Partridge, Matthew - Superinvestors

Harriman House, 2017, [Equity Investing] Grade 3

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This book is at the same time in a rewarding but ungrateful genre. Learning from the best is always worthwhile and getting to know the secrets of those who have been the most successful in equity markets never fails to interest a wide audience. Still, profiling a collection of famous investors and turning this into a book has been done numerous times before – it is hard to add much to what has been written previously. In Superinvestors Matthew Partridge, a UK financial journalist, historian and previous investment bank employee, presents his selection of 20 investors to study. Further, the author takes on the hard task of rating those profiled and name the “best” investor of all times.

The structure of the book is – as expected – fairly simple. After a brief introduction 20 “super investors” are portrayed and the book finishes off with the conclusions the author draws from the many individual fates and fortunes. For each investor the reader is served with a short personal and professional history, a discussion on the investor’s method, his performance and potential mistakes made. Then Partridge seeks to distill some learnings from the above and ends the section with a rating where the investor gets a score from 1 to 5 on performance, longevity, influence and ease of replication for the private investor. Many of the profiled names like George Soros, Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham and Peter Lynch will be well known to many readers.

Although it’s always arguable who should be included in such an illustrious group I would have made some different choices. Even if it is quaint that Paul Samuelson privately acted at odds with what he preached as the high priest of efficient market theory I don’t think that his profile, nor the one on fellow economist David Ricardo (1772-1823), adds much to the discussion and the venture capital pioneers of George Doriot and Kleiner & Perkins feels a bit misplaced. Further, there is obviously much to learn from Jack Bogle but he is more successful as a businessman and advocate of an idea than a successful stock market investor. Who would I want to see instead? Jim Simons, James Chanos and Seth Klarman could in my view be fair alternatives. On the other hand the book benefits from the author’s deep knowledge of UK investors who are less documented in literature and Anthony Bolton’s track record in China will come as a surprise to many – as it did to me.

In my opinion the texts on UK investors Neil Woodford and Nick Train were the most interesting. Also, even though I had heard of Robert Wilson as an early short seller, I knew nothing of him. Overall Partridge, with some minor disagreements, in my view gives a short but fully accurate picture of the investors I had previous knowledge of. The author is clearly well read and even the cover is inspired by Ken Fisher’s 1984 book Super Stocks. My only objections are that I think George Soros’ concept of reflexivity is too vaguely described and given its huge influence on the hedge fund community and its closeness to the current concepts of complexity theory and adaptive markets it is a bit harsh to say that the theory has left little mark. Further, to describe what Ed Thorp did as “nothing new, but more systematic” is to diminish a person who long before academics Black and Myron Scholes came up with an option pricing model that allowed rational derivatives trading.

Even though the book is over 200 pages long it is an easy read and it is quite tempting to time after time read “just one more profile”. The conclusions at the end are sound but hardly novel. So who does Partridge rank as the best investor of all times? Those on the short list are Philip Fisher, Buffett, Bogle and Graham (skip Bogle and add Soros and Thorp and I would have agreed). The winner is Graham, much thanks to his huge influence on later day investors. A good choice.

It is never possible to do an investor justice over 6 to 8 pages. However, it is through books like this that many up and coming investors have gotten a glimpse of their role models for the first time.

Mats Larsson, August 8, 2017

Clark, David - The Tao of Charlie Munger

Scribner, Inc., 2017, [Equity Investing] Grade 4

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If you collect quotations from one of the broadest thinkers in business who for decades has delivered witty and wise sayings, you cannot really go wrong. The Tao translates as “the way” or “the path” and what we are served here is the way of Charlie Munger, vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and long business partner to Warren Buffett. Munger’s many sayings have over time gained enough status to be christened as “Mungerisms.”

The reference to Taoism is equally apt when it comes to the format of the book. Just as Lao-tzu, the Taoist collection of saying and proverbs, this is a commented assortment of quotations where David Clark, co-writer of the many Buffettology books does the observing and deciphering of the wise musings of the old master. Buffett obviously has a wonderful way with words but I have always enjoyed Munger’s shorter, sharper and more cynical statements more and Clark has done us all a huge service collecting these quotes. It is a book possible to read in one, albeit long, sitting – but please don’t. Take the time to scribble down how Munger’s thoughts reflect on your investments, business and being. Does this make sense to you? If so, how are you living up to it? What can you change? What can you improve?

The selected quotations are grouped into four parts covering investing, banking and the economy, business and philosophizing on life at large. Sections one and three are delivered with authority and Ben Graham’s saying that investing is the most intelligent when it is most businesslike springs to mind. At the same time the investing of Munger and Berkshire Hathaway is hardly unknown material due to the vast coverage of Buffett’s investing success.

The danger with adding commentary is that it isn’t always better to say something in a lengthier format when it has already been delivered crisp and clear in a short pitchy way. There is a balance to be kept to not over-explain things. Clark is mostly on the right side of the tracks but he delivers rather similar explanations to many of the quotes and is forced to add quite a few “as we have said earlier”.

Further, just as it comes to later commentary of, say old Taoist texts, it is always possible to debate if the interpretation of the original scriptures from one specific scholar is optimal. Occasionally I would have chosen to make alternative reflections. I think the selection of quotes Clark has made is a good one. Perhaps it could have hade been tilted a tad more towards psychology given Munger’s wisdom in the area. There are few real gems missing apart from this favorite on investing “It’s not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.” – a typical Mungerism in it’s lack of flattery.

The second part of the book is the least interesting - but every time one hears figures about the gross exposure of global derivatives one marvels. The best and most inspiring part is the fourth, on Life, Education and the Pursuit of Happiness. Below are some of our favorites. “Being rational is a moral imperative. You should never be stupider than you need to be”; “Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve” and especially close to our heart “In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time – none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren reads – and how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.” Amen. If you ever find yourself hesitating over a decision, simply ask yourself “What would Charlie Munger do?”

Mats Larsson, May 14, 2017

Cassidy, Donald - It's When You Sell That Counts

Global Professional Publishing, 2011 (3rd ed.), [Equity Investing] Grade 3

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Selling stocks is less fun and less easy than buying them. Also, you can get plenty of advice on how to buy stocks and which stocks to buy, but few tell you when to sell. Therefore, a sell strategy is vital for investment success. Donald Cassidy who has been a research analyst since the mid 1970s aims to give the trend following investor with a medium term investment horizon of 6 – 18 months the tools to develop this sell strategy.

I first want to dig into the main problem of the text before turning to the positive sides. The four sections are named 1) Understanding the Selling Problem in Depth, 2) Developing the Proper Mindset, 3) Mastering the Contrarian Approach and 4) Using Smart Selling Tactics. Although this looks like an organized setup where the first part discusses the difficulties of selling, the two in the middle cover how this could be mended and the final part gives hands on advice on the execution of selling, structure isn’t what comes to mind when reading the text.

There are 30 very short chapters and it’s hard to see the logic of many of them as a number of recurring themes are repeated multiple times in basically all sections of the book. For someone advising on how to set up a well-thought-out sell strategy this doesn’t inspire confidence - and this is the 3rd edition of the book.

A large number of reasons for selling and methods of selling are discussed but there are few attempts made to connect them or direct specific investors to tools that are more suitable for them. Further, many of the pictures of the book – at least in my print - are sadly of such low quality that it is virtually impossible to interpret them.

All this is a shame since there are some definitive qualities to the book. Fist and foremost the strength of the text is the author’s understanding of trading psychology. The keen psychological interest makes the book come to life and the reader can very easily relate to what is said. The topic of trading psychology is also covered broadly, it describes buying as well and pops up at various places in the book but this is more easily forgiven by the shear enthusiasm Cassidy shows for the topic.

Apart from the apt account of trading psychology the author, benefitting from 4 decades in the financial markets, delivers plenty of sound advice and insights into the investing world. His account of the brokerage industry and why sell-side analysts don’t give the recommendation “sell” very often is clearly cynical but probably not entirely wrong. It simply hasn’t been good for business with the business model that has been in use.

Further, while I above noticed that the author had a mid-term investment horizon the methods portrayed could also be quite useful to longer-term oriented investors (or stale buy-and-holders and stock collectors as the author describes them – I’m always surprised how different types of market participants form separate religions), as they are to sell their winners. Especially, value investors tend to buy too early and sell (winners) too early and could do well by studying techniques such as for example trailing stop losses. Finally, the checklist in chapter 29 starts to bring everything that has been said in the book into order.

There is much to learn in this book for the retail investor with a medium term horizon. Unfortunately it takes some serious work to distill a clear selling strategy out of this text. A forthcoming edition slimmed down from 280 pages to 180 with more structure and less duplication would be a real winner in my mind.

Mats Larsson, May 7, 2017

Elder. Dr. Alexander - Sell & Sell Short

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008, [Equity Investing] Grade 4

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This book isn’t really for me or any other more fundamental and long-term investor – but it is excellent. Short sellers come in many forms and just as there are short term contrarian traders on the long-only side there are those on the short side. Dr. Alexander Trader is one such swing trader with an investment time horizon that is probably between a few days up to a month. The strategy is to trade the short fluctuations around a trend. To profit from these price wiggles it is only natural to try to exploit movements both as prices go up and as they go down.

Apart from being an active trader the author is since long a teacher of other traders and has written a large number of books on trading and trading psychology. The last angle is important since Sell & Sell Short clearly excels when it comes to the description of the psychology of being invested in the financial markets. Interestingly, the experienced mental joys and pains of putting on short-term trading positions and holding a longer-term fundamentally based portfolio are remarkably similar.

Despite being a book on selling and short selling, those two subjects are complemented by one section on buying. They probably cover one third each of the books volume. In many cases this kind of branching out from the main subjects detracts from the worth of a book. This time it adds to the worth since the reader gets a feel for all the necessary angles of succeeding in markets, be it knowing ones edge, keeping records to learn from mistakes or handling money management, i.e. portfolio risk.

Paradoxically, Elder describes his trading strategy as a value strategy. He buys when the price is lower than the value and the price is looking as it is about to turn up. He sells when the price reaches the value zone, or he might ride it a little further into overvalued territory if the momentum of the share price is really strong. He sells short when the stock is in expensive territory and has started to decline and then covers his position when the stock is back down in the value zone. The thing is, what the author calls “value” is the zone between two rolling averages, i.e. the underlying medium term trend of the share price, rather than the intrinsic worth of the company.

While buying is fun and offers opportunities, selling is an unsmiling business. This is why books on selling are important but rare. If a stock goes in the wrong direction doubts start to swirl in the back of the trader’s mind. If it goes in the right direction he is torn between taking profits but then risk not taking part in potential further profits.

Selling situations can according to Elder be split into three categories: a) selling with a profit at a pre-determined profit target, b) selling with a loss using a protective stop and c) selling between the profit target and the stop level since conditions have changed and you no longer want to hold the position – “when in doubt, get out”. Covering short positions very much follows the same logic only with the price trend turned on its head.

A long teaching career, trying to explain something to others, makes wonders when it comes to how illuminating and clear this text is in explaining Elder’s very hands-on method to trading. I also appreciate the author’s wide knowledge of other investment styles as he can readily discuss similarities, differences, advantages and disadvantages of what he is doing himself compared to quants, fundamental investors, momentum traders, short sellers, long-onlies and so on. The key message is that to succeed any investor must do what suits his own disposition.

This book is highly recommended for the swing trader looking to profit from all types of short-term price movements – but also for those interested in understanding equity markets and investment psychology at large.

Mats Larsson, May 05, 2017

Kumar, Amit - Short Selling

Columbia Business School, 2015, [Equity Investing] Grade 3

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Columbia Business School is the academic home of value investing so it’s only fitting that it is their publishing company that provides Amit Kumar’s expose of short selling. Fundamental shorting of stocks is a discipline related to value investing since it is based on detecting a discrepancy between price and value through research of business fundamentals. But where value investing focuses on the situations where the value is deemed to be higher than the price, short selling zooms in on the opposite situations.

The author Amit Kumar who is a portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle Investments and a business professor at Rutgers Business School, has also written a book that is clearly influenced by the value investing discipline. The text has three sections. In the first Kumar lays out a framework to identify short selling opportunities, then he presents a number of interviews with investors and in the finishing third section he covers the risks and mechanics of shorting.

In short the presented categories of structural short opportunities are in companies 1) with business model issues, 2) that are unsustainably leveraged, 3) in structural decline making them value traps, 4) that are broken growth stories and 5) with accounting issues. The chapters in part 1 loosely follow this setup and the author develops his thoughts, provides some detail and present a large number of case studies – all more or less successful for the short seller.

If there is an overriding theme to the author’s short cases I would say that the core of a case is centered on businesses model problems. High leverage, high valuations, accounting warning flags etc. are secondary factors. There has to be a fundamental shift to the worse in business fortunes acting as a catalyst. And it is definitely a no-no to short open-ended growth stocks on the fact alone that they are overvalued.

The interview section is clearly interesting but considering the theme of the book, not very well aligned. First there is a section on the value investor icons Ben Graham, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and although Graham at least did some shorting (is there something he didn’t do?) this is hardly where his legacy lies. Then follows an interview with famed value investor Jean-Marie Eveillard who doesn’t short stocks at all and the activist investor Bill Ackman that only occasionally (but very publicly) take short positions. Finally, in the last interview with Mark Roberts, analyst at Off Wall Street, there is a contribution from a dedicated short seller. Names like Ackman and Eveillard clearly sell books but it really would have been more appropriate to seek other interviewees.

The finishing section with one chapter on when to cover short positions and one on the mechanics of short selling would probably fit equally well as a part of the first section. At least the basic knowledge of how to actually short a stock should have been presented in the very beginning, for the benefit of those less familiar with the process.

Most investment books explore the angle of finding winning (long-only) stocks as the road to success, but a portfolio that avoids losers will almost certainly also outperform. Short Selling will as such not only instruct those who are interested in short positions, but also help long-only investors avoid disaster positions. Success is often about sidestepping the stupid actions. However, although perfectly fine, in my opinion this is not the definite primer on short selling.

All investors benefit from learning about stocks that risk failure. This book provides some clues.

Mats Larsson, May 1, 2017

Staley, Kathryn F. - The Art of Short Selling

John Wiley & Sons, 1997, [Equity Investing] Grade 3

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There are very few books on fundamental short selling of stocks but this is one of the more well-known ones. It covers many aspects of the trade very well but leaves others out. Unfortunately we are still waiting for the definite book on shorting, preferably written by some of the veterans of the game.

There are three parts to the book where the first gives an okay background to the area and its practitioners. Short candidates are categorized into companies that a) lie to investors through their accounting, b) have expensive valuations and c) will be negatively affected by external events. Signals used by those shorting are according to the author a) accounting warning flags, b) signs of “insider sleaze”, c) stellar stock price rises, d) cash consuming companies and e) overvalued assets or ugly balance sheets.

Then the absolute bulk of the book is a number of rather old case studies meant to exemplify different types of short selling cases – although not exactly linking to the categories in part one. The author has had good access to commentary from a number of veteran short sellers through interviews. I still think the author could have drawn more explicit deductions from these, as they now mostly resemble a line-up of successful war stories.

The storyline is that clever short sellers first see something that daft Wall-Street analysts or long-only investors couldn’t detect. Then the investment case either takes longer to pan out than expected or the short sellers are tormented by violent short squeezes causing pain but in the end they are always vindicated and the company lead by the evil managers dwindles into disaster. Finally, there is a short wrap up where Staley draws some general conclusions about the field but also gives a historical account of shorting.

Kathryn Staley have, as I understand it from the sleeve of the book, worked with both hedge funds and brokerages in trying to find stocks to short. She has taught financial statement analysis for AIMR, the Association for Investment Management Research and “reads balance sheets and footnotes for fun and profit”. Despite her experience as a short seller there is very little of technical detail in the book as it is written in an anecdotal, almost journalistic, style. As an example, if Days Sales of Inventory is one of the most reliable signs of trouble as is claimed, how is the ratio calculated, what are the pros and cons of using it and which other indicators are useful to complement it with? Even though the title points to the “art” or short selling I think the “craft” could have deserved some space.

Even though the tone can sometimes become a bit too idolizing the strong aspect of the book is that you get a fair grip of the psychology of shorting and above all of the character of short sellers. Their contrarian nature is described as ambitious, cynical, driven, single minded – even pigheaded – and sometimes frugal and anti-social. They are curious, hard working and find pleasure in finding the truth and being smarter than the gullible investment crowd as stocks blow up. The author describes an almost moralist disposition since short sellers enjoy exposing the corporate fraudsters who waste the shareholders money. I also like how the book defuses short selling and shows how very similar the research into investment cases is on the short side and the long side. Long-only investors can actually learn plenty from the attention to accounting detail among short sellers.

Despite the mixed review the unfortunate truth is that there aren’t many other books to recommend instead so the book could still be worth purchasing. We are still waiting for the definite reference book on shorting.

Mats Larsson, April 23, 2017

Madura, Jeff - What Every Investor Needs to Know About Accounting Fraud

McGraw-Hill, 2004, [Equity Investing] Grade 2

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Reading this book I went from mildly pleased, to incurious and finally downright irritated. The subtitle is “Proven Techniques to Avoid Questionable Stocks”. In reality Jeff Madura, a finance professor at Florida Atlantic University and an author of several finance textbooks, provides nothing of the kind in this book written after the Enron and WorldCom scandals burst in the early 2000s.

The author has divided the text in 5 different parts and the book starts off by displaying a number of ways that companies historically have used to look more profitable - by increasing sales alternatively decreasing costs - or look more financially stable than they actually were and Madura clarifies with some of the then recent examples from the bust after the TMT-bubble. It is fairly basic but illuminating and written in good spirit. It’s an okay introduction to the subject of financial deception.

In the next chapter Madura tries to explain why so few have the ability but more importantly the incentive to uncover the shenanigans. The short answer is that they are all on the payroll of the corporations who cheat. Auditors are paid by the companies and apart from doing audits earn money on doing extra corporate consulting. The firms that Wall-Street analysts work for earn the big bucks from corporate finance services for the companies and the analysts are dependent on the goodwill of the companies for their flow of information. Credit rating agencies depend on the audited accounts prepared by the auditors who are on the take. This was prior to the debacles of the rating agencies in the GFC so the fact that companies pay for the rating agencies’ ratings as well isn’t discussed. Still the bottom line is that no one wants to bite the hand that feeds them.

Then follows two sections on how board practices should serve the owners of the companies and governmental regulatory initiatives and bodies related to financial supervision. These sections are fairly basic (SEC should get more resources), they have a kind of academic ivory tower touch to them (FASB should be allowed to write really detailed accounting rules), also they are a bit dull and don’t really speak to the investor who wants to understand how to protect himself from investing in the wrong kind of stocks.

The last part is called “How Investors Can Cope With Deceptive Accounting” and at last we should presumably in the six chapters that follow learn how to “protect your investing portfolio from accounting fraud”. I expected some discussion on how to use financial tools like cash conversion, change in accruals, change in Days Sales Outstanding, Days Sales in Inventory or other less frequently used metrics perhaps in combination with other more subtle signs of ethical collapse in companies.

One of the chapters can be summed up with that the reader shouldn’t trust anyone. This is a rather superfluous message since it has to a large extent been the overall message so far. However, Madura now also adds that the reader shouldn’t even trust his own ability to uncover financial tricksters. Consequently the advice in three of the other chapters is “give up”! Invest in mutual funds, ETFs, T-bills and bonds instead of individual stocks. Talk about a let down! Yes, by investing in bonds the investor clearly “avoids questionable stocks” but that was probably not quite the type of advice that people expected to get and what got them interested in purchasing the book.

In all honesty there are two other chapters that look into investing in stocks. The author advices the reader to look for corporate management teams that run their companies for the long term and to do detailed fundamental research on all aspects of the company’s business operations, sector and management and then make common sense judgments on the corporate quality. This is fair advice, but it’s hardly very specific.

Buy Howard Schilit’s Financial Shenanigans or Thornton O’glove’s Quality of Earnings instead.

Mats Larsson, March 25, 2017

Damodaran, Aswath - Narrative and Numbers

Columbia Business School, 2017, [Equity Investing] Grade 4

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The procedure of valuing a stock through is rather simple once it has been learnt. And when looking in retrospect on why old valuations turn out to be incorrect it is rarely due to getting the mechanics of the valuation tool wrong. Instead it is almost always because the sales or profits turned out very differently from what was forecasted since the company, its strategy or business environment developed in an unanticipated way – the narrative was wrong. This is a book on how to combine the numbers of the valuation tools with a narrative that brings life, understanding and, by this, increased precision into the valuation made. The author is a well-known finance professor at NYU who has written a large number of finance books.

As I understand it the book started with the author posting and updating the narratives and subsequent valuations for a number of stocks like Uber, Amazon, Apple, Alibaba etc. online. They now feature as case studies throughout the book. Taking a step back, Narrative and Numbers is also a personal journey for Damodaran as he over time has developed from a pure number cruncher to taking a more holistic approach. I find that when a reader is invited to share an author’s personal development the result is often very likable. This book is no exception and it is evident that the author has enjoyed writing it.

The structure of the text is very, well… structured. Damodaran tells you that he will combine narratives and numbers, he describes the basics of one of those, then he describes the basics of the other one, he merges them and finally discusses the consequences. The author who describes himself as a “teacher first” gives us short but thorough accounts of the two components before merging them into a greater whole. And to clarify, the narrative referred to in this book is the fundamental story of long-term value creation drivers for the company, not the flimsy, often biased and constantly shifting stories that always surround listed companies on the stock exchange. All the way through the book we get to follow the described process through the case studies and there are further several illuminating pictures giving good oversights of the reasoning.

The advocated valuation process is to:

1.      develop a narrative for the business,

2.      test the narrative to see if it is possible, plausible and probable,

3.      convert the narrative into drivers of value,

4.      connect the drivers of value to a valuation and

5.      keep the feedback loop open.

Interestingly the author calculates one value of the company as a going concern and one liquidation value and then estimates the probabilities of each life-or-death scenario. I very much appreciate the 3P test in stage 2 and the openness for change in stage 5 importantly tries to ensure that the narratives are reasonable and don’t becomes stale and outdated in the light of changes. Damodaran’s arguing for the importance of having enough humility to alter ones opinion brings to mind similar arguments from George Soros.

My main caveat is that the process doesn’t explicitly enough ensure a combination of an inside view and an outside view when developing the story. When forming a narrative it is very easy to focus on the uniqueness and thrill of the situation at hand and extrapolate from the recent history. Often this leads to too high expectations and bottom-up sell side analyst estimates are partly due to this almost always too optimistic. The outside view treats the situation statistically and takes into account the outcome of many similar historical situations. In business where success is governed by both skill and luck both viewpoints have merit.

To make good forecasts narratives must meet numbers. Without the verbal structuring of the fundamental business story of a company it isn’t even possible to understand the numbers to start with. Damodaran shows that good decisions benefit from several points of view such as the numerical and the verbal and I fully agree.

Mats Larsson, March 03, 2017

Miller, Jeremy - Warren Buffett's Ground Rules

Profile Books, 2016, [Equity Investing] Grade 4

I like this book. It’s got a genuine and honest feeling. There are several dozens of books on Warren Buffett. What makes this one special or needed? All other texts on Buffett’s methodology are based on how he has conducted his business at Berkshire Hathaway. However, before this... Further reading... Link to Amazon...

Ashworth-Lord, Keith - Invest in the Best

Harriman House, 2016, [Equity Investing] Grade 4

The author of this text on stock selection is touted as the Warren Buffett of the UK. This is a bit unfair since, to me, Keith Ashworth-Lord displays a distinct investment personality of his own. He’s not simply a Buffett clone. The author has more than 30 years’ experience from sell-side... Further reading... Link to Amazon...

Chancellor, Edward (ed) - Capital Returns

Palgrave, 2016, [Equity Investing] Grade 5

This is the even more brilliant sequel to the already superb 2004 book Capital Account. Edward Chancellor, the author of the classic Devil Takes the Hindmost, picks and chooses among the 2002 to 2015 Global Investment Reviews written by money manager Marathon Asset Management... Further reading... Link to Amazon...

Chancellor, Edward (ed) - Capital Account

TEXERE, 2004, [Equity Investing] Grade 5

There lies a danger in rereading books after a long time – it’s not always they age gracefully. The subtitle of Capital Account is A Money Manager’s Reports on a Turbulent Decade, 1993-2002. The time period corresponds roughly to the first half of my time in the equity market so far and I... Further reading... Link to Amazon...

Neely, J. Lukas - Value Investing: A Value Investor's Journey Through the Unknown

EndlessRiseInvestor.com, 2015, [Equity Investing] Grade 4

In Value Investing the author, an investment advisor and former hedge fund manager, shares his framework for investing in stocks. The stated aim is to provide a process for investment success. The emphasis is on process as investors without one are prone to let psychology determine... Further reading... Link to Amazon...

Crosby, Dr. Daniel - The Laws of Wealth

Harriman House, 2016, [Equity Investing] Grade 4

This is something as unusual as a practical book on behavioral finance. Where the discipline for too long has focused on disproving the so-called Modern Portfolio Theory and listing psychological quirks among investors, Daniel Crosby takes things one well needed step further... Further reading... Link to Amazon...

Ervolini, Michael A. - Managing Equity Portfolios

MIT Press, 2014, [Equity Investing] Grade 4

When someone writes a book on a subject and at the same time runs a company offering a software solution to the issues discussed this generally throws up warning flags. In the case of Managing Equity Portfolios this is unjustified. The author is clearly passionate about solving the... Further reading... Link to Amazon...

Cunningham, Lawrence A. (ed) - The Buffett Essays Symposium

The Cunningham Group & Harriman House, 2016, [Equity Investing] Grade 4

If you’ve ever watched Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger answering questions at a Berkshire Hathaway AGM, one thing that is striking is the combination of breadth and depth. That is, the breadth in the number of topics covered and the depth of the insight. The George Washington... Further reading... Link to Amazon...

Montgomery, Roger - Value.able

My Cents Worth Publishing, 2010, [Equity Investing] Grade 4

A few years ago I attended a class at Columbia Business School and seated next to me was this very nice Australian. When I at one point asked about his favorite investment book he pointed to Value.able by Roger Montgomery. Later on when I read the book my expectations were perhaps... Further reading... Link to Amazon...

Griffin, Trent - Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor

Columbia University Press, 2015 [Equity Investing] Grade 4

This might very well be the best over-hyped book I have ever read. Already a year before actual publication rumors began to swirl around the book - fully understandable given the intriguing combo of our time’s most mythical investor and a hugely successful writer with an ardent... Further reading... Link to Amazon...

Kirz, Jarred J. - Fisher Investments on Financials

John Wiley & Sons, 2012, [Equity Investing] Grade 3

With this book the author provides the basis of an understanding of how to invest in the finance sector. The author is an analyst at Fisher Investments covering the financial sector and macro strategy and with this book Ken Fisher’s investment firm completed the book series going... Further reading... Link to Amazon...