Harvard Business Review, 2012, [Finance] Grade 5
Michael Maboussin is a strategist at Legg Mason and previously at CSFB. He is also a teacher at Columbia, a trustee board member of Santa Fe Institute and one of the two persons that have influenced my financial thinking the most. Maboussins’s new book aims to explain the elements... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
John Wiley & Sons, 2011, [Equity Investing] Grade 3
Gas, water and electricity companies make up the utility sector. Despite the mundane reputation it’s an interesting group of businesses. Sure, the sales growth is slow, demand is inelastic, investors are focusing on dividends etc. but in the past decade, deregulation has allowed the... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
HarperCollins Publishers, 2012, [Business] Grade 5
Cynthia Montgomery is a Professor, and former Head of the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, where she has taught for more than 20 years. She is currently teaching strategy in the School’s executive program for entrepreneurs and owners of private companies. This book is... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Prometheus Books, 1936, [Behavioural Finance] Grade 5
This is not a review of the book that many argue is that cradle of modern macroeconomics. Instead it is a peak into the brilliant mind of J.M. Keynes the investor. One, by economists mostly forgotten, chapter of Keynes magnum opus is fully devoted to investing - and what a chapter... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
John Wiley & Sons, 2006, [Finance] Grade 4
Some of my smartest friends argue that the next few years will be similar to the period around 1990, where Politicians’ and Central Bankers’ decisions were the driving forces behind market action. Personally, I believe we are in a global deleveraging phase, a “Japan Lite”, with... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Palgrave, 2012, [Behavioural Finance] Grade 4
Fifty-two portfolio managers placed on a shrink’s couch, can that make a useful book? It sure can. Award winning psychoanalyst David Tuckett has an initial training as an economist which creates an unusual and fortunate cross pollination of knowledge. While finance and psychology... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Wiley, 2012, [Equity Investing] Grade 4
Interview books – what’s the novelty here? Often long on philosophy, but short on actual advice. Always dominated by hedge fund characters, as if all the authors have been as awestruck by the razzle-dazzle and unconstrained world of hedge funds, as opposed to stodgy... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
2012, [Finance] Grade 3
A risk premium could be defined as a situation where an investor receives a higher expected return as a compensation for taking higher risk. The overarching thesis of the author is that positive risk premiums are extremely rare. Eric Falkenstein was one of the first to research the low... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
Harriman House, 2012, [Equity Investing] Grade 3
“Investing clients’ money is a serious business, but it helps not taking yourself to seriously.” This dichotomy of easy going style and discussion of key issues in classic value investing a la Ben Graham, pretty much sums up this compilation of some of Alastair Mundy’s monthly writings to... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
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...
Doddington Publishing, 2007, [Equity Investing] Grade 5
Simple But Not Easy might very well be the best book written by a practitioner that you´ve never heard of. It certainly competes very well with the likes of the more widely acclaimed Investing Against The Tide (Anthony Bolton) and The Dhandoo Investor (Mohnish Pabrai). In certain aspects, I would... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
John Wiley & Sons, 2nd ed 2005, [Equity Investing] Grade 4
This is probably the most widely read book on the way Warren Buffet invests. And there are good reasons why. The Warren Buffett Way is a perfect introduction to this subject for the targeted audience of laymen and recent professionals. Even very seasoned investors will be reminded of some of the important... Further reading... Link to Amazon...
McGraw-Hill, 2010, [Business] Grade 3
It is an ungrateful task to try to give a fair overview of banks when the entire industry is in flux. Finance Professors Peter Rose and Sylvia Hudgins should however be more qualified than most as this is their 8th edition textbook on bank management. They don’t fully... 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...
Columbia University Press, 2011, [Equity Investing] Grade 5
I read this book a year ago and have thought about it since then. It felt like I had missed something important and that I needed to re-read it. I’m happy I did. The Business Professors at Columbia University have done it again. Accounting for Value is another truly interesting... 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...
HarperCollins, 2012, [Surrounding Knowledge] Grade 3
I have admired Colin Powell since Desert Storm. The former four star General, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State is a role model of a natural leader. It’s obvious to all of us. But it was not his power, his decisions or even his communication that... 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
