The Top Books About Finance

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The Man Who Solved the Market

The Man Who Solved the Market is a portrait of a modern-day Midas who remade markets in his own image, but failed to anticipate how his success would impact his firm and his country. It’s also a story of what Simons’s revolution means for the rest of us.

The Greatest Trade Ever
  • Title: The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History
  • Author(s): Gregory Zuckerman
  • First Published: 2009

The Greatest Trade Ever is a superbly written, fast-paced, behind-the-scenes narrative of how a contrarian foresaw an escalating financial crisis–that outwitted Chuck Prince, Stanley O’Neal, Richard Fuld, and Wall Street’s titans–to make financial history.

The Frackers
  • Title: The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters
  • Author(s): Gregory Zuckerman
  • First Published: 2013

Everyone knew it was crazy to try to extract oil and natural gas buried in shale rock deep below the ground. Everyone, that is, except a few reckless wildcatters – who risked their careers to prove the world wrong.

One Up On Wall Street
  • Title: One Up On Wall Street: How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market
  • Author(s): Peter Lynch
  • First Published: 1988

In easy-to-follow terminology, Lynch offers directions for sorting out the long shots from the no shots by spending just a few minutes with a company’s financial statements. His advice for producing “tenbaggers” can turn a stock portfolio into a star performer!

The Intelligent Investor

The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham’s philosophy of “value investing” — which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies — has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949.

Summary

Value Investing
  • Title: Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond
  • Author(s): Bruce C.N. Greenwald, Judd Kahn, Paul D. Sonkin
  • First Published: 2001

From the “guru to Wall Street’s gurus” comes the fundamental techniques of value investing and their applications Bruce Greenwald is one of the leading authorities on value investing. 

Summary

The Signal and the Noise
  • Title: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t
  • Author(s): Nate Silver
  • First Published: 2012

Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.

Summary

The Most Important Thing
  • Title: The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor
  • Author(s): Howard Marks
  • First Published: 2011

“This is that rarity, a useful book.”- Warren Buffett. Marks expounds on such concepts as “second-level thinking,” the price/value relationship, patient opportunism, and defensive investing.

Summary

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings margin of safety

Philip Fisher is considered one of the pioneers of modern investment theory and is one of the most influential investors of all time. His investment philosophies, which he introduced almost 40 ago, are not only studied and applied by modern financial experts and investors – including Warren Buffett – but are for many considered the gospel par excellence.

Summary

Bull!
  • Title: Bull!: A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982-2004
  • Author(s): Maggie Mahar
  • First Published: 2003

Philip Fisher is considered one of the pioneers of modern investment theory and is one of the most influential investors of all time. His investment philosophies, which he introduced almost 40 ago, are not only studied and applied by modern financial experts and investors – including Warren Buffett – but are for many considered the gospel par excellence.

Summary

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Philip Fisher is considered one of the pioneers of modern investment theory and is one of the most influential investors of all time. His investment philosophies, which he introduced almost 40 ago, are not only studied and applied by modern financial experts and investors – including Warren Buffett – but are for many considered the gospel par excellence.

Summary

Business Adventures

Stories about Wall Street are infused with drama and adventure and reveal the machinations and volatile nature of the world of finance. John Brooks’s insightful reportage is so full of personality and critical detail that whether he is looking at the astounding market crash of 1962, the collapse of a well-known brokerage firm, or the bold attempt by American bankers to save the British pound, one gets the sense that history really does repeat itself.

Summary

Radical Uncertainty
  • Title: Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers
  • Author(s): John Kay, Mervyn A. King
  • First Published: 2020

The limits of certainty demonstrate the power of human judgment over artificial intelligence. In most critical decisions there can be no forecasts or probability distributions on which we might sensibly rely. Instead of inventing numbers to fill the gaps in our knowledge, we should adopt business, political, and personal strategies that will be robust to alternative futures and resilient to unpredictable events.

Summary

Why Stock Markets Crash
  • Title: Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems
  • Author(s): Didier Sornette
  • First Published: 2002

The scientific study of complex systems has transformed a wide range of disciplines in recent years, enabling researchers in both the natural and social sciences to model and predict phenomena as diverse as earthquakes, global warming, demographic patterns, financial crises, and the failure of materials. In this book, Didier Sornette boldly applies his varied experience in these areas to propose a simple, powerful, and general theory of how, why, and when stock markets crash.

The New Financial Order

Shiller describes six fundamental ideas for using modern information technology and advanced financial theory to temper basic risks that have been ignored by risk management institutions–risks to the value of our jobs and our homes, to the vitality of our communities, and to the very stability of national economies.

Summary

Irrational Exuberance

The original and bestselling 2000 edition of Irrational Exuberance evoked Alan Greenspan’s infamous 1996 use of that phrase to explain the alternately soaring and declining stock market. It predicted the collapse of the tech stock bubble through an analysis of the structural, cultural, and psychological factors behind levels of price growth not reflected in any other sector of the economy.

Summary

Lords of Finance
  • Title: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
  • Author(s): Liaquat Ahamed
  • First Published: 2009

It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person’s or government’s control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.

Summary

The Volatility Smile

It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person’s or government’s control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.

No Bull: My Life in and Out of Markets

No Bull is the long-awaited autobiography of Wall Street legend Michael Steinhardt. Steinhardt is considered one of the most successful investors in Wall Street history. Between 1967 and 1995 he amassed a fortune for himself and his investors. With an annual return of over 30%, he was well above the market average and surpassed almost every one of his colleagues. But until recently he was not prepared to reveal much about himself and his philosophy.

The Man Who Knew
  • Title: The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan
  • Author(s): Sebastian Mallaby
  • First Published: 2016

Mallaby argues that the conventional wisdom is off base: Greenspan wasn’t a naïve ideologue who believed greater regulation was unnecessary. He had pressed for greater regulation of some key areas of finance over the years, and had gotten nowhere. To argue that he didn’t know the risks in irrational markets is to miss the point. He knew more than almost anyone; the question is why he didn’t act, and whether anyone else could or would have.

What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars

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

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When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management

In this business classic—now with a new Afterword in which the author draws parallels to the recent financial crisis—Roger Lowenstein captures the gripping roller-coaster ride of Long-Term Capital Management.

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The (Mis)Behavior of Markets

Benoit B. Mandelbrot, one of the century’s most influential mathematicians, is world-famous for making mathematical sense of a fact everybody knows but that geometers from Euclid on down had never assimilated: Clouds are not round, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not smooth. To these classic lines we can now add another example: Markets are not the safe bet your broker may claim.

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Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises

The best known and most highly regarded book on financial crises

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The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
  • Title: The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
  • Author(s): Leonard Mlodinow
  • First Published: 2008

With the born storyteller’s command of narrative and imaginative approach, Leonard Mlodinow vividly demonstrates how our lives are profoundly informed by chance and randomness and how everything from wine ratings and corporate success to school grades and political polls are less reliable than we believe.

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Superforecasting

In Superforecasting, Tetlock and coauthor Dan Gardner offer a masterwork on prediction, drawing on decades of research and the results of a massive, government-funded forecasting tournament.

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Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity

When it comes to markets, the first deadly sin is greed. In this New York Times bestseller, Michael Lewis is our jungle guide through five of the most violent and costly upheavals in recent financial history

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Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
  • Title: Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
  • Author(s): Peter L. Bernstein
  • First Published: 1996

With the stock market breaking records almost daily, leaving longtime market analysts shaking their heads and revising their forecasts, a study of the concept of risk seems quite timely. Peter Bernstein has written a comprehensive history of man’s efforts to understand risk and probability, beginning with early gamblers in ancient Greece, continuing through the 17th-century French mathematicians Pascal and Fermat and up to modern chaos theory.

Summary

A Random Walk Down Wall Street

Today’s stock market is not for the faint of heart. At a time of frightening volatility, what is the average investor to do? The answer: 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 or 401(k), A Random Walk Down Wall Street now features new material on “tax-loss harvesting,” the crown jewel of tax management; the current bitcoin bubble; and automated investment advisers; as well as a brand-new chapter on factor investing and risk parity.

Summary

The Big Short
  • Title: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
  • Author(s): Michael Lewis
  • First Published: 2010

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.

Summary

Antifragile
  • Title: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
  • Author(s): Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • First Published: 2012

In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem; in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what he calls the “antifragile” is one step beyond robust, as it benefits from adversity, uncertainty and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension.

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Fooled by Randomness
  • Title: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
  • Author(s): Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • First Published: 2001

An investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand.

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Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami.

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The Flaw of Averages
  • Title: The Flaw of Averages: Why We Underestimate Risk in the Face of Uncertainty
  • Author(s): Sam L. Savage
  • First Published: 2009

As the recent collapse on Wall Street shows, we are often ill-equipped to deal with uncertainty and risk. Yet every day we base our personal and business plans on uncertainties, whether they be next month’s sales, next year’s costs, or tomorrow’s stock price. In The Flaw of Averages, Sam Savage-known for his creative exposition of difficult subjects- describes common avoidable mistakes in assessing risk in the face of uncertainty

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Plight of the Fortune Tellers

Rebonato forcefully argues that we must restore genuine decision making to our financial planning, and he shows us how to do it using probability, experimental psychology, and decision theory.

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"A gilded No is more satisfactory than a dry yes" - Gracian