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.

    But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark. He just wasn't sure how to do it.  Colleagues at investment banks scoffed at him and investors dismissed him.  Even pros skeptical about housing shied away from the complicated derivative investments that Paulson was just learning about.  But Paulson and a handful of renegade investors such as Jeffrey Greene and Michael Burry began to bet heavily against risky mortgages and precarious financial companies. Timing is everything, though. Initially, Paulson and the others lost tens of millions of dollars as real estate and stocks continued to soar. Rather than back down, however, Paulson redoubled his bets, putting his hedge fund and his reputation on the line.     In the summer of 2007, the markets began to implode, bringing Paulson early profits, but also sparking efforts to rescue real estate and derail him. By year's end, though, John Paulson had pulled off the greatest trade in financial history, earning more than $15 billion for his firm--a figure that dwarfed George Soros's billion-dollar currency trade in 1992.  Paulson made billions more in 2008 by transforming his gutsy move.  Some of the underdog investors who attempted the daring trade also reaped fortunes. But others who got the timing wrong met devastating failure, discovering that being early and right wasn't nearly enough.     Written by the prizewinning reporter who broke the story in The Wall Street Journal, The Greatest Trade Ever is a superbly written, fast-paced, behind-the-scenes narrative of how a contrarian foresaw an escalating financial crisis--that outwitted Chuck Prince, Stanley O'Neal, Richard Fuld, and Wall Street's titans--to make financial history.

    Cohen changed Wall Street. He and his fellow pioneers of the hedge fund industry didn't lay railroads, build factories, or invent new technologies. Rather, they made their billions through speculation, by placing bets in the market that turned out to be right more often than wrong and for this, they gained not only extreme personal wealth but formidable influence throughout society. Hedge funds now oversee more than $3 trillion in assets, and the competition between them is so fierce that traders will do whatever they can to get an edge.Cohen was one of the industry's biggest success stories, the person everyone else in the business wanted to be. Born into a middle-class family on Long Island, he longed from an early age to be a star on Wall Street. He mastered poker in high school, went off to Wharton, and in 1992 launched the hedge fund SAC Capital, which he built into a $15 billion empire, almost entirely on the basis of his wizard like stock trading. He cultivated an air of mystery, reclusiveness, and excess, building a 35,000-square-foot mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, flying to work by helicopter, and amassing one of the largest private art collections in the world. On Wall Street, Cohen was revered as a genius: one of the greatest traders who ever lived.That image was shattered when SAC Capital became the target of a sprawling, seven-year investigation, led by a determined group of FBI agents, prosecutors, and SEC enforcement attorneys. Labeled by prosecutors as a magnet for market cheaters whose culture encouraged the relentless pursuit of edge and even black edge, which is inside information SAC Capital was ultimately indicted and pleaded guilty to charges of securities and wire fraud in connection with a vast insider trading scheme, even as Cohen himself was never charged.Black Edge offers a revelatory look at the gray zone in which so much of Wall Street functions. It's a riveting, true-life legal thriller that takes readers inside the government's pursuit of Cohen and his employees, and raises urgent and troubling questions about the power and wealth of those who sit at the pinnacle of modern Wall Street.

    Written in a way that even the financial novice can easily absorb, this is a new edition of the bestselling guide to understanding and using business accounts and accounting principles.

    Most important, they focus on the decisions we make every day and, using entertaining examples, provide invaluable tips on avoiding the financial faux pas that can cost thousands of dollars each year.

    

    Mark will work through other areas that are typically considered safe, like farmland and real estate, before showing the reader how to align his/her portfolio to withstand a potential crash. Topics covered include: What is a safe haven investment and how do they fit in a portfolio? Silver and gold Real Estate, Art, & Farmland Dividends & Hedge Funds Derivatives & Tail Hedging What you, as an investor, should ultimately do

    Drastic changes are clearly in order, but no new model has yet been implemented. Steven Drobny explores a new model from a simple starting point--by consulting the traders and managers who actually made money during this profoundly difficult period. In The Invisible Hands, top global macro managers reveal their own (clearly successful) approaches to markets and risk, suggesting important tenets for money management in a future, precarious world.Providing money managers and investors with the proven expertise of the best and most successful players in money management and detailing many specific elements of their risk management processes, The Invisible HandsOutlines investment strategies for the rocky road ahead Provides guidance on how real money managers can implement certain elements of macro hedge fund strategies, developing a new paradigm of portfolio construction anchored in superior risk management Reveals intimate aspects of the investment processes of some of today's top hedge fund managers The book highlights the similarities among successful traders, showing that the investment process should be anchored in understanding the true risk-adjusted returns in your portfolio.

    Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers?According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. And the full story, in all of its complexity and detail, is like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Almost everyone has missed the big picture. Almost no one has put all the pieces together.All the Devils Are Here goes back several decades to weave the hidden history of the financial crisis in a way no previous book has done. It explores the motivations of everyone from famous CEOs, cabinet secretaries, and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers, analysts, and Wall Street traders. It delves into the powerful American mythology of homeownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature.Among the devils you'll meet in vivid detail:• Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, who dreamed of spreading homeownership to the masses, only to succumb to the peer pressure-and the outsized profits-of the sleaziest subprime lending.• Roland Arnall, a respected philanthropist and diplomat, who made his fortune building Ameriquest, a subprime lending empire that relied on blatantly deceptive lending practices.• Hank Greenberg, who built AIG into a Rube Goldberg contraption with an undeserved triple-A rating, and who ran it so tightly that he was the only one who knew where all the bodies were buried.• Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, aloof and suspicious, who suffered from "Goldman envy" and drove a proud old firm into the ground by promoting cronies and pushing out his smartest lieutenants.• Lloyd Blankfein, who helped turn Goldman Sachs from a culture that famously put clients first to one that made clients secondary to its own bottom line.• Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae, who (like his predecessors) bullied regulators into submission and let his firm drift away from its original, noble mission.• Brian Clarkson of Moody's, who aggressively pushed to increase his rating agency's market share and stock price, at the cost of its integrity.• Alan Greenspan, the legendary maestro of the Federal Reserve, who ignored the evidence of a growing housing bubble and turned a blind eye to the lending practices that ultimately brought down Wall Street-and inflicted enormous pain on the country.Just as McLean's The Smartest Guys in the Room was hailed as the best Enron book on a crowded shelf, so will All the Devils Are Here be remembered for finally making sense of the meltdown and its consequences.

    Perhaps you thought of grocery stores or something sexy like internet retailing, but chances are you didn’t think of banking. Yet, most likely you interact with a bank every time you’re paid and when you pay your bills. Banks facilitate the flow of money through the economy and even if you don’t interact with a bank daily, the businesses you deal with on a daily basis do. For all the interaction people have with banks, few understand how they work or why they work. Even fewer understand why they should consider including bank stocks in their investment portfolio. There are a lot of misconceptions about banks, including understanding what they are and what they do. For many people the word “bank” evokes images of receiving a toaster upon opening an account, or thoughts of security related to the storing of precious items in a safety deposit box. Others might go further and tap their inner Michael Moore and talk about how banks are greedy and evil. It’s our belief that banks aren’t just places to store idle savings (on which you receive virtually nothing in interest) or to cash checks, but that they should be an integral part of an investor’s portfolio. The goal of this book is to provide you with a foundation and framework with which you can both begin to understand banks, but also learn the basic tools used to analyze banks as investments.

    By examining the three keys to successful real estate investing - selection, taxation and protection - this book shows what it takes.

    Indeed, there is a direct line between the record-shattering investing performance of Buffett (and other value investors) and Graham’s life. In six books and dozens of papers, Graham—known as the "Dean of Wall Street"—left an extensive account of an investing system that, as Buffett can attest, actually works! This biography of Benjamin Graham, the first written with access to his posthumously published memoirs, explains Graham’s most essential wealth-creation concepts while telling the colorful story of his amazing business career and his multifaceted, unconventional personal life. The author distills the best from Graham’s extensive published works and draws from personal interviews he conducted with Warren Buffett, Charles Brandes, and many other top US and global value investors as well as Graham’s surviving children and friends, weaving Graham’s transformational ideas into the narrative of a momentous life and legacy. Warren Buffett once said, "No one ever became poor by reading Graham." By the same token, no one will ever become uninspired by reading Carlen’s lively account of Benjamin Graham’s fascinating life and time-tested techniques for generating wealth.

    In Investing In One Lesson, investment guru Mark Skousen clearly and convincingly reveals the reasons for the seemingly perverse, unpredictable nature of the stock market. Drawing upon his decades of experience as an investment advisor, writer, and professor, Dr. Skousen explains in one spirited, easy-to-follow lesson why stock prices fluctuate with such apparent irrationality. Lifting back the veil of perplexity and confusion that surrounds the workings of the stock market, Dr. Skousen explains:*Why good news for the economy is often bad news for the stock market*Why stocks of old, established companies in shrinking industries tend to be a better investment than shares in rapidly growing firms in cutting-edge fields*Why stock prices can suddenly skyrocket or collapse--regardless of market fundamentals*Why initial public offerings often enrich insiders at the expense of the majority of investors*How Wall Street is like a giant casino--and how it isn'tThe perfect investment primer, Investing In One Lesson provides an introduction to everything from day trading to contrary investing to chart-based techniques. Dr. Skousen's book concludes with a comprehensive but simple investment strategy to maximize your returns without having to dedicate countless hours to researching the market. Dr. Skousen packs his book with entertaining personal and professional anecdotes illustrating his central point--that the business of investing is not the same as investing in a business. He offers investors a wide-ranging but accessible course on investing history, psychology, and strategy--all in one lesson.

    . . or a New Positive Force Helping to Drive the Economy . . .   The untold story of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone, the financier and his financial powerhouse that avoided the self-destructive tendencies of Wall Street. David Carey and John Morris show how Blackstone (and other private equity firms) transformed themselves from gamblers, hostile-takeover artists, and ‘barbarians at the gate’ into disciplined, risk-conscious investors. The financial establishment—banks and investment bankers such as Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Lehman, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley—were the cowboys, recklessly assuming risks, leveraging up to astronomical levels and driving the economy to the brink of disaster. Blackstone is now ready to break out once again since it is sitting on billions of dollars that can be invested at a time when the market is starved for capital.  The story of a financial revolution—the greatest untold success story on Wall Street: Not only have Blackstone and a small coterie of competitors wrested control of corporations around the globe, but they have emerged as a major force on Wall Street, challenging the likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for dominance. Great human interest story: How Blackstone went from two guys and a secretary to being one of Wall Street’s most powerful institutions, far outgrowing its much older rival KKR; and how Steve Schwarzman, with a pay packet one year of $398 million and $684 million from the Blackstone IPO, came to epitomize the spectacular new financial fortunes amassed in the 2000s. Controversial: Analyzes the controversies surrounding Blackstone and whether it and other private equity firms suck the lifeblood out of companies to enrich themselves—or whether they are a force that helps make the companies they own stronger and thereby better competitors. The story by two insiders with access: Insightful and hard-hitting, filled with never-before-revealed details about the workings of a heretofore secretive company that was the personal fiefdom of Schwarzman and Peter Peterson. Forward-looking: How Blackstone and private equity will drive the economy and provide a model for how financing will work.

    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.