid costly errors, build resilience, and turn uncertainty to our advantage. Green ushers us into the lives of more than forty super-investors, visiting them in their offices, homes, and even their places of worship—all to share what they have to teach us. Richer, Wiser, Happier brings together the thinking of many of the greatest investment minds, from Sir John Templeton to Charlie Munger, Jack Bogle to Ed Thorp, Will Danoff to Mohnish Pabrai, Bill Miller to Laura Geritz, Joel Greenblatt to Howard Marks. In explaining how they think and why they win, this landmark book provides gems of insight that will enrich you not only financially but also professionally and personally.

    In Your Money and Your Brain, Jason Zweig explains why smart people make stupid financial decisions -- and what they can do to avoid these mistakes. Zweig, a veteran financial journalist, draws on the latest research in neuroeconomics, a fascinating new discipline that combines psychology, neuroscience, and economics to better understand financial decision making. He shows why we often misunderstand risk and why we tend to be overconfident about our investment decisions. Your Money and Your Brain offers some radical new insights into investing and shows investors how to take control of the battlefield between reason and emotion. Your Money and Your Brain is as entertaining as it is enlightening. In the course of his research, Zweig visited leading neuroscience laboratories and subjected himself to numerous experiments. He blends anecdotes from these experiences with stories about investing mistakes, including confessions of stupidity from some highly successful people. Then he draws lessons and offers original practical steps that investors can take to make wiser decisions. Anyone who has ever looked back on a financial decision and said, "How could I have been so stupid?" will benefit from reading this book.

    He had discovered that when you simplify your investment decisions, you end up getting better returns. As a bonus, you gain more time for family, friends, and other pursuits.The Coffeehouse Investor explains why we should stop thinking about top-rated stocks and mutual funds, shifts in interest rates, and predictions for the economy. Stop trying to beat the stock market average, which few “experts” ever do. Instead, just remember three simple principles: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And save for a rainy day.By focusing more on your passions and creativity and less on the daily ups and downs, you will actually build more wealth—and improve the quality of your life at the same time.