P. D. Mangan Health & Fitness Maximalist 🇺🇸
What is your candidate for best single book on investing?
Book mentions in this thread
Votes: 20
The Bitcoin Standard
by Saifedean Ammous
When a pseudonymous programmer introduced “a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party” to a small online mailing list in 2008, very few paid attention. Ten years later, and against all odds, this upstart autonomous decentralized software offers an unstoppable and globally-accessible hard money alternative to modern central banks. The Bitcoin Standard analyzes the historical context to the rise of Bitcoin, the economic properties that have allowed it to grow quickly, and its likely economic, political, and social implications. While Bitcoin is a new invention of the digital age, the problem it purports to solve is as old as human society itself: transferring value across time and space. Ammous takes the reader on an engaging journey through the history of technologies performing the functions of money, from primitive systems of trading limestones and seashells, to metals, coins, the gold standard, and modern government debt. Exploring what gave these technologies their monetary role, and how most lost it, provides the reader with a good idea of what makes for sound money, and sets the stage for an economic discussion of its consequences for individual and societal future-orientation, capital accumulation, trade, peace, culture, and art. Compellingly, Ammous shows that it is no coincidence that the loftiest achievements of humanity have come in societies enjoying the benefits of sound monetary regimes, nor is it coincidental that monetary collapse has usually accompanied civilizational collapse. With this background in place, the book moves on to explain the operation of Bitcoin in a functional and intuitive way. Bitcoin is a decentralized, distributed piece of software that converts electricity and processing power into indisputably accurate records, thus allowing its users to utilize the Internet to perform the traditional functions of money without having to rely on, or trust, any authorities or infrastructure in the physical world. Bitcoin is thus best understood as the first successfully implemented form of digital cash and digital hard money. With an automated and perfectly predictable monetary policy, and the ability to perform final settlement of large sums across the world in a matter of minutes, Bitcoin’s real competitive edge might just be as a store of value and network for final settlement of large payments—a digital form of gold with a built-in settlement infrastructure. Ammous’ firm grasp of the technological possibilities as well as the historical realities of monetary evolution provides for a fascinating exploration of the ramifications of voluntary free market money. As it challenges the most sacred of government monopolies, Bitcoin shifts the pendulum of sovereignty away from governments in favor of individuals, offering us the tantalizing possibility of a world where money is fully extricated from politics and unrestrained by borders. The final chapter of the book explores some of the most common questions surrounding Bitcoin: Is Bitcoin mining a waste of energy? Is Bitcoin for criminals? Who controls Bitcoin, and can they change it if they please? How can Bitcoin be killed? And what to make of all the thousands of Bitcoin knock-offs, and the many supposed applications of Bitcoin’s ‘blockchain technology’? The Bitcoin Standard is the essential resource for a clear understanding of the rise of the Internet’s decentralized, apolitical, free-market alternative to national central banks.Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
by Edwin Lefèvre
First published in 1923, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is the most widely read, highly recommended investment book ever. Generations of readers have found that it has more to teach them about markets and people than years of experience. Among the most compelling and enduring pieces ever written on trading, the new Illustrated Edition brings this story to life like never before. "Although Reminiscences...was first published some seventy years ago, its take on crowd psychology and market timing is as timely as last summer's frenzy on the foreign exchange markets."―Worth magazine "The most entertaining book written on investing is Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, by Edwin Lefèvre, first published in 1923."―The Seattle Times "After twenty years and many re-reads, Reminiscences is still one of my all-time favourites."―Kenneth L. Fisher, Forbes "A must-read classic for all investors, whether brand-new or experienced."―William O'Neil, founder and Chairman, Investor's Business Daily "Whilst stock market tomes have come and gone, this remains popular and in print eighty years on."―GQ magazineSecurity Analysis
by Benjamin Graham
Buying a dollar's worth of assets for 50 cents isn't the only way to succeed on Wall Street. But it is how Warren Buffett got rich. Just as value investing never goes out of style, neither does the value investor's bible, Security Analysis, by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd, which has withstood the test of time as well or better than any investment book ever published. Now the Sixth Edition updates the masters' ideas and adapts them for the 21st century's markets.Valuation
by McKinsey & Company Inc.
The #1 guide to corporate valuation is back . . . and better than ever! "The best valuation book just got better. This edition's greater emphasis on what drives value and how to measure it will improve the way practitioners conduct financial analysis and, ultimately, make strategic decisions. It is required reading for all executives." —Professor Benjamin C. Esty, Harvard Business School, author of Modern Project Finance: A Casebook "The bible in its field. Anyone wanting to understand what drives corporate value should read this latest edition." —Dr. Raymund Breu, former chief financial officer, Novartis AG "Valuation gets to the heart of how to measure and manage value in a company. Whether you are evaluating an acquisition, restructuring a corporation, or formulating strategy, this book will help you do it well." —John A. Manzoni, Chief Executive Officer, Talisman Energy Inc. "A 'how-to' guide for corporate executives who want to get at the unrealized shareholder values trapped in public companies." —New York Times "The book's clarity and comprehensive coverage make it one of the best practitioners' guides to valuation." —Financial TimesInvesting Made Simple
by Mike Piper
Find all of the following explained in plain-English with no technical jargon: Asset Allocation: What does it mean, why is it so important, and how should you determine your own? How to Pick Mutual Funds: Learn how to choose funds that are mathematically certain to outperform the majority of other mutual funds. Roth IRA vs. Traditional IRA vs. 401(k): What's the difference, and how should you choose between them? Financial Advisors: Learn what to look for as well as pitfalls to avoid. Frequent Investor Mistakes: Learn the most common mistakes and what you can do to avoid them. Calculate Your Retirement Needs: Learn how to calculate how much you'll need saved in order to retire. Who Is This Book For? Anyone who has questions about investing, but who doesn't want to trudge through a 300-page textbook. What This Book Is Not: This book is not a great work of literary art. This book is not going to make you an absolute expert on the topic, and This book is not going to provide you with a way to get rich overnight. What it will do (hopefully) is provide an easy-to-understand, concise introduction to the topic of prudent investing.Modern Security Analysis
by Martin J. Whitman
A legendary value investor on security analysis for a modernera This book outlines Whitman's approach to business and securityanalysis that departs from most conventional security analysts.This approach has more in common with corporate finance than itdoes with the conventional approach. The key factors in appraisinga company and its securities: 1) Credit worthiness, 2)Flows—both cash and earnings, 3) Long-term outlook, 4)Salable assets which can be disposed of without compromising thegoing concern, dynamics, 5) Resource conversions such as changes incontrol, mergers and acquisitions, going private, and major changesin assets or in liabilities, and 6) Access to capital. Offers the security analysis value approach Martin Whitman hasused successfully since 1986 Details Whitman's unconventional approach to security analysisand offers information on the six key factors for appraising acompany Contains the three most overemphasized factors used inconventional securities investing Written by Martin J. Whitman and Fernando Diz, ModernSecurity Analysis meets the challenge of today's marketplace bytaking into account changes to regulation, market structures,instruments, and the speed and volume of trading.Votes: 6
Rational Expectations
by William J Bernstein
Rational Expectations is a clean sheet of paper in the wonky world of quantitatively based asset allocation aimed at small investors. Continuing the theme of the Investing for Adults series, this full-length finance title is not for beginners, but rather assumes a fair degree of quantitative ability and finance knowledge. If you think you can time the market or pick stocks and mutual fund managers, or even if you think that you can formulate an optimally efficient mean-variance asset allocation with a black box, then learn some basic finance and come back in a few years. On the other hand, if you know your way around risk premiums and standard deviations and know who Irving Fisher and Benjamin Graham were, and if you want to sharpen your asset class skills, you've come to the right place.Votes: 6
What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars
by Jim Paul
Jim Paul's meteoric rise took him from a small town in Northern Kentucky to governor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, yet he lost it all--his fortune, his reputation, and his job--in one fatal attack of excessive economic hubris. In this honest, frank analysis, Paul and Brendan Moynihan revisit the events that led to Paul's disastrous decision and examine the psychological factors behind bad financial practices in several economic sectors. This book--winner of a 2014 Axiom Business Book award gold medal--begins with the unbroken string of successes that helped Paul achieve a jet-setting lifestyle and land a key spot with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It then describes the circumstances leading up to Paul's $1.6 million loss and the essential lessons he learned from it--primarily that, although there are as many ways to make money in the markets as there are people participating in them, all losses come from the same few sources. Investors lose money in the markets either because of errors in their analysis or because of psychological barriers preventing the application of analysis. While all analytical methods have some validity and make allowances for instances in which they do not work, psychological factors can keep an investor in a losing position, causing him to abandon one method for another in order to rationalize the decisions already made. Paul and Moynihan's cautionary tale includes strategies for avoiding loss tied to a simple framework for understanding, accepting, and dodging the dangers of investing, trading, and speculating.Elements of Poker
by Tommy Angelo
Beyond statistics, beyond whether to raise, call, or fold, Elements of Poker reveals a new world of profitability for your bankroll and your life. You know tilt costs you money, but do you know how to make it go away? You know position is important, but do you know how to cash in that knowledge? Elements of Poker will teach you all of this and much more. Published in 2007, Elements of poker has been extremely well-received by the poker community for its fresh perspective, grand scope, humor, insight, and tilt reduction teachings. Tommy Angelo is a top tier poker coach, poker writer, and philosopher. Join professional, winning poker players like Phil Galfond, Ed Miller, Simon Munz, Lee Jones, and David Benefield in reading the book that Jay Rosenkrantz calls the best poker book ever.The Education of a Speculator
by Victor Niederhoffer
Acclaim for The Education of a Speculator, a provocative and penetrating look into the mind, the soul, and the strategies of one of the most controversial traders of all time "A compelling and an entertaining read." -The Wall Street Journal "Victor Niederhoffer gives us page after page of distilled investment wisdom. Taken together, this is pure nectar to those who aim for consistently superior stock market performance." -Barron's "The Education of a Speculator offers plenty of insights into the way markets work, but the epiphanies are what a reader might expect from Lao-tzu rather than, say, Graham and Dodd." -Worth magazine "The Education of a Speculator is the first meaningful book on speculating. Successful speculating is as fine an art as chess, checkers, fishing, poker, tennis, painting, and music. Niederhoffer brings forth the best from each of these fields and shows the investor how their principles can enrich one's life and net worth." -Martin Edelston, President, Boardroom Inc., publishers of Boardroom Classics and Bottom Line/Personal "With an original mind and an eclectic approach, Victor Niederhoffer takes the reader from Brighton Beach to Wall Street, visiting all stops of interest along the way. What emerges is a book full of insights, useful to the professional and layman alike." -George Soros, Principal Investment Advisor, The Quantum FundVotes: 5
The Little Book That Still Beats the Market
by Joel Greenblatt
In 2005, Joel Greenblatt published a book that is already considered one of the classics of finance literature. In The Little Book that Beats the Market—a New York Times bestseller with 300,000 copies in print—Greenblatt explained how investors can outperform the popular market averages by simply and systematically applying a formula that seeks out good businesses when they are available at bargain prices. Now, with a new Introduction and Afterword for 2010, The Little Book that Still Beats the Market updates and expands upon the research findings from the original book. Included are data and analysis covering the recent financial crisis and model performance through the end of 2009. In a straightforward and accessible style, the book explores the basic principles of successful stock market investing and then reveals the author’s time-tested formula that makes buying above average companies at below average prices automatic. Though the formula has been extensively tested and is a breakthrough in the academic and professional world, Greenblatt explains it using 6th grade math, plain language and humor. He shows how to use his method to beat both the market and professional managers by a wide margin. You’ll also learn why success eludes almost all individual and professional investors, and why the formula will continue to work even after everyone “knows” it. While the formula may be simple, understanding why the formula works is the true key to success for investors. The book will take readers on a step-by-step journey so that they can learn the principles of value investing in a way that will provide them with a long term strategy that they can understand and stick with through both good and bad periods for the stock market. As the Wall Street Journal stated about the original edition, “Mr. Greenblatt...says his goal was to provide advice that, while sophisticated, could be understood and followed by his five children, ages 6 to 15. They are in luck. His ‘Little Book’ is one of the best, clearest guides to value investing out there.”The Long Run
by Matt Long
A New York City firefighter's emotional and inspiring memoir of learning to run again after a debilitating accident. "The Long Run" is an emotional and incredibly honest story about Long's determination to fight through fear, despair, loneliness, and intense physical and psychological pain to regain the life he once had.The Essays of Warren Buffett
by Lawrence A. Cunningham
In the third edition of this international best seller, Lawrence Cunningham brings you the latest wisdom from Warren Buffett’s annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. New material addresses: the financial crisis and its continuing implications for investors, managers and society; the housing bubble at the bottom of that crisis; the debt and derivatives excesses that fueled the crisis and how to deal with them; controlling risk and protecting reputation in corporate governance; Berkshire’s acquisition and operation of Burlington Northern Santa Fe; the role of oversight in heavily regulated industries; investment possibilities today; and weaknesses of popular option valuation models. Some other material has been rearranged to deepen the themes and lessons that the collection has always produced: Buffett’s “owner-related business principles” are in the prologue as a separate subject and valuation and accounting topics are spread over four instead of two sections and reordered to sharpen their payoff. Media coverage is available at the following links: Interviews/Podcasts: Motley Fool, click here. Money, Riches and Wealth, click here. Manual of Ideas, click here. Corporate Counsel, click here. Reviews: William J. Taylor, ABA Banking Journal, click here. Bob Morris, Blogging on Business, click here. Pamela Holmes, Saturday Evening Post, click here. Kevin M. LaCroix, D&O Diary, click here. Blog Posts: On Finance issues (Columbia University), click here. On Berkshire post-Buffett (Manual of Ideas), click here. On Publishing the book (Value Walk), click here. On Governance issues (Harvard University blog), click here. Featured Stories/Recommended Reading: Motley Fool, click here. Stock Market Blog, click here. Motley Fool Interviews with LAC at Berkshire's 2013 Annual Meeting Berkshire Businesses: Vastly Different, Same DNA, click here. Is Berkshire's Fat Wallet an Enemy to Its Success?, click here. Post-Buffett Berkshire: Same Question, Same Answer, click here. How a Disciplined Value Approach Works Across the Decades, click here. Through the Years: Constant Themes in Buffett's Letters, click here. Buffett's Single Greatest Accomplishment, click here. Where Buffett Is Finding Moats These Days, click here. How Buffett Has Changed Through the Years, click here. Speculating on Buffett's Next Acquisition, click here. Buffett Says “Chief Risk Officers” Are a Terrible Mistake, click here. Berkshire Without Buffett, click here.Zero to One
by Blake Masters
WHAT VALUABLE COMPANY IS NOBODY BUILDING? The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them. It’s easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. Every new creation goes from 0 to 1. This book is about how to get there. ‘Peter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how.’ ELON MUSK, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla ‘This book delivers completely new and refreshing ideas on how to create value in the world.’ MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO of Facebook ‘When a risk taker writes a book, read it. In the case of Peter Thiel, read it twice. Or, to be safe, three times. This is a classic.’ NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB, author of The Black Swan