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mto1985

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I’ve read a ton in the past couple months (just finished school, looking for a job, and taking advantage of the library), but I’ve literally run out of books to read in the Finance/Economics/Politics context.
Does anyone have any good suggestions?
Of the 200 or so I’ve gone through, here are some that I found to be particularly useful and original (they are all a great complement to the CFA curriculum):
1) Mystery of Capital (Hernando De Soto)
2) Guns, Germs, & Steel or Third Chimpanzee (Jared Diamond)
3) The Birth of Plenty (William Bernstein)
4) Hedgehogging (Barton Biggs)
5) Thinking Strategically (Dixit)
6) Supercapitalism (Reich)
7) Mind of the Market (Shermer) or Your Money and Your Brain…(Jason Zweig)
8) Colossus, the price of America’s empire (Niall Ferguson)
9) Supercrunchers (Ayres)
I can’t tell you how many books I’ve looked at were simply variations of Freakonomics or how many economics or finance books are simply repackaging of old materials.
I would love to get some of your feedback on books you found to be particularly interesting, useful, pertinent, or dare i say, life-changing.
 
Sun Tzu’s Art of War (thanks null & nuller)
Greenspan’s new autobiography (I have it on hold at library… not going to pay for it!)
 
I read Greenspans book… Its okay. Nothing incredibly useful. Most of his book is about his life, big whoop, do you really care about his personal routine in the 1980s and 1990s? But he does spend a little time at the end giving some actual insight which I found useful.
 
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
Fooled by Randomness
When Genius Failed
 
Money and the Economy, A Monetarist View: William Poole
Inside the Yield Book: Sydney Homer & Martin Leibowitz
A History of Interest Rates: Sydney Homer
Options, Futures and other Derivatives: John C Hull
Just about anything by Frank Fabozzi…
 
here are some books i’ve read recently:
alexander hamilton, by ron chernow: i really enjoy early american history and the period from the end of the war through the end of hamilton’s time as treas sec were fascinating. if you find you like him, i’m reading the many faces of ah right now and really enjoy it.
john adams, by david mccullough: like i said, i like history.
capitalism and freedom, by milton friedman and the road to serfdom, by friedrich hayek: i’ve also got free to choose and the fatal conceit on my bookshelf; i just really believe in getting government out of business. the primary argument of road to serfdom is against socialism an an economic order, but the same arguments can be made to today surrounding the debates of socialized/nationalized/universal (whichever term you prefer) healthcare.
house of morgan, by ron chernow: very cool. my favorite period was from the turn of the century through ww2. i really enjoyed the interaction of finance and politics. i’ve also got chernow’s book titan on my list to read.
irrational exuberance 2nd ed, by robert shiller: i liked his discussion of historical bubbles and why they happen. he has a nice discussion of behavioral finance, my favorite part of the level 3 curriculum.
the fountainhead, by ayn rand: some say i should’ve read atlas first, but i didn’t. her characters are a bit extreme and unrealistic, but the idea is interesting.
fooled by randomness, by nassim taleb: talks about how the things we commonly ascribe to as skill have a lot more to do with randomness than we’d like to believe.
good to great, by jim collins: i thought it had some good takeaways when i read it, though i can’t recall what those were at the moment.
master of the senate, by robert caro: about lbj’s years in the senate. a great book about how the us senate operates. but lbj was a jerk.
a couple books on my list to read:
the myth of the rational voter, by bryan caplan
the forgotten man, by amity shlaes
also, take them for what they’re worth, but here are a couple lists of books i’ve gone to for books to read:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/03/21/825482...
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/070513/21best.intro.htm
 
is Margin of Safety that good? how does it compare to the other classics? i see its 1200 dollars min.
 
mto1985
- so I assume you’re 23 and you’ve read all the books in your library (!) - you’re either the world’s fastest reader or you have no life….probably both.
i’m an old bugger but here are some on my bookshelf:.
Most are classics and should be re-read say every 10 years:
Investment lessons:
- Where are the customers’ yachts? - Fred Schwed (Wiley)
- Manias, Panics and Crashes - Charles Kindleberger (Wiley)
- Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds - Charles Mackay (Wiley)
- Confusios de Confusiones - Joseph de la Vdga (Wiley)
- Richest man in Babylon - George Classon (Signet)
- Wheels of Fortune - Charles Geisst (Wiley)
- A Fool and his money - John Rothchild (Wiley)
- Reminiscences of a Stock Operator - Edwin Lefevre (Trader Press)
Investment strategy:
- Random walk down wall st - Burton Malkiel (Norton)
versus: - One up on Wall St - Peter Lynch (Simon & Schuster)
- The Zulu Principle - Jim Slater (Orion)
versus: - What works on Wall St - James O’Shaughnessy (McGraw hill)
- The Warren Buffett Way - Hagstrom (Wiley)
- Graham & Dodd’s Security Analysis - Cottle, Murray, Block (McGraw Hill)
versus: - Technical Analysis of Stock Trends - Edwards & Magee (Magee, Boston)
what really happens on Wall st:
- Infectious Greed - Frank Partnoy (Profile)
- Wheel, Deal & Steal - D.Quinn Mills (Prentice Hall)
- The Number - Alex Berenson (Simon & Schuster)
- Wall St on trial - Justin O’Brien (Wiley)
- Liar’s Poker - Michael Lewis
- the mind of wall street - Leon Levy (PublicAffairs)
all versus: CFA code of ethics & Professional standards (CFA)
Wealth in general over history:
- Wealth and Poverty of Nations - David Landes (Little, Brown)
versus: - Adam Smith/ Michael Porter
- Millenium - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (Black Swan)
versus: - Rise and Fall of the Great Powers - Paul Kennedy (Fontana)
- No room at Nature’s Mighty Table - Michael Kile (Demos)
versus: - Malthus
Life changing?
if you want some inspiration to start with, try:
- Market Wizzards (1 & 2) by Jack Schwager (Harper)
versus: - Liar’s Poker - Michael Lewis
when you’ve done with the above, then this will stop you cold:
- Analysis & use of Financial Statements - White, Sondhi, Fried (Wiley)!!!!
- anything by Schweser……
 
Well, I’m too tired to figure out what’s life changing, but here are good investment related books I’ve read recently:
James O’Shaunessy (sp?), What Works on Wall Street. It’s kinda dry, but a very useful read. It also goes pretty quickly because a lot of the book is filled with charts.
Alexander Elder, Come Into My Trading Room, talks a lot about technical analysis and trading discipline.
Curtiss Faity, “The Way of the Turtle,” if you doubt trading strategies have any value, this will make you think.
Drobny, “Inside the House of Money”, I read it a while ago but really liked it.
Taleb, “The Black Swan,” Still reading it, but i like it.
Michael Mauboussin, “More Than You Know” Great book on strategy in general and psychological and money principles. Mauboussin is so smart it makes me feel very dumb.
 
I just read jimmy roger’s commodity book and I was bit disappointed. It was light on insight.
I liked T. Boone Picken’s autobiography.
 
- Analysis & use of Financial Statements - White, Sondhi, Fried (Wiley)!!!!
I read it and it wasn’t too bad….given that I’m accting major
 
I enjoyed An American Hedge Fund (Sykes). Received mixed reviews but it was an entertaining read.
 
null&nuller: your right on both accounts. 22 and no life. Obviously I exaggerate when I say I read all books in library, but most of the books I had an interest in reading.
The library I go to has an online function that accesses the records of all the libraries in the country (about 50), so I can just sit at home and search for the records of all these books, have them delivered to my library and just go through them all and hope to find some good ones. It certainly beats paying $20 for most of these, which is what I used to do.
 
mlh97 Wrote:
——————————————————-
> capitalism and freedom, by milton friedman and the
> road to serfdom, by friedrich hayek: i’ve also got
> free to choose and the fatal conceit on my
> bookshelf; i just really believe in getting
> government out of business. the primary argument
> of road to serfdom is against socialism an an
> economic order, but the same arguments can be made
> to today surrounding the debates of
> socialized/nationalized/universal (whichever term
> you prefer) healthcare.
I appreciate the links
I tried to read friedman, hayek, schumpeter, etc. But, I guess I’m a product of my time and can’t read something more than 20 years old and more than 250 pages. Its a shame. Every now and then I’ll try again to read them but I just feel like their stories and thesis were so grounded in the era, i.e. socialism, pre-computers.
 
mto1985 Wrote:
——————————————————-
I guess I’m a product of my time and can’t
> read something more than 20 years old and more
> than 250 pages. Its a shame. Every now and then
> I’ll try again to read them but I just feel like
> their stories and thesis were so grounded in the
> era, i.e. socialism, pre-computers.
“those who fail to profit from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them”- George Santayana.
ok so if we stick Graham & Dodd on a podcast would you listen to it then? G&D has been the bible of fundamantal investing since 1934 and will probably always be
do me a favour - read (actually read, not skim) any one of the books in my “investment lessons” list (above) - most were written 50+ years ago and they’re all less than 250 pages - and tell me what’s different today?
The players are different and the instuments are different, but it’s the same old song - the same underlying human characteristics at play
eg. How is Kenneth Lay different from Charles Ponzi? How was the south sea bubble diffent from tulips? How is sup-prime different from inverse floaters, etc, etc.
don’t just read 200+ books for the sake of it - absorb, reflect, think…
 
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