What are the best Finance books for keeping your skills sharp

The Intelligent Investor’ by Ben Graham, anything by him, really.

To be honest, I reread some CFA readings, but mainly focus on Youtube a lot. Recently looked at hedonic pricing models, kelly’s criterion for efficient capital allocation and brownian motion. 

IF you want a book to hold, the intelligent investor I cannot agree with more. You could also look at common stocks and uncommon profits and another one, not quite sure if i can remember the title, “irrational exuberance” by shiller. I did economics at uni and the author was pretty entertaining. 

I’m tending to read a bit of the top management books if you wanted to look there as well like Good to Great. They don’t drain your brain like some of the finance books and easy to read on public transport.

just my 2cents

We’ve just published an article on this, focusing on some casual but educational books: The Essential CFA Candidate Reading List

A bit out of topic, but I just wanted to share my favourite passage from one of the more entertaining finance-related books, Liar’s Poker:

I
want to be an investment banker. Lehman Brothers is the best. I want to be
rich. On the appointed day, at the appointed hour, I rubbed two sweaty palms
together outside the interview chamber and tried to think only pure thoughts
(half-truths), such as these. I did a quick equipment check, like an astronaut
preparing for lift-off. My strengths: I was an overachiever, a team player, and
a people person, whatever that meant. My weaknesses: I worked too hard and
tended to move too fast for the organizations I joined.

My
name was called. Lehman interviewed in pairs. I wasn’t sure I stood much of a
chance against one of these people, much less two.

Good
news. Lehman had sent to Princeton one man and one woman. I didn’t know the
man. But the woman was a Princeton graduate, an old friend I hadn’t expected to
see. Perhaps I would survive.

Bad
news. As I walked into the cubicle, she didn’t smile or otherwise indicate that
she knew me. She later told me that such behavior is unprofessional. We shook
hands, and she was about as chummy as a boxer before a fight. She then retired
to her corner of the room, as if waiting for the bell to ring. She sat silently
in her blue suit and little bow tie. Her accomplice, a square-shouldered young
man of perhaps twenty-two, held a copy of my resume.

Between
the two of them they had two years of investment banking experience. The
greatest absurdity of the college investment banking interview was the people
the investment banks sent to conduct them. Many of them hadn’t worked on Wall
Street for more than a year, but they had acquired Wall Street personas. One of
their favorite words was professional. Sitting stiffly, shaking firmly,
speaking crisply, and sipping a glass of ice water were professional. Laughing
and scratching your armpits were not. My friend and her accomplice were exhibit
number one in the case against becoming a professional. One year on Wall Street
and they had been transmogrified. Seven months earlier my friend could be seen
on campus wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt that said dumb things. She drank
more beer than was healthy for her. She had been, in other words, a fairly
typical student. Now she was a bit player in my Orwellian nightmare.

The
young man took the seat behind the cold metal desk and began to fire questions
at me. Perhaps the best way to describe our encounter is to recount, as best as
memory will allow, what passed for our conversation:

SQUARE
YOUNG MAN: Why don’t you explain to me the difference between commercial
banking and investment banking?
ME
(making my first mistake by neglecting to seize the chance to praise investment
bankers and heap ridicule on the short work hours and Lilliputian ambition of
commercial bankers): Investment bankers underwrite securities. You know, stocks
and bonds. Commercial bankers just make loans.

SQUARE
YOUNG MAN: I see you majored in art history. Why? Aren’t you worried about
getting a job?
ME
(clinging to the party line of the Princeton art history department): Well, art
history interested me most, and the department here is superb. Since Princeton
doesn’t offer any vocational training, I don’t believe that my choice of
concentration will make much difference in finding a job.

SQUARE
YOUNG MAN: Do you know the size of U.S. GNP?

ME:
I’m not sure. Isn’t it about five hundred billion dollars?

SQUARE
YOUNG MAN (casts a meaningful glance at the woman who I thought was my friend):
More like three trillion. You know we interview hundreds of people for each
position. You’re up against a lot of economics majors who know their stuff. Why
do you want to be an investment banker?

ME
(obviously, the honest answer was that I didn’t know. That was unacceptable.
After a waffle or two, I gave him what I figured he wanted to hear): Well, really,
when you get right down to it, I want to make money.
SQUARE
YOUNG MAN: That’s not a good reason. You work long hours in this job, and you
have to be motivated by more than just money. It’s true, our compensation is in
line with our contribution. But frankly, we try to discourage people from our
business who are too interested in money. That’s all.

That’s
all? The words ring in my ears. Before I could stop it from happening, I was
standing outside the cubicle in a cold sweat listening to the next candidate
being grilled. Never for a moment did I doubt the acceptability to an
investment banker of a professed love of money. I had thought that investment
bankers made money for a living, the way Ford made cars. Even if analysts were
not paid as well as the older investment bankers, I had thought they were meant
to be at least a tiny bit greedy. Why did the square young man from Lehman take
offense at the suggestion? A friend who eventually won a job with Lehman
Brothers later explained. “It’s taboo,” he said. “When they ask
you why you want to be an investment banker, you’re supposed to talk about the
challenges, and the thrill of doing deals, and the excitement of working with
such high-caliber people, but never, ever mention money.”

I thought everybody had the opposite problem – too much on the reading wish list and not enough time.  Investing and finance probably the most written about subject.   There is so much good stuff out there. My favorite author is Jack Schwager.  He has several book where he interviews the best in various roles and he’s a very competent finance guy himself, so he explains concepts where necessary.

As for books on finance, not all books will be understandable to people. Books with a lot of meaning and knowledge are written in a very complex language, and it will be difficult for a person who is uneducated to understand all this. Therefore, you need to start with simpler literature for beginners. Of course, such literature is not enough to teach you, but it is also useful, and in any case, it will not hurt you. If you read such books to start earning, I will tell you that you will not succeed. Instead of books, you need to look for apps that pay you real money https://wealthofgeeks.com/apps-that-pay-you-money/ . After all, you will immediately start earning in applications, and you will not have to read anything.

Does a novice investor need to read books?

An investor should start his acquaintance with investments with the fundamentals and not with cunning strategies and fashionable techniques. First, you need to understand what investing is and how it works, learn not to give in to emotions and learn about investment tools. There are many books about investing, theories and practice, with graphs or pictures, written in a professional or, conversely, simple, just for a beginner, language. After reading these books or explanations of FZROX vs VTSAX <span data-sheets-value=”{"1":2,"2":"https://thefrugalexpat.com/vtsax-vs-fzrox-who-is-the-best/&quot;}” data-sheets-userformat=”{"2":375555,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16777215},"11":3,"12":0,"14":{"1":2,"2":0},"15":"Arial","16":10,"18":1,"19":0,"21":0}” data-sheets-hyperlink=”https://thefrugalexpat.com/vtsax-vs-fzrox-who-is-the-best/”&gt;https://thefrugalexpat.com/vtsax-vs-fzrox-who-is-the-best/</span> , it becomes easier to study news collections, monitor the situation and understand.

Think and Grow Rich: Your Key to Financial Wealth and Power ( Get this book ) The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich ( Get this book ) The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel ( Get this book ) Jim Cramer’s Get Rich Carefully ( Get this book )

Very good. Thank you.