i'm looking for something that can give me a better understanding of risk management and probabilities as related to trading.

i've already ordered fooled by randomness, Practical Speculation, Devil Take the Hindmost, and Against the Gods. am i wasting my time with any of these?

i really think most 'traders' end up failing because they just dont have a real appreciation and understanding of risk and probability so i want to read whatever i can get my hands on that can help me with this.

Please tell me someone has a copy of this and/or past letters. I would greatly appreciate reading them. pm me please.

The first book mentioned in the topic start is "The Intelligent Investor" and I think that's where you should start.

from topicstart:

Excellent advice. Bill Bernstein's 4 Pillars of Investing is the best book I've read on investing. John Bogle's Commensense Investing is great as is is 12 Pillars of Investing article
http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/april272001.html

thanks

Which are the best books on Monte Carlo simulations?

Im new to MC methods and looking for both introductions and more advanced books, mainly covering options and using matlab.

Are these three a good start?


An Introduction to Financial Option Valuation

Numerical Methods in Finance and Economics

Stochastic Simulation and Applications in Finance with Matlab Programs

So after Black Friday, I haven't had a hobby that's caught me. I tried getting back into video games, but there's no money, so no real interest. I've always been intrigued by trading, economics, and investing but I was intimidated.

I've switched my degree to Economics (starting this fall) and I wanted to get a head start with some books. And maybe even dabble a bit with some investing/trading over the summer.

I bought "Stock Market Primer" by Claude Rosenberg as a starter, got it used off Amazon for $4 and I purchased "Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets: A Comprehensive Guide to Trading Methods and Applications"

Are these two books a good jumping off point?

honestly, the most efficient method would be to read this thread from page 1 and on. it provides a very good framework for anyone interested in learning about exactly what you're interested in. if you do this you'll get a good sense of which books are must-haves and have a better idea of what will interest you.

basically, what i did was start by reading anything by Greenblatt starting with 'You Can Be A Stock Market Genius" and mixed in some Damodaran. Then I read Buffet's Essays and Margin of Safety These all helped me get a good sense of value investing.

After that you can try some stuff like TAFM, Traders, Guns and Money, Practical Speculation, Enhancing Trader's Performance, Liar's Poker, Trading Your Way to Financial Freedom, Fortune's Formula, the Marktet Wizards series, Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. not to mention books on the financial crisis like The Big Short and All The Devils Are Here.

I'm also myself looking for good material on macroeconomics as well as books on risk and probabilities as it relates to trading and the like so if you find anything please post it here.

Economics is very very different from finance. You might want to make sure this is what you actually want. You won't really be talking about investments a ton in econ. So no those books are for finance people. I wouldn't read a thing about technical analysis anyway. Especially while your just starting out.

As far as investment books you shouldn't start out with anything overly technical. Stick with general story based books or more mainstream stuff (Jim Cramer's books come to mind) until you have a grasp of the basics.

As for econ, look at anything from Bovard, Rand, Hayek and you'll have a good start.

I'm looking on something on how to value startups and maybe a detailed walk through of the typical path a startup should aim to take. I'm looking for something in depth and technical if need be. Definitely not just looking for a story. I am potentially going to be a part of a startup and would need to help them with valuation and pitching to VCs. Any recommended resources would be appreciated. Thanks.

Just read King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone.

Loved it, and you will too if you are fascinated by the world of high finance and leveraged buyouts but don't know much about it.

It was a pretty concise story of the rise of LBO/PE firms from the late 70s to now, obv focused primarily on SS and Blackstone.

TIL:
Blackrock was an offshoot of Blackstone, a brainchild among others from SS to bring in superior talent and expand his empire without actually giving up equity in Blackstone proper.

Schwarzman is silly, silly, silly rich. Just silly rich. And he really likes to show it off.

Schwarzman contractually secured the bulk of his first fund (after a long, painstaking several years of bootstrapping) one week before the 87 crash which would have obv torpedoed Blackstone before it even started.

Schwarzman fires people quicker and more violently than Donald Trump and Mitt Romney combined.

Schwarzman didnt co-start Blackstone until he was 39, and didnt really get rolling until he was in his 40s (there's still hope for us dreamers!)

...and many other gems of private equity past.

Also, on a similar note, I really enjoyed a book last week called "Goldman Sachs: A Culture of Success."

Similar to King of Capital, its largely a history of investment banking over the last 100 years, again obv from the perspective of GS. Its not really a propaganda piece like I thought it would be -- half the book or more really focuses on the large scandals GS seemed to get itself into every 10 years or so.

Again I'd say if you are fascinated by this stuff but don't know terribly much about it (read: young and eyeballing a career in this field) its a really good read.

For a really good insight into the VC world and startups, check out "This Week In Venture Capital". 63 episodes available for free on itunes.

Mark Suster is a pimp and gives a really good inside look at the industry from the VC perspective.

Probably not a great resource as far as valuation, but on that note there is a torrent called "finance tools" (its not proprietary) its just a big package of excel models (DCF, FCF etc) that can probably get you started in some valuation procedures. Although I'd imagine thats really the job of the VC's minions (associates) so I'd just focus on the sales pitch (Im not in VC so thats outta my ass, take it fwiw).

Im curious to what you thought of it, if youve gotten around to it yet.

I finished William D. Cohan's Money And Power: How Goldman Sachs Came To Rule The World last week. I haven't read GS:ACoS so I can't say which is better, but Cohan's take was very good.

Cohan covers Goldman's history - the good and the bad - in a detailed and even-handed manner. In writing the book he was able to interview Blankfein, Paulson, Corzine, Rubin, Friedman, Whitehead, Cohn, Viniar, and a host of other current and former Goldman employees, which adds a great deal to the book.

The only real negative was some sloppy editing in the latter half of the book (having read a few Amazon reviews of his other books it seems like this is a fairly common criticism of his) which resulted in unnecessary repetition (e.g. I don't need you to tell me five times that David Viniar is the CFO; I heard you the first time).

As I said earlier, I don't know whether this is better than Endlich's book, but one thing which might sway people in favour of Cohan's is that his was published last year, while Endlich's was published in 1999, and obviously a lot of interesting and relevant stuff has happened in the last ten years. Understandably, Cohan spends a lot of time on the financial crisis, and his extensive interviews with Josh Birnbaum and others were very interesting.

If you're interested in Goldman Sachs you can't go wrong with this book.

Looking to read any good informative book on the UK Property Market. Anything from introductory books to advanced reading. Either property investment, development, buy-to-let or landlording.

All recommendations welcomed.

Is there a thread somewhere discussing the JP Morgan loss? I've looked here and in economics and didn't see anything. Thanks

Just read:

The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman: I would suggest reading the first 234 pages and then stopping. That first portion of the book is filled with a lot of cool anecdotes about the various game-changers and game-changing events from the 90s to the book's present (2004). This is particularly neat if your are in your 20s/early 30s and, like me, just drifted through this time period enjoying the moment and taking everything for granted. I kept stopping every few pages and going to wikipedia to investigate various people, businesses, and topics further, and ultimately learned a lot about things I hadn't cared to notice at the time.

After the section on the 10 flattening forces, the book really just gets preachy and political. The cool stories grind to a halt, and all thats left is his clueless agenda, which anyone can get in much shorter doses from anywhere else on the web.

Would also recommend subscribing to McKinsey Quarterly. They send me an email once every other week or so with a selection of relevant articles (some current, some archived revivals). The collection of articles will all revolve around a single topic. This week its stock market performance; last time it was social media, and before that corporate governance I think. Anyhow, its mostly right at the cutting edge of what the mainstream believes and prescribes.

I'm looking for a bare bones basic podcast on the stock market

not about what stocks to buy, technical analysis, etc... but just a flat out overview of what the stock market actually is, what stocks are, the different indexes, options, margins, etc...

thanks for any help

Yale/Robert Shiller on ITunesU is your best bet. Full course on financial markets with some baller guest lecturers (Steve Schwarzman, Carl Icahn, David Swenson)

Thanks, exactly what I was looking for, just a couple lectures in but this is the type of overall look I needed.

By the way, here's that Econ252 class in video form

videolectures.net/yaleecon252s08_financial_markets/

Started listening to Bloomberg radio last week for the first time. Pretty interesting stuff sometimes.

I listen to bloomberg surveillance on my drive in on sirius. As far as talking heads go, it's pretty good.

I havent googled so this is a bit lazy of me, but Ive liked a lot of the reccs in this forum so...

Looking for good books on the following topics:

2000-2001 recession / corporate shenanigans and their fallout (I already have The Smartest Men In The Room)

Greenspan's tenure (from different viewpoints)