Book picks similar to
The Great Investors: Lessons on Investing from Master Traders by Glen Arnold
finance
investing
investment
non-fiction
Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager
Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager - 2010
government's credit? I mean, if the U.S. defaults, "what bank" is going to be able to make good on that contract? Who are you going to buy that contract from, the Martians? n+1: When does this begin to feel like less of a cyclical thing, like the weather, and more of a permanent, end-of-the-world kind of thing? HFM: When you see me selling apples out on the street, that's when you should go stock up on guns and ammunition.
Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
Bryan Burrough - 1989
An enduring masterpiece of investigative journalism by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, it includes a new afterword by the authors that brings this remarkable story of greed and double-dealings up to date twenty years after the famed deal. The Los Angeles Times calls Barbarians at the Gate, “Superlative.” The Chicago Tribune raves, “It’s hard to imagine a better story...and it’s hard to imagine a better account.” And in an era of spectacular business crashes and federal bailouts, it still stands as a valuable cautionary tale that must be heeded.
The Richest Man in Babylon
George S. Clason - 1926
This is the book that reveals the secret to personal wealth. The Success Secrets of the Ancients—An Assured Road to Happiness and Prosperity Countless readers have been helped by the famous “Babylonian parables,” hailed as the greatest of all inspirational works on the subject of thrift, financial planning, and personal wealth. In language as simple as that found in the Bible, these fascinating and informative stories set you on a sure path to prosperity and its accompanying joys. Acclaimed as a modern-day classic, this celebrated bestseller offers an understanding of—and a solution to—your personal financial problems that will guide you through a lifetime. This is the book that holds the secrets to keeping your money—and making more. The Richest Man in BabylonRead it and recommend it to loved ones—and get on the road to riches.MORE THAN TWO MILLION BOOKS SOLD
Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science
Charles Wheelan - 2002
In fact, you won’t be able to put this bestseller down. In our challenging economic climate, this perennial favorite of students and general readers is more than a good read, it’s a necessary investment—with a blessedly sure rate of return. This revised and updated edition includes commentary on hot topics such as automation, trade, income inequality, and America’s rising debt. Ten years after the financial crisis, Naked Economics examines how policymakers managed the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.Demystifying buzzwords, laying bare the truths behind oft-quoted numbers, and answering the questions you were always too embarrassed to ask, the breezy Naked Economics gives you the tools to engage with pleasure and confidence in the deeply relevant, not so dismal science.
The Ivy Portfolio: How to Invest Like the Top Endowments and Avoid Bear to Markets
Mebane T. Faber - 2009
Using the endowment Policy Portfolios as a guide, the authors illustrate how an investor can develop a strategic asset allocation using an ETF-based investment approach."The Ivy Portfolio" also reveals a novel method for investors to reduce their risk through a tactical asset allocation strategy to protect them from bear markets. The book will also showcase a method to follow the smart money and piggyback the top hedge funds and their stock-picking abilities. With readable, straightforward advice, "The Ivy Portfolio" will show investors exactly how this can be accomplished--and allow them to achieve an unparalleled level of investment success in the process.With all of the uncertainty in the markets today, "The Ivy Portfolio" helps the reader answer the most often asked question in investing today - "What do I do"?
House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
William D. Cohan - 2009
Bear Stearns was about to announce profits of $115 million for the first quarter of 2008, had $17.3 billion in cash on hand, and, as the company incessantly boasted, had been a colossally profitable enterprise in the eighty-five years since its founding.Ten days later, Bear Stearns no longer existed, and the calamitous financial meltdown of 2008 had begun.How this happened – and why – is the subject of William D. Cohan’s superb and shocking narrative that chronicles the fall of Bear Stearns and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street. Bear Stearns serves as the Rosetta Stone to explain how a combination of risky bets, corporate political infighting, lax government regulations and truly bad decision-making wrought havoc on the world financial system.Cohan’s minute-by-minute account of those ten days in March makes for breathless reading, as the bankers at Bear Stearns struggled to contain the cascading series of events that would doom the firm, and as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, New York Federal Reserve Bank President Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke began to realize the dire consequences for the world economy should the company go bankrupt. But HOUSE OF CARDS does more than recount the incredible panic of the first stages of the financial meltdown. William D. Cohan beautifully demonstrates why the seemingly invincible Wall Street money machine came crashing down. He chronicles the swashbuckling corporate culture of Bear Stearns, the strangely crucial role competitive bridge played in the company’s fortunes, the brutal internecine battles for power, and the deadly combination of greed and inattention that helps to explain why the company’s leaders ignored the danger lurking in Bear’s huge positions in mortgage-backed securities.The author deftly portrays larger-than-life personalities like Ace Greenberg, Bear Stearns’ miserly, take-no-prisoners chairman whose memos about re-using paper clips were legendary throughout Wall Street; his profane, colorful rival and eventual heir Jimmy Cayne, whose world-champion-level bridge skills were a lever in his corporate rise and became a symbol of the reasons for the firm’s demise; and Jamie Dimon, the blunt-talking CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who won the astonishing endgame of the saga (the Bear Stearns headquarters alone were worth more than JP Morgan paid for the whole company). Cohan’s explanation of seemingly arcane subjects like credit default swaps and fixed- income securities is masterful and crystal clear, but it is the high-end dish and powerful narrative drive that makes HOUSE OF CARDS an irresistible read on a par with classics such as LIAR’S POKER and BARBARIANS AT THE GATE.Written with the novelistic verve and insider knowledge that made THE LAST TYCOONS a bestseller and a prize-winner, HOUSE OF CARDS is a chilling cautionary tale about greed, arrogance, and stupidity in the financial world, and the consequences for all of us.
Market Mind Games: Profiting from the New Psychology of Risk, Uncertainty, and the Convergence of Trading with Investing
Denise Shull - 2011
Read this first and you will learn that the surest path to success will be to start with yourself; solve that conundrum and challenges like understanding how you do and should react to markets will come to be solvable."--Marvin Zonis, Professor Emeritus, Booth School of Business, The University of Chicago"When it comes to fast-moving global financial markets, professional investors strive to evaluate complex economic conditions from data analysis, economic reasoning, and professional judgment. This is what is taught in business schools. Denise Shull demonstrates how investment decision making is also determined by unconscious emotions and perceptions. "Market Mind Games" is a fascinating book that proposes a new and unexpected hypothesis about the factors that drive financial decision-making."--A.G. Malliaris, Professor of Economics and Finance, Loyola University Chicago"Denise Shull wants us to get in touch with our feelings, not to beat our bare chests and utter primordial screams. Far from it--her techniques are focused on making more money."--"Financial Times""Denise Shull's gem of a book is long overdue. . . . "Market Mind Games"] has made the ability to analyze and overcome our unconscious biases and prejudices available to everyone."--Dr. Donald T. Wargo, Department of Economics, Temple University""Market Mind Games" is iconoclastic to say the very least Pay attention to the last word in the subtitle: "risk." This book will change your perspective on how to approach and think about the markets and your life "--Michael J. Levas, Founder, Senior Managing Principal, and Director of Trading, Olympian Capital Management, LLC"Denise changes the way you look at yourself and investing. Her insights and methods are necessary to succeed in the markets, period."--Jared Levy, Portfolio Manager and author of "Your Options Handbook """Market Mind Games" offers a new school of trading psychology. Truly an important work that needs to be on the bookshelf of every serious market participant."--Mike Bellafiore, author of "One Good Trade""Masterful explanation of not only why emotionless trading is a myth, but how we can take advantage of our natural wiring to gain an edge."--Derek Hernquist, Chief Investment Officer, Integrative Capital, LLC"Shull details ways to learn how you 'feel' before you 'act' so that your buy, sell, or hold decisions become more successful."--E. Bernstein, OPUS Trading"A must-read for those who want to make their livelihood as a professional investor, trader, or algorithmic trading developer."--Larry Tabb, founder and CEO, Tabb Group"Denise Shull enlightens the reader how to effectively unlock one's psychological capital and translate that awareness into clear and concise investment decisions."--Grant Mashek, Managing Member, Palm Equity, LLC"Shull's book is not only a great read but lays out an entirely more effective approach to thinking about any decision that involves the unknown--market related or not."--Leslie Shaw, Ph.D., Behavioral Economics, and trained psychoanalystAbout the Book:What if the mystery of market crashes stems from a simple but total misunderstanding of our own minds? Could everything we think we know about ourselves--intelligence and rationality versus emotion and irrationality--be wildly off the mark? Simply put: yes.With these words, Denise Shull introduces her radical--and supremely rational-- approach to risk. Her vision stems from the indisputable fact that human beings can't make any decision at all without emotion and that emotion gets the first--and last--word when it comes to our perceptions and judgments.Shull should know. She started out managing major accounts for IBM and then chose to research unconscious emotional patterns instead of getting her MBA. Next she became a trader and trading desk manager while continuing to study biopsychology.We are all taught that sidelining our emotions is the best way to make good decisions-- Shull declares the converse: "emotions inform us." Attempting to control them actually increases the risks we take. Shull advocates treating feelings as data, and she convincingly argues that doing so eradicates the baffling question that repeats itself in our heads after making a poor investing decision: "What was I thinking?"Through a series of "lectures," Shull logically but engagingly connects emotions, beliefs, and context to our innate reaction to uncertainty and risk (yes, the two are different). In "Market Mind Games," she merges more than 20 years of studying risk decisions into a single, astoundingly effective strategy.A reasonable approach to emotion is the best and only way to win the investing game. The methods Shull details in "Market Mind Games" shake the foundation of conventional market and decision psychology. And, most important, they work.
All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
Bethany McLean - 2010
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.
Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties
Beth Kobliner - 1996
And who could blame them? These so-called millennials have come of age in the wake of the worst economic crisis in memory, and are now trying to get by in its aftermath. They owe record levels of student loan debt, face sky-high rents, and struggle to live on a budget in an uncertain economy. It’s time for them to get a financial life. For two decades, Beth Kobliner’s bestseller has been the financial bible for people in their twenties and thirties. With her down-to-earth style, she has taught them how to get out of debt, learn to save, and invest for their futures. In this completely revised and updated edition, Kobliner shares brand-new insights and concrete, actionable advice geared to help a new generation of readers form healthy financial habits that will last a lifetime. With fresh material that reflects the changing digital world, Get a Financial Life remains an essential tool for young people learning how to manage their money. From tackling taxes to boosting credit scores, Get a Financial Life can show those just starting out how to decrease their debt, avoid common money mistakes, and navigate the world of personal finance in today’s ever-changing landscape.
Flash Crash: A Trading Savant, a Global Manhunt, and the Most Mysterious Market Crash in History
Liam Vaughan - 2020
In the span of five minutes, a trillion dollars of valuation was lost. The Flash Crash, as it became known, represented the fastest drop in market history. When share values rebounded less than half an hour later, experts around the globe were left perplexed. What had they just witnessed?Navinder Singh Sarao hardly seemed like a man who would shake the world's financial markets to their core. Raised in a working-class neighborhood in West London, Nav was a preternaturally gifted trader who played the markets like a computer game. By the age of thirty, he had left behind London's "trading arcades," working instead out of his childhood home. For years the money poured in. But when lightning-fast electronic traders infiltrated markets and started eating into his profits, Nav built a system of his own to fight back. It worked--until 2015, when the FBI arrived at his door. Depending on whom you ask, Sarao was a scourge, a symbol of a financial system run horribly amok, or a folk hero who took on the tyranny of Wall Street and the high-frequency traders.A real-life financial thriller, Flash Crash uncovers the remarkable, behind-the-scenes narrative of a mystifying market crash, a globe-spanning investigation into international fraud, and the man at the center of them both.
Little Book of Bull's Eye Investing
John Mauldin - 2012
Clinging to outdated strategies and played out market trends are sure ways to miss out on new investments, and in The Little Book of Bull's Eye Investing, acclaimed investment expert John Mauldin teaches you how to read the direction of the markets to make decisions that capitalize on today's investment opportunities. A practical road map to what's in store for the markets to help you stay ahead of the curve, the book debunks many of the myths that have come to govern investment logic, particularly the buy-and-hold, relative return vehicles that Wall Street peddles to unsuspecting investors. Giving you a clear view of the trends shaping the markets right now which are likely to provide investment options for the decade ahead, The Little Book of Bull's Eye Investing teaches the value of careful research before you put your money to work.Whether the market is on its way up or down, there are always excellent opportunities to invest profitably. You just need to know where they are. Looking at how the markets have behaved in the past to make an educated prediction about where they?re going, The Little Book of Bull's Eye Investing explains how to make investment decisions that make sense today, whether you?re trading stocks, bonds, gold, real estate, or anything else.Making the most of the markets is like hitting a moving target?difficult, but not impossible?and with The Little Book of Bull's Eye Investing in hand, you have everything you need to improve your eye for investing and make stable and secure trading decisions that can turn a profit in even the most turbulent of times.
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?
Lessons from the Greatest Stock Traders of All Time
John Boik - 2004
Lessons from the Greatest Stock Traders of All Time makes the choice simple, examining the careers of five traders--Jesse Livermore, Bernard Baruch, Gerald Loeb, Nicolas Darvas, and Bill O'Neil--who, more than any others over the past century, demonstrated tremendous success at conquering Wall Street.This technique-filled book presents numerous ways in which the timeless strategies of these investing icons can be used to tame today's high-speed, unforgiving marketplaces. Comparing and contrasting the successes--and occasional failures--of these five giants of finance, it reveals:What Jesse Livermore did to correctly call every market break between 1917 and 1940How Bill O'Neil stuck to basics to create his famously effective CANSLIM systemThe strategies Nicolas Darvas used to become a self-made millionaire several times over
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.
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.