For a lot of you guys who are still in college and waiting to start whatever stint you're starting later this year, the second semester of your senior year of college has just started, or is starting within the next week or so. Now would be a great time to catch up on your personal reading, seeing as how, you know, you've done nothing but academic reading for four years.
In an attempt to follow-up on an earlier entry about reading ("What Happened To Reading?"), I'm going to post my work-in-progress reading list for the next couple months. Feel free to make suggestions or tell me I'm wasting my time!
There have been a lot of threads recently about the hedge fund industry -- an industry that I could maybe speak somewhat-intelligently about to my parents (who have ABSOLUTELY no idea), while sounding entirely ignorant if speaking to someone like BlackHat. Then again, one would be dumb in most settings when talking to BlackHat, but I digress.
I heard this was a great, quick, and pleasurable read -- what do you guys think?
2. How to Win Friends & Influence People
Another popular book among the WSO readership. I have to say I've always been quite cynical when it comes to these self-help / self-improvement books, but the folks on WSO tend to be a cynical bunch, so if YOU guys think this book is useful, I must actually be missing out on what it has to say.
Similar to #1, an in-depth understanding of sub-prime mortgages and the eventual collapse seems both useful and interesting. Michael Lewis is a great writer -- many fans of Liar's Poker on this site -- who is always on top of his game when it comes to financial journalism. Folks who have read this book, what'd you think?
4. William Faulkner Collection
Although I'm no expert in American literature, it's hard to argue with the fact that Faulkner is one of the greatest -- if not THE greatest -- American writers. Several courses in college glossed over Faulkner, but I was hooked quickly, and now that I have the leisure time, I'd love to continue reading this guy.
Need to fill my "blood, guts, & nudity" quota, and having finished the first book recently, I'm excited to keep trucking along with this dense but easy-to-read and disturbingly entertaining series. The astonishing length of each entry in the Game of Thrones series makes this entire reading list somewhat ambitious, but Game of Thrones is fairly low-priority -- especially because the [awesome] show follows the books closely enough, or so I've heard.
There you have it folks, my heavily-influenced-by-WSO reading list! Feel free to make suggestions, or tell me that certain books/series need the axe. Or, if you're feeling up for it, post your reading lists too!
I've read the first two and liked them a lot.
I've read a couple of these. I'd definitely add (as a technical text) Investment Banking by Pearl and Rosenbaum. I skimmed it before my first internship and greatly impressed an MD with my knowledge I read The Big Short in a day ... I couldn't put it down. It's simultaneously encouraging and depressing as hell. I love Michael Lewis' writing style.
A lot of good reading lists in the WSO FAQs...like the IB one: //www.wallstreetoasis.com/faq/what-should-i-read-if-i-am-interested-in-in…
1) Fooling some of the people all of the time 2) Confidence Game 3) The Vulture Investors 4) You can be a stock market genius - Greenblatt
for those looking for some less-commonly recommended books related to value investing that are fun to read.
He has a quirky sense of humor as you'll realize when you read it. The title might have been a result of that. It's a great book. I love books with case studies because they actually show you how they research the idea. This book is a collection of that, in special situations like spinoffs/merger arbitrage/rights offerings etc. Very practical approach.
I would add Financial Shenanigans, Distressed Investing/Distressed Debt, Margin of Safety, Security Analysis, and Boomerang.
Other books I've enjoyed:
Street Freak --Jared Dillian: I can't believe this book isn't more popular. Very well written and highly entertaining.
Fooled by Randomness -- Taleb
Against the Gods -- don't remember author
The (mis) Behavior of Markets -- Benoit Mandlebrot
Pioneering Portfolio Management -- David Swensen....if you wonder how your clients think of your strategies, this is the best book for understanding their thought process.
I'll probably get shit for this because I know David Einhorn is a good manager, but his book 'Fooling some of the people...' was painful to read. I couldn't finish it. He should have told a story and paid someone else to write it.
The Big Short is a great book for kids in college and high school. It's obviously pretty basic but the storytelling is very good and it gives a solid background of the crisis. You can and will read this book in 24 hours or less, which is both a good and bad thing.
Agreed - it's a great read. Watch out for some biases, plenty of over-generalizations, and some mischaracterizations. For example, tranching is better understood as a cash-flow waterfall (as opposed to a building being flooded). But overall, it provides a decent perspective of how things got as bad as they did, and more importantly talks about the personalities who actually saw it coming, their approaches, their general outlooks. And also those who, I might say, perhaps got lucky (looking at you J. Paulson).
Haven't finished the big short yet, but I think Paulson was probably tipped off by Boaz Weinstein. In the confidence game, Boaz tries to pitch to Ackman the idea of buying CDS protection on the ABX index. If I'm not wrong that's exactly what Paulson did... just guessing.
I'm assuming you already read Liar's Poker and Monkey Business.
Hopefully these are default on everyone's reading list!
Yes! I forgot to mention Street Freak because I've already read it, but awesome. Eddie interviewed Jared a few months back -- great guy!
Speaking of Jared and Street Freak, I loved the book so much and his writing that I reached out and he will be
1 giving a special deal to WSO Monkeys for his daily market newsletter (The Daily Dirtnap) which we are announcing today @ 1pm EST
2 he will be sharing one of these per month with the WSO readership, so you can get a glance into what to expect in his newlsetter
3 he will be writing on other topics related to the market exclusively for WSO about once per month...
So stay tuned. I'm excited to have him on board.
-Patrick
Patrick, this is great news.
I read his newsletters everyday during my SA this past summer. One particular newsletter hit me really hard and changed my outlook on both the industry and life.
I'm looking forward to this.
When genius failed: Rise and Fall of LTCM. Really opened up my eyes to dangers of mathematical modeling in finance (and is a good primer for Fooled by Randomness as well as The Black Swan).
Streak freak was awesome, looking forward to seeing the author here.
How to Win Friends & Influence People is a great book. I try and read it twice a year; its a good refresher/reminder of how crazy people can get and how to react and manoeuvre your way through some situations. I know with myself sometimes work/life can get too busy and stressful that I forget how to act right so the book is a nice quick refresher.
Just make sure to avoid Sun Tzu's Art of War. For years I've heard how its a great read and fantastic for business minded individuals. I found it to be neither. I received a kindle as a gift so I decided to break it in with this book. Tremendous disappointment. I don't doubt Sun Tzu's military prowess or his strategic genius but the book is overly simplistic. The first story in the book is pretty great but then it goes down hill from there.
Agreed, I don't know what everyone keeps going on about.
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Game of Thrones is a lot to piece through but it gets better and better
2nd Margin of Safety. Not in print anymore but PDF versions online aren't hard to come across.
Just bought King of Capital - we'll see if its any good
So many books to read, yet so little time.
2 is pretty good.
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