Here are 54 books that How Markets Work fans have personally recommended if you like
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When I was growing up, I saw family members and friends, who were otherwise smart people who could master other aspects of their lives, have difficulty with personal finance decisions and investing. When my dad was laid off during a recession, he had some retirement money distributed to him, and I got interested in investing as he researched and tried with difficulty to handle this money himself. In my young adult years, I was a sponge to learn as much as I could about personal finance.
I first read this book as required reading for a college course, and it greatly changed how I thought about investing.
Over the years, I’ve read updated editions, and it never gets stale and always includes new information and insights. But the foundational issues have stood the test of time and remain in the newest edition.
I also love this book because it introduced me at a young age to mutual funds and Vanguard.
Today's stock market is not for the faint hearted. At a time of frightening volatility, the answer is to turn to Burton G. Malkiel's advice in his reassuring, authoritative, gimmick-free and perennially best-selling guide to investing. Long established as the first book to purchase before starting a portfolio, A Random Walk Down Wall Street now features new material on "tax-loss harvesting"; the current bitcoin bubble and automated investment advisers; as well as a brand-new chapter on factor investing and risk parity. And as always, Malkiel's core insights-on stocks and bonds, as well as investment trusts, home ownership and tangible assets…
My entire career has been spent in finance. From life insurance to central banks, from stock exchanges to post-trade clearing and settlement, this is all I’ve ever done. My college degrees include BSBA in Business/Marketing, MBA in Management, and PhD in Economics. In addition to knowing what a lot of people know about finance, I also worked inside the “black box” of the Federal Reserve System and depository trust and clearing corporations (in 4 cities, on 2 continents). Therefore, I know more about the plumbing of stock market infrastructure than most people who have careers (and education) as long as mine.
I started working at Depository Trust Company in New York in September 1987 – a month later the “Black Monday” stock market crash happened! At the time, it was very difficult to see exactly what caused it. “When you are up to your neck in alligators, it is hard to remember why you drained the swamp!” This book explains how Wall Street banks hatched all those alligator eggs by hiring MIT math-whizz-kids and turning them loose without explaining the simplest thing about the stock market to them. One of the errors in their models was that they did not take bank holidays into account when calculating the time value of stocks and option prices.
Inside markets, innovation, and risk Why do markets keep crashing and why are financial crises greater than ever before? As the risk manager to some of the leading firms on Wall Street-from Morgan Stanley to Salomon and Citigroup-and a member of some of the world's largest hedge funds, from Moore Capital to Ziff Brothers and FrontPoint Partners, Rick Bookstaber has seen the ghost inside the machine and vividly shows us a world that is even riskier than we think. The very things done to make markets safer, have, in fact, created a world that is far more dangerous. From the…
My entire career has been spent in finance. From life insurance to central banks, from stock exchanges to post-trade clearing and settlement, this is all I’ve ever done. My college degrees include BSBA in Business/Marketing, MBA in Management, and PhD in Economics. In addition to knowing what a lot of people know about finance, I also worked inside the “black box” of the Federal Reserve System and depository trust and clearing corporations (in 4 cities, on 2 continents). Therefore, I know more about the plumbing of stock market infrastructure than most people who have careers (and education) as long as mine.
This was required reading in my MBA program at Golden Gate University. In fact, the economics teacher, Joe Fuhrig, inspired me to go on for my PhD in Economics at New York University. The book explains how economics isn’t just about mathematical models: it is about how people think and behave. Once you learn to think like an economist, you will find investing (and even grocery shopping!) a completely different experience.
Intended primarily for one semester survey courses in general economics, this text also provides practical content to current and aspiring industry professionals.
Learn how to think like an economist.
The Economic Way of Thinking goes beyond explaining the basic principles of micro- and macroeconomic analysis by showing readers a method of reasoning that teaches them how to apply these principles as tools. The authors expose readers to a method of reasoning that makes them think like an economist through example and application and also shows them how not to think, by exposing errors in popular economic reasoning.
My entire career has been spent in finance. From life insurance to central banks, from stock exchanges to post-trade clearing and settlement, this is all I’ve ever done. My college degrees include BSBA in Business/Marketing, MBA in Management, and PhD in Economics. In addition to knowing what a lot of people know about finance, I also worked inside the “black box” of the Federal Reserve System and depository trust and clearing corporations (in 4 cities, on 2 continents). Therefore, I know more about the plumbing of stock market infrastructure than most people who have careers (and education) as long as mine.
Co-author Ken Rogoff taught my PhD course in Global Economics while he was a visiting professor at NYU (from Princeton). We used Foundations of International Macroeconomics as our textbook; Ken was writing the book with Maurice Obstfeld. When I turned in a handful of pages to him with editorial corrections, he hired me to edit the rest of the book and a research paper for him! It caused quite a stir among my peers when Ken thanked me by name when the article was published (JEL, June 1996). This book traces eight hundred years of financial crises to demonstrate that they are, in fact, predictable. Economists and policymakers are taken by surprise only because they do not learn the lessons from one crisis to the next.
Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary…
I am Rubén Villahermosa, independent trader and author. My logical and rational mind led me to question the why of market movements, which allowed me to learn the principles of the Wyckoff method. I have deepened in the study of the interaction between supply and demand through high-level Technical Analysis tools such as Wyckoff, VSA, Price Action, Volume Profile, and Order Flow; knowledge that I share through my books from principles of honesty, transparency, and responsibility.
In financial markets, knowing what the large trader is doing is vital. In his book, Tom Williams, who was a syndicated trader, taught us the main signs that allow us to identify the participation of the large traders on the chart, which allows us to make judicious analyses about where the price is most likely to go.
I’ve been an independent investor for nearly 25 years. In my previous life as an employee, I was a research actuary for a firm of pension consultants, and then a university lecturer. I left my last academic job at the age of 35 because I had made enough money to survive, and freedom was worth more to me than a salary. FIRE (Financial Independence – Retire Early) is what it’s called these days, but with two differences. First, I’m not retired: I spend most of my time on investing, but entirely on my own terms. Second, and relatedly, I’m an active investor, albeit a cheap one, nearly as cheap as an index fund.
A star business has market leadership of a niche, where the niche is itself growing fast. This is arguably close to a tautology, but it is also quite a rare thing to find.
This book is about how to spot these star businesses at an early stage, and the enormous returns which can flow from doing so. Much of my wealth has come from doing this a few times (probably largely by luck).
It also makes interesting suggestions about how to create and manage a star business, albeit this is not something that I’ve ever tried myself.
Richard Koch has made over GBP100 million from spotting 'Star' businesses. In his new book, he shares the secrets of his success - and shows how you too can identify and enrich yourself from 'Stars'. Star businesses are ventures operating in a high-growth sector - and are the leaders in their niche of the market. Stars are rare. But with the help of this book and a little patience, you can find one, or create one yourself.
THE STAR PRINCIPLE is a vital book for any budding entrepreneur or investor (of grand or modest means). It is also invaluable for…
I am the author of The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing and The 3% Signal, among other financial books, and editor of The Kelly Letter. Despite having been ranked by CXO Advisory as one of the best stock-market forecasters, I gave up the practice in favor of price reaction. I realized that nobody knows where stocks are headed, myself included, and set out to find ways to beat the market without forecasting—and succeeded. My readers and I are now much happier and wealthier.
This monthly approach uses three-month momentum to select two funds from a pool of four stock funds and two bond funds. The stock indexes are the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, Russell 2000, and Nasdaq, i.e. US large caps, mid caps, small caps, and tech. It’s not a revolutionary idea but provides a good introduction to major asset class switching, which runs circles around pundit guessing games. If you do nothing but swear off gut-guessing in favor of price reaction, you’ll beat almost everybody—including the supposed pros.
First step: don't trade stocks. In a radical departure from most investment books, a former day trader demonstrates how a simple asset allocation strategy that 'adapts' to changing market conditions has delivered a 12% average annual return over the past 10 years.
What does 12% mean?
If you're familiar with investing basics, you'll know that figure comes close to doubling the average return of the benchmark S&P 500. It also outperforms 99% of all mutual funds.
But what's outperformance without protection? When the S&P 500 crashed in 2008 and lost 37% of its value,…
After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1989 with an LAS degree in communications and a knack for artwork, I had no idea what I wanted to do. That was until my brother pulled me from my low-paid art job in Chicago to work as a clerk on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. I eventually became a trader on that same floor, as well as an oil and gas dealer in New York. Screaming and yelling in the trading pits while money moved back and forth with a shout and a hand signal I learned more about investing, trading, and human nature through osmosis than I ever could in an MBA course.
Of all the books about trading written over the decades, perhaps none is still so beloved, revered, and followed as this 1923 classic by journalist Edwin Lefèvre. Although technically a work of fiction, the book really is about the life and trading style of one of the greatest speculators of all time, Jesse Livermore (told under the guise of “Larry Livingston”).
What makes this book such a treasure is not just its fun prose, and interesting glimpse into what the process of investing in old exchanges and “bucket shops” was over a century ago, when ticker-tape and board boys with chalk and ladders were one’s only information about market prices, but also how the mind of one of the world’s greatest traders worked.
This book offers many gems of knowledge about trading—based upon the general principle that, although methods and technologies change, human nature does not and therefore “there is…
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is a fictionalized story based on the trading career of Jesse Livermore. It follows his journey from the age of 15 when he made his first $1,000 to becoming a Wall Street legend.
I have produced twenty books/DVDs and three academic papers on finance and social-mood theory. I also write a monthly publication on markets titled The Elliott Wave Theorist. For a bio, visit robertprechter.com. My recommended titles convey financial markets’ nonrational nature in a visceral way. If you understand that feature, if you feel it, you will have a fighting chance to succeed at investing.
This is one of my favorite books because rather than observing the follies of others, this author details his own. Reading it is like watching a tragedy when you already know the well-meaning protagonist is going to die.
The author chose to remain anonymous for obvious reasons: He thought he was a rare fool. But getting wiped out happens all the time, to many people. If you want to experience vicariously a dangerous thrill ride that you may or may not already have taken, this is your ticket. The book is out of print and hard to find.
This is the totally galvanizing confession of an amateur investor who at first made money in the stock market and then tried to make money faster.... With a directness that startles, with specific references to specific stock transactions, with an abundance of detail unique in investment literature, the author takes the reader on a devastating roller-coaster ride through the market. From the "hot" tip and the impulsive phone-order to buy or sell, to the verdict in next morning's financial pages; from the chase after people who "know their way around," to the frantic switching of brokers and systems; from the…
I collected coins a kid. I went to college and studied econ. I worked in a bank. I later became a financial journalist. And later, a professional money manager. I’ve always been fascinated by money…the way it moves around the world, the enormous role it plays in peoples’ lives, the power it gives a select few, the good it can do, and the way it grows. As a fee-only financial planner running my own shop, I'm only peripherally involved with Wall Street. That frees me to step back and look at the key players, the shenanigans, the sometimes awful greed. The books I’ve selected were instrumental in helping others make their money work for them.
I’ve bumped into Richard “Rick” Ferri at a few financial conferences. He’s easy to recognize as the guy getting hate stares from across the room. Ferri thinks most financial professionals charge too much – way too much – and he isn’t shy about saying so. One of the reasons he loves passive (index) investing, as I do, is that it can be done at very little cost. If you think you want to be an index investor, but you aren’t sure where to start, I highly recommend this book. It will serve as an excellent pair of training wheels, explaining the whys and the hows of proper index investing. I’d also love to see many financial professionals read it, for they’d become better money managers if they did. Yeah, I’m talking about those guys I see in the back of the room giving Ferri the evil eye!
A practical guide to passive investing Time and again, individual investors discover, all too late, that actively picking stocks is a loser's game. The alternative lies with index funds. This passive form of investing allows you to participate in the markets relatively cheaply while prospering all the more because the money saved on investment expenses stays in your pocket. In his latest book, investment expert Richard Ferri shows you how easy and accessible index investing is. Along the way, he highlights how successful you can be by using this passive approach to allocate funds to stocks, bonds, and other prudent…
