McGraw-Hill, 2012, [Finance] Grade 4
This is a book on high yield investing that is short on details but long on common sense and real life experience. Robert Levine is the founder, former CEO and CIO of Nomura Corporate Research and Asset Management. Prior he worked with junk bonds for... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Harriman House, 2009 3rd ed, [Finance] Grade 4
This is a study of the four best moments to buy American stocks in history, namely 1921, 1932, 1949 and 1982. These occasions were followed by long secular bull markets. At all these buying opportunities the valuation was low, but how do you know when the market is cheap enough and won’t continue down... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Wiley Finance, 2007, [Finance] Grade 3
The author’s thesis is that what he calls active asset management will become the norm in the asset management industry instead of today’s long only, buy and hold paradigm. Ineichen who, before he started up his own consultancy business had a long career as... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
McGraw-Hill, 2012, [Finance] Grade 5
We live in troubled times. Since the dawn of time, which in this case means the late 70’s, the asset allocation of pension funds has been governed by a mean-variance-optimization (MVO) process that springs from the so called modern portfolio theory (MPT). Then came the TMT-crisis. Confidence... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
John Wiley & Sons, 2012, [Finance] Grade 5
Twenty three years after the first Market Wizard book Jack Schwager, hedge fund PM, derivatives expert and author, again serves us a brimming smorgasbord of unforgettable characters in this fourth book in the series. Trading legend Ed Seykota says in his foreword that the previous books in... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Crown Business, 2010, [Finance] Grade 3
For a while in 2006 it felt like private equity would buy up the universe. Intoxicated by rising pension allocations and a tidal wave of credit, PE companies acquired anything in their sight. The bonanza was crowned with the extravagant 60th birthday party of... Further reading... Link to Amazon
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, [Finance] Grade 3
Even though many types of hedge funds (HFs) didn’t live up to expectations in the 2008 financial crisis and the pure alpha – less both traditional and alternative betas - of hedge funds in aggregate has withered to zero during the last few risk-on-risk-off years, the money allocated to HFs has not... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
John Wiley & Sons, 2010, [Finance] Grade 5
There are many good books about bottom-up investing. It is harder to find really good books on top-down investing – tactical asset allocation. The Great Reflation, by Antony Boeckh, is my favorite. He was the editor, and owner, of Banker Credit Analyst (BCA) for more than 30 years. There are only... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Forth Estate, 2001, [Finance] Grade 5
This book is an overview of the rise and fall of a hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), 1994-1998. It gives the reader timeless knowledge of how the financial industry works from time to time. The author, Roger Lowenstein, has written several books, many critical of... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Marketplace Books, 1988, [Finance] Grade 5
Some of my favourite investment reads have always been the monthly issues of publications such as Outstanding Investor´s Digest and Value Investor Insight. Why? Because of the simple but brilliant idea that as a reader you feel like you are effectively... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Public Affairs, 2008, [Finance] Grade 5
Can we observe the market objectively, being participants as well? What is reflexivity, and why is it a must to understand it? What is George Soros’ long-term scenario for the financial markets? This book consists of two parts: (1) Perspective and (2) The Current Crisis and Beyond. The second part is good. The first is... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
W.W. Norton & Company, 2011, [Finance] Grade 4
Twenty years ago, young and quitting bond trader Michael Lewis stumbled out of Salomon Brothers convinced that he had seen the peak of financial folly unwound. He was clearly wrong, but the book he wrote about his experience, Liar’s Poker, launched a hugely successful... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
John Wiley & Sons, 2001, [Finance] Grade 3
This is partly an introduction to the foreign exchange (FX) market, partly a glance at a currency trader’s strategy. Kathy Lien, today Director of Currency Research at Global Forex Trading, has a long history in FX from DailyFX.com and JP Morgan Chase. My major learning from the book is that... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Bloomberg Press, 2010, [Finance] Grade 3
James Picerno is a journalist who has been writing about finance for more than twenty years. Well, he sure picked up a lot of things on the way. Apart from a whole lot of knowledge he acquired a religion, the faith of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) and its belief in... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
John Wiley & Sons, 2012, [Finance] Grade 4
Paul Kaplan is one of the more innovative thinkers in finance. After leaving Northwestern University Kaplan has spent over two decades at Ibbotson Associates and later Morningstar – after they bought Ibbotson – currently as the research director for Morningstar Europe. Kaplan’s thinking spans over... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
John Wiley & Sons, 2010, [Finance] Grade 5
On a basic level there are two competing mental models of stock values in the financial sector. The first is that the value of something is what someone is prepared to pay for that something. In the equity market this leads to statements such as “the valuation of a stock is low” if the current... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Basic Books, 2004, [Finance] Grade 5
Fractals. This seems to have been Benoit Mandelbrot’s premier professional passion in life. A fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole.” While fractals are... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
McGraw-Hill, 2011, [Finance] Grade 3
This is as far as I know a unique book. It’s in essence a number of check lists covering most aspects of the work description of a sell side equity analyst. The book aims to cater to both the buy side analyst and the sell side analyst. In reality it is the later who is in focus. This is no... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
John Wiley & Sons, First edition 1987, [Finance] Grade 5
This book is by many famous traders quoted as the revelation that changed how they view markets. Not that the author needs the validation of others. “Four hundred seventy-three million to one. Those are the odds against George Soros compiling the investment record he did […]” as Paul Tudor Jones II states in... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Harvard Business Press, 2008, [Finance] Grade 3
Does private equity owned companies have a superior management model than public owned companies? The writers of this book certainly like to think so. Israeli born strategy expert Orit Gadiesh is the chairwoman of the management consulting firm Bain & Company and Hugh MacArthur is the leader of the same firms’ - huge - global private equity practice. In this short book they describe the... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
