The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age


James Dale Davidson - 1997
    The Sovereign Individual details strategies necessary for adapting financially to the next phase of Western civilization. Few observers of the late twentieth century have their fingers so presciently on the pulse of the global political and economic realignment ushering in the new millennium as do James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. Their bold prediction of disaster on Wall Street in Blood in the Streets was borne out by Black Tuesday. In their ensuing bestseller, The Great Reckoning, published just weeks before the coup attempt against Gorbachev, they analyzed the pending collapse of the Soviet Union and foretold the civil war in Yugoslavia and other events that have proved to be among the most searing developments of the past few years. In The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg explore the greatest economic and political transition in centuries—the shift from an industrial to an information-based society. This transition, which they have termed "the fourth stage of human society," will liberate individuals as never before, irrevocably altering the power of government. This outstanding book will replace false hopes and fictions with new understanding and clarified values.

Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information


Robert Wright - 1988
    It is an easy read that is also witty and can be read in one sitting.

House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again


Atif Mian - 2014
    More than four million homes were lost to foreclosures. Is it a coincidence that the United States witnessed a dramatic rise in household debt in the years before the recession—that the total amount of debt for American households doubled between 2000 and 2007 to $14 trillion? Definitely not. Armed with clear and powerful evidence, Atif Mian and Amir Sufi reveal in House of Debt how the Great Recession and Great Depression, as well as the current economic malaise in Europe, were caused by a large run-up in household debt followed by a significantly large drop in household spending. Though the banking crisis captured the public’s attention, Mian and Sufi argue strongly with actual data that current policy is too heavily biased toward protecting banks and creditors. Increasing the flow of credit, they show, is disastrously counterproductive when the fundamental problem is too much debt. As their research shows, excessive household debt leads to foreclosures, causing individuals to spend less and save more. Less spending means less demand for goods, followed by declines in production and huge job losses. How do we end such a cycle? With a direct attack on debt, say Mian and Sufi.  More aggressive debt forgiveness after the crash helps, but as they illustrate, we can be rid of painful bubble-and-bust episodes only if the financial system moves away from its reliance on inflexible debt contracts. As an example, they propose new mortgage contracts that are built on the principle of risk-sharing, a concept that would have prevented the housing bubble from emerging in the first place. Thoroughly grounded in compelling economic evidence, House of Debt offers convincing answers to some of the most important questions facing the modern economy today: Why do severe recessions happen? Could we have prevented the Great Recession and its consequences? And what actions are needed to prevent such crises going forward?

The Behavioral Investor


Daniel Crosby - 2018
    Joint Gold medallist at the Axiom Business Book Awards 2019 - Personal Finance / Retirement Planning / Investing. In The Behavioral Investor, psychologist and asset manager Dr. Daniel Crosby examines the sociological, neurological and psychological factors that influence our investment decisions and sets forth practical solutions for improving both returns and behavior. Readers will be treated to the most comprehensive examination of investor behavior to date and will leave with concrete solutions for refining decision-making processes, increasing self-awareness and constraining the fatal flaws to which most investors are prone. The Behavioral Investor takes a sweeping tour of human nature before arriving at the specifics of portfolio construction, rooted in the belief that it is only as we come to a deep understanding of "why" that we are left with any clue as to "how" we ought to invest. The book is comprised of three parts, which are as follows: - Part One - An explication of the sociological, neurological and physiological impediments to sound investment decision-making. Readers will leave with an improved understanding of how externalities impact choices in nearly imperceptible ways and begin to understand the impact of these pressures on investment selection. - Part Two - Coverage of the four primary psychological tendencies that impact investment behavior. Although human behavior is undoubtedly complex, in an investment context our choices are largely driven by one of the four factors discussed herein. Readers will emerge with an improved understanding of their own behavior, increased humility and a lens through which to vet decisions of all types. - Part Three - Illuminates the "so what" of Parts One and Two and provides a framework for managing wealth in a manner consistent with the realities of our contextual and behavioral shortcomings. Readers will leave with a deeper understanding of the psychological underpinnings of popular investment approaches such as value and momentum and appreciate why all types of successful investing have psychology at their core. Wealth, truly considered, has at least as much to do with psychological as financial wellbeing. The Behavioral Investor aims to enrich readers in the most holistic sense of the word, leaving them with tools for compounding both wealth and knowledge.

The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust


Diana B. Henriques - 2011
    Many have speculated about what might have happened or what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story -- until now.In The Wizard of Lies, Diana B. Henriques of The New York Times -- who has led the paper’s coverage of the Madoff scandal since the day the story broke -- has written the definitive book on the man and his scheme, drawing on unprecedented access and more than one hundred interviews with people at all levels and on all sides of the crime, including Madoff’s first interviews for publication since his arrest. Henriques also provides vivid details from the various lawsuits, government investigations, and court filings that will explode the myths that have come to surround the story.A true-life financial thriller, The Wizard of Lies contrasts Madoff's remarkable rise on Wall Street, where he became one of the country’s most trusted and respected traders, with dramatic scenes from his accelerating slide toward self-destruction. It is also the most complete account of the heartbreaking personal disasters and landmark legal battles triggered by Madoff’s downfall -- the suicides, business failures, fractured families, shuttered charities -- and the clear lessons this timeless scandal offers to Washington, Wall Street, and Main Street.

How to Be Rich


J. Paul Getty - 1965
    Paul Getty's secrets on making money and getting rich in this "excellent How To book from a $$$ and sense man" (Kirkus Reviews).There are plenty of books on making money by men who haven't made much. But if J. Paul Getty, who Fortune magazine called "the richest man in the world," doesn't know how, who does? Here the billionaire businessman discloses the secrets of his success--and provides a blueprint for those who want to follow in his footsteps. And he goes beyond the matter of making money to the question of what to do with it."Getty says it: 'You can be rich.'"--New York Herald Tribune "Aimed at the rising young business executive."--Albany Times-Union

The Wealthy Gardener: Life Lessons on Prosperity between Father and Son


John Soforic - 2018
    . . The Wealthy Gardener is an intimate classic on money and success because it was written by a financially independent father for his ambitious son.The father and son met weekly to discuss lessons on prosperity. A parable was used to clarify financial insights and maintain the son’s interest. This private education between the father and son lasted two years. These two years culminated in this remarkable book.It is a treasure that you’ll want to keep on your desktop as a reference guide, review many times, and refer to your children, nieces, nephews and friends. Topics you’ll explore in the book. . . How the pursuit of wealth can be a noble adventure Why earning excess money is wise and necessary Why work that fulfills you is vital to amassing wealth How to surmount obstacles that trap the masses in debt and wage slavery How to engage free time to win your freedom How to use financial fears as compelling motivators How to tap intuition to sense opportunities and avoid calamity How to transform your financial life within five years How to cause lucky breaks through mental practices How to amass enough money to never again have to worry about money Excerpt from the book. . . They dubbed him the Wealthy Gardener due to his vast fortune and his passion for backyard gardening. The silly nickname stuck, and he didn't object to it. Instead, within a year he renamed his vineyards The Wealthy Gardens.He enjoyed the name because it reminded him of a metaphor comparing life to a plot of land.Gardeners are not afraid of working hard to shape their landscape, but they are also aware of a mysterious Unseen Force that operates behind the scenes to make the plants grow.

Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street


Sheelah Kolhatkar - 2017
    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.

The Art of Value Investing: How the World's Best Investors Beat the Market


John Heins - 2013
    What market inefficiencies will I try to exploit? How will I generate ideas? What will be my geographic focus? What analytical edge will I hope to have? What valuation methodologies will I use? What time horizon will I typically employ? How many stocks will I own? How specifically will I decide to buy or sell? Will I hedge, and how? How will I keep my emotions from getting the best of me?Authors Tilson and Heins have delegated the task of providing answers to such questions to the experts: the market-beating money managers to whom they’ve had unparalleled access as the co-founders of leading investment newsletter Value Investor Insight. That includes such hedgefund superstars as Julian Robertson, Seth Klarman, Leon Cooperman, David Einhorn, Bill Ackman and Joel Greenblatt, as well as mutual-fund luminaries including Marty Whitman, Mason Hawkins, Jean-Marie Eveillard, Bill Nygren and Bruce Berkowitz.Who should read The Art of Value Investing? It is as vital a resource for the just-starting-out investor as for the sophisticated professional one. The former will find a comprehensive guidebook for defining a sound investment strategy from A-to-Z; the latter will find all aspects of his or her existing strategy challenged or reconfirmed by the provocative thinking of their most-successful peers. It also is a must-read for any investor – institutional or individual – charged with choosing the best managers for the money they are allocating to equities. Choosing the right managers requires knowing all the right questions to ask as well as the answers worthy of respect and attention – both of which are delivered in The Art of Value Investing.

Big Money Thinks Small: Biases, Blind Spots, and Smarter Investing


Joel Tillinghast - 2017
    They may make a lucky bet, realize a sizable profit, and find themselves full of confidence. Their next high-stakes gamble might backfire, not only hitting them in the balance sheet but also taking a mental and emotional toll. Even veteran investors can be caught off guard: a news item may suddenly cause havoc for an industry they've invested in; crowd mentality among fellow investors may skew the market; a CEO may turn out to be unprepared to effectively guide a company. How can one stay focused in such a volatile profession? If you can't trust your past successes to plan and predict, how can you avoid risky situations in the future?In Big Money Thinks Small, veteran fund manager Joel Tillinghast shows investors how to avoid making these mistakes. He offers a set of simple but crucial steps to successful investing, including: - Know yourself, how you arrive at decisions, and how you might be susceptible to self-deception.- Make decisions based on your own expertise, and do not invest in what you don't understand.- Select only trustworthy and capable colleagues and collaborators.- Learn how to identify and avoid investments with inherent flaws.- Always search for bargains, and never forget that the first responsibility of an investor is to identify mispriced stocks.Patience and methodical planning will pay far greater dividends than flashy investments. Tillinghast teaches readers how to learn from their mistakes--and his own, giving investors the tools to ask the right questions in any situation and to think objectively and generatively about portfolio management.

Naked Money: A Revealing Look at Our Financial System


Charles Wheelan - 2016
    Yet even children recognize that tearing one into small pieces is an act of inconceivable stupidity. What makes a $20 bill actually worth twenty dollars? In the third volume of his best-selling Naked series, Charles Wheelan uses this seemingly simple question to open the door to the surprisingly colorful world of money and banking.The search for an answer triggers countless other questions along the way: Why does paper money (“fiat currency” if you want to be fancy) even exist? And why do some nations, like Zimbabwe in the 1990s, print so much of it that it becomes more valuable as toilet paper than as currency? How do central banks use the power of money creation to stop financial crises? Why does most of Europe share a common currency, and why has that arrangement caused so much trouble? And will payment apps, bitcoin, or other new technologies render all of this moot?In Naked Money, Wheelan tackles all of the above and more, showing us how our banking and monetary systems should work in ideal situations and revealing the havoc and suffering caused in real situations by inflation, deflation, illiquidity, and other monetary effects. Throughout, Wheelan’s uniquely bright-eyed, whimsical style brings levity and clarity to a subject often devoid of both. With illuminating stories from Argentina, Zimbabwe, North Korea, America, China, and elsewhere around the globe, Wheelan demystifies the curious world behind the paper in our wallets and the digits in our bank accounts.

A Mathematician Plays The Stock Market


John Allen Paulos - 2003
    In A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market , best-selling author John Allen Paulos employs his trademark stories, vignettes, paradoxes, and puzzles to address every thinking reader's curiosity about the market -- Is it efficient? Is it random? Is there anything to technical analysis, fundamental analysis, and other supposedly time-tested methods of picking stocks? How can one quantify risk? What are the most common scams? Are there any approaches to investing that truly outperform the major indexes? But Paulos's tour through the irrational exuberance of market mathematics doesn't end there. An unrequited (and financially disastrous) love affair with WorldCom leads Paulos to question some cherished ideas of personal finance. He explains why "data mining" is a self-fulfilling belief, why "momentum investing" is nothing more than herd behavior with a lot of mathematical jargon added, why the ever-popular Elliot Wave Theory cannot be correct, and why you should take Warren Buffet's "fundamental analysis" with a grain of salt. Like Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street , this clever and illuminating book is for anyone, investor or not, who follows the markets -- or knows someone who does.

Warren Buffett: The Ultimate Guide To Investing like Warren Buffet. Learn the Warren Buffet Way, the Warren Buffett Portfolio and the Warren Buffett Stocks


Richard Borrows - 2015
    Learn the Warren Buffet Way, the Warren Buffett Portfolio and the Warren Buffett Stocks The stock market has developed a reputation among the people of the world as a mystical entity. It has become a realm with the top closed in on Wall Street with a circle of seemingly impenetrable suits even though the reality is that anyone can become an investor. Although the average Joe might be at an immediate disadvantage in terms of safety funds and insider knowledge on the best deals and short term fluctuations of a stock, there are most definitely options such as mutual funds like index funds that are easy to use and relatively safe in comparison to filling a portfolio with a narrow range of risky securities. Warren Buffett is known today as a massively successful entrepreneur and investor. However, all successful people had to make their way from the beginning, Warren Buffett included. It is often both inspiring and a key to understanding to look at a successful person’s journey to success, and so in this book I cover Warren Buffett’s success story, the Warren Buffett Way, his portfolio and stocks, quotes, and tips. I hope that with this book, you will not only learn to be a smart investor, but become successful in more ways than one while gaining insight into the business world as a whole. Specific topics covered in this book include: ● Warren Buffett’s Road to Success ● The Warren Buffett Way ● The Warren Buffett Portfolio ● The Warren Buffett Stocks ● Motivational Warren Buffett Quotes ● Final Warren Buffett Investing Tips

Everyday Millionaires: How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth--And How You Can Too


Chris Hogan - 2019
    You'll learn how millionaires live on less than they make, avoid debt, invest, are disciplined and responsible!This book is based on the largest study EVER conducted on 10,000 U.S. millionaires--and the results will shock you! You'll learn that building wealth has almost NOTHING to do with your income or your background! It doesn't matter where you come from. It matters where you're going.Most people think it takes crazy investing knowledge, a giant salary, a streak of luck, or a huge inheritance to become a millionaire. But that couldn't be further from the truth! Here's what you need to understand: if you're willing to do the work--if you'll follow the stuff we teach, if you'll commit to our plan--then you CAN become a millionaire.

Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors


Michael E. Porter - 1980
    Porter's Competitive Strategy has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world. Electrifying in its simplicity -- like all great breakthroughs -- Porter's analysis of industries captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. Porter introduces one of the most powerful competitive tools yet developed: his three generic strategies -- lowest cost, differentiation, and focus -- which bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. He shows how competitive advantage can be defined in terms of relative cost and relative prices, thus linking it directly to profitability, and presents a whole new perspective on how profit is created and divided. In the almost two decades since publication, Porter's framework for predicting competitor behavior has transformed the way in which companies look at their rivals and has given rise to the new discipline of competitor assessment. More than a million managers in both large and small companies, investment analysts, consultants, students, and scholars throughout the world have internalized Porter's ideas and applied them to assess industries, understand competitors,, and choose competitive positions. The ideas in the book address the underlying fundamentals of competition in a way that is independent of the specifics of the ways companies go about competing. Competitive Strategy has filled a void in management thinking. It provides an enduring foundation and grounding point on which all subsequent work can be built. By bringing a disciplined structure to the question of how firms achieve superior profitability, Porter's rich frameworks and deep insights comprise a sophisticated view of competition unsurpassed in the last quarter-century.