Here are 100 books that Stocks for the Long Run fans have personally recommended if you like
Stocks for the Long Run.
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I’ve always been interested—a vast understatement to anyone who knows me—in what makes people tick. I’ve focused on analyzing business actors – bankers, lawyers, investors, executives, shareholders, and others. What do they want? Some combination of money, power, or prestige? How does loving to win fit in? How about hating to lose? When is enough (money/power/prestige) enough? What do they think is ok to do to get what they want? What do they think is not ok? Amazingly, as a law professor, I can pursue that interest as part of my job, and – I think and hope – do so in a way that might help lawmakers, regulators, and policymakers do better.
As everyone knows at this point, anything Michael Lewis writes will be enormous fun to read, while being about something really important—something he’ll make you care about even if you didn’t when you started the book.
In this case, the subject is people who bet on the direction of mortgages (and thus, house prices), and how those who bet on a huge plunge were right. This book has an amazing cast of characters, all richly drawn: some are smart, some are not so smart; some are excellent schmoozers, some can barely tolerate human interaction; some care a lot about money, some care more about being right, especially if everyone else is wrong.
Each book I've recommended cries out to be made into a movie. This one actually was.
The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking.
Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar's Poker. Out of a…
Selwyn Parker is an award-winning journalist, author, speaker and pianist. In journalism he focuses on transformational contemporary issues like the new era in energy, the upheaval in banking, the revolution in transportation and the fast-moving world of investment. However most of his dozen books – novels and non-fiction -- are rooted in landmark historical events whose effects still register today.
Apart from revealing and sometimes dismaying insights into the workings of the White House, this legendary chairman of the US Federal Reserve presents a tour d’horizon of the economic thought that underpins the creation of wealth. As such, it should be obligatory reading for anybody interested in how nations prosper (or don’t), how governments routinely make disastrous interventions even if they aim to act for the right reasons, why Adam Smith continues to influence our lives (even though we don’t know it), and why capitalism is so foolishly demonised by banner-waving grandstanders.
Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence is the essential guide to what is happening in the world, and where we're heading, from the ultimate expert.
Alan Greenspan wielded more power than the presidents he worked for, from Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to George Bush and his son. He was in the command room of the world economy for longer than any other single figure. One word from him could send markets into freefall.
Now Alan Greenspan, the legendary former chairman of the Federal Reserve, gives us a unique insider's view of the world over his lifetime, from stock market…
Selwyn Parker is an award-winning journalist, author, speaker and pianist. In journalism he focuses on transformational contemporary issues like the new era in energy, the upheaval in banking, the revolution in transportation and the fast-moving world of investment. However most of his dozen books – novels and non-fiction -- are rooted in landmark historical events whose effects still register today.
Money is not the root of all evil, as this book makes clear in a highly entertaining romp through the major events in the history of coin and their derivatives. The author, who made his name with Empire, covers everything that really matters including the rise of the loan sharks, historic bubbles, the development of currencies, the egregious behaviour of a few very greedy and/or crooked people, supposedly fool-proof money-making schemes that backfired, and much else. If you want to understand how money works, you can hardly do better.
Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labour. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential back-story behind all history.
The evolution of credit and debt was as important as any technological innovation in the rise of civilization, from ancient Babylon to the silver mines of Bolivia. Banks provided the material…
I was always interested in American history and studied at Brown University under an outstanding professor of American economic history, James Blaine Hedges. During my career at the mutual fund association I often approached issues from an historical perspective. For example: Why did Congress draft legislation in a particular way? How would past events likely affect a regulator’s decisions today? As a lawyer I had been trained to write carefully and precisely. As a lobbyist I learned the need to pre
The book does an outstanding job in describing the people and events that produced the October 1929 stock market crash in a highly entertaining style. Galbraith wrote more like a witty and insightful journalist than the award-winning economist that he was. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn about American financial history. The book is a model for writers who want to educate non-experts about public policy issues.
'One of the most engrossing books I have ever read' Daily Telegraph
John Kenneth Galbraith's now-classic account of the 1929 stock market collapse remains the definitive book on the most disastrous cycle of boom and bust in modern times.
Vividly depicting the causes, effects, aftermath and long-term consequences of financial meltdown, Galbraith also describes the people and the corporations who were affected by the catastrophe. With its depiction of the 'gold-rush fantasy' ingrained in America's psychology, The Great Crash 1929 remains a penetrating study of human greed and folly.
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,…
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…
I am passionate about the dissemination of economic ideas both inside and outside university spaces. In addition to classroom lectures at my university, I give a lot of public lectures on economics. Through these talks, I introduce the audience to the tradition of doing economics using a critical perspective. I have an MA and MPhil in Economics from the University of Hyderabad and a PhD in Economics from the University of Sydney.
This book on measurement in economics was published in 1951. Stone discusses the link between theory and empirics in this book.
I like this slim book of Stone’s because it shows the strengths and weakness of empirical exercises in economics. It also raises foundational questions regarding empirical constructs.
Books like this allow us to ask foundational questions regarding the links between theory and empirics in economics as well as theory and applications in statistics.
First published in 1951, and originally delivered as the Newmarch Lectures for 1948-9, this book examines the role of measurement in obtaining and applying economic knowledge. Esteemed economist Richard Stone, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, divides his topic into four sections: questions of fact and empirical constructs; the truth or falsity of a hypothesis; the estimation of parameters; and questions of prediction. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in economics and the development of the discipline.
I am a writer and a sociologist of money. I am passionate about money, relationships, and family violence, because I know from my research that talking about money opens up intimate conversations about the way people see themselves, their aspirations and hopes. Sometimes through hearing other people’s stories I have found mine. I realised while researching family violence that I too had suffered economic abuse. For me too economic abuse was ‘hidden in plain sight’. One of the most meaningful things for me is to help women and men overcome family violence and empower themselves to live with freedom.
Nicola Sharp-Jeff’s book makes a great contribution by linking research on economic abuse to policy and practice.
She has been able to use her research to set up an important organisation, Surviving Economic Abuse, to help raise awareness of economic abuse, influence law and policy and work with industry and government to address and prevent family violence.
I recognise the book’s value because I know how difficult it is to draw on research to suggest ways forward for policymakers and industry. This is a necessary step for all researchers if they want to prevent family violence and empower women.
Despite being recognised by victim-survivors as a tactic used by abusers, economic abuse has received little attention in research, policy, or practice. Written by an internationally recognised expert on economic abuse, this powerful book provides a crucial validation of the lived experience of victim-survivors, and highlights the urgent need to develop effective responses to the issue.
Breaking fresh ground, Understanding and Responding to Economic Abuse exposes the many ways in which abusers seek to control their intimate partners through economic resources and reinforces the importance of holding abusers accountable for their behaviour. Whilst the focus of this book is on…
We are law professors at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Eyal Zamir is interested in the intersections of law, economics, ethics, and psychology. In addition to theoretical studies of these issues, he engages in experimental legal studies, as well. Barak Medina studies constitutional law, human rights, and economic analysis of law. He is interested in constitutional interpretation and the interaction between common-sense morality, public opinion and adjudication.
The book provides an excellent introduction to the philosophical foundations of economic analysis as a normative theory of human behavior and as a tool for public policy making.
It lucidly explains and criticizes the building blocks of welfare economics – the normative branch of economic analysis.
This book shows through argument and numerous policy-related examples how understanding moral philosophy can improve economic analysis, how moral philosophy can benefit from economists' analytical tools, and how economic analysis and moral philosophy together can inform public policy. Part I explores the idea of rationality and its connections to ethics, arguing that when they defend their formal model of rationality, most economists implicitly espouse contestable moral principles. Part II addresses the nature and measurement of welfare, utilitarianism and cost-benefit analysis. Part III discusses freedom, rights, equality, and justice - moral notions that are relevant to evaluating policies, but which have…
I previously had no interest in politics, but in 2020 the world became so politically charged that I wanted to better understand the landscape. That led me down a rabbit hole of questioning the basic assumptions about what government is and why we have it. Fortunately, there are many brilliant thinkers whose work I was able to study. I ultimately integrated this thinking into my own worldview. This list of books provides a starting point for thinking about our world—and the nature of reality—in an entirely new way. They certainly helped to alter my views, and they all contain excellent references if you’d like to explore them even further.
DiLorenzo analyzes fundamental economic topics in a clear and understandable way.
This book helped me develop better counterarguments to many of the mainstream views on how the economy “should” work. For instance, he explains that although the government is supposed to try to help the economy, its policies are often driven by special interests that steer the economy in their own desired direction.
And he explains that although government central planning is supposed to help the environment, it often results in great environmental damage (such as the severe environmental harm done under the former Soviet Union).
DiLorenzo gives example after example of the ways in which governments damage the very economies that they are allegedly tasked with managing for the “greater good.”
Another entry in the best-selling, irreverent, hard-hitting Politically Incorrect Guide series! Economics from a rational, conservative viewpoint—that is, a refreshing look at how money actually works from an author who knows the score, and how the law of economics are frequently broken and derailed by pernicious leftists and virtue signaling progressives.
Markets Rule. Socialism Sucks.
Time to wise up. Think economics is the Dismal Science? No more! Here is the lowdown on the biases, superstitions, and outright falsehoods that permeate and corrupt economics and economic policy. Here's the skinny on the poisonous effects of socialism and crony capitalism. Even better,…
