I've read it, and its a decent intro to the cash flow statement, balance sheet, calculating key ratios etc. - but it is at a pretty elemental level relatively, and I figured books such as Security Analysis, Financial Statements, Investment Valuation, and The Interpretation of Financial Statements would cover the same material.

Obviously some of these books are going to heavily overlap on concepts, but at this point I figure, the more the better.

A few others I forgot to mention that are en-route:

Financial Fine Print: Uncovering... - Leder

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role... - Taleb

The Dick Davis Dividend: Straight Talk... - Davis

Thats gonna be a tough one given the complete overhaul of price correlations in the last couple years.

Cant decide if I want to read that next, or a book equally highly recommended to me, The Prize by Daniel Yergin.

Thought about this one (and Black Swan), but figured a poker player wouldn't need to be told not to be 'fooled by randomness' ;-)

Ps. Feel free to most more books you think of in these areas!

Just add'ed that one to my Amazon wish list, although I think I will start off with Oil 101 since I'm a bit annoyed by that fact that The Price is so old (although that doesn't make books like the Graham ones or A Random Walk bad).

Really liking this website: http://www.indexmundi.com/

Great visuals on historical commodity prices and some other off-the-beaten-path data.

I found this master thesis from less than two years ago:

INTERNATIONAL DIVERSIFICATION
USING COINTEGRATION AND
MODERN PORTFOLIO THEORY
by Jose Balarezo


"This research investigates the benefits of international diversification from the point of view of
an American investor and finds that superior risk adjusted portfolios can be constructed by
combining cointegration techniques with Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) as compared to
portfolios created solely by using MPT techniques. 39 pairs of portfolios are tested, and in 36
cases, the combination of cointegration and MPT outperforms the optimization techniques
based solely in MPT.

We argue that investors looking to diversify internationally need to be very selective in
reference to which countries they invest into since international diversification will benefit the
investor only in the cases that the home country does not cointegrate with the foreign market.
In the cases where the countries cointegrate, the benefits of international diversification will be
diminished. In this respect, before portfolios could be optimized, our findings suggest that a
necessary step is to perform cointegration analysis in order to include in the optimization
process only countries that do not share common long term equilibrium relationships.
Following this line of thought, our research performs bivariate and multivariate cointegration
analysis between The U.S. as home country, and 15 foreign markets. 4 countries are found to
cointegrate with The States, and therefore should be avoided by American investors.
These countries are: England, France, Sweden and Japan.

On the other side, for 11 other countries we do not find evidence of cointegration with The U.S.
, implying that they offer good diversification benefits for American investors.
These countries are:
Brazil, Russia, India, China, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa, Taiwan, Germany, Spain and Australia."

This is a cool site!

Has anyone read Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor by the Baupost hedge fund manager Seth Klarman? It's going rate at Amazon for a used copy is $825... (isn't printed anymore). Seems to me that if the content in this book is as valuable as the price suggests, it would become an instant best-seller if re-published...


Another one: The Einstein of Money: The Life and Timeless Financial Wisdom of Benjamin Graham. Do you think this will add anything to Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor (or perhaps serve as an adequate recap of the two books, of which I haven't read any yet, but TII is on my to-read pile)?


_ _ _ _

Am finishing When Genius Failed - can anyone recommend something similar that sort of gives insight into the history of finance? My "theory" is that a solid knowledge of the past is beneficial when judging future, potential bubbles etc.

Margin of Safety -- Haven't read it... Probably a great read, but **** that's a lot of $ for a book (for me at least). I may search some libraries for it at some point.

The Einsten of Money -- Looks pretty interesting, but after reading the reviews and info, it seems like more of a biography of Ben Graham's life. The book probably makes connections between his teachings and examples of where/when/how they work. Either way, I will probably add it to my list.

History -- Security Analysis has a lot of examples from the earlier parts of Graham's career (1920's). The 6th Edition (2009)-- the one I have--is updated with a lot of great commentary that relates Graham's examples to more modern situations.
The Intelligent Investor - Updated by Jason Zweig - covers more of the 1950-1972 era in its examples. Zweig also includes commentary relating the teachings to the tech bubble and how absurd that **** was.

should be easy to find Margin of Safety online for free.

meh, I normally wouldn't do this but considering it has already been posted in this thread...

http://www.my10000dollars.com/MS.pdf

Lol, had found that site already, but figured it wouldn't be prudent to post here

Has anyone read it yet?

Nevermind, searched this thread and saw it recommended several places. Up on the ever-growing pile it goes.

Kanu,

You alluded to it in your post re: "good time to do this?". My 2 cents on this is that it is a really bad time to do this. I am not sure how fast real estate moves in the UK (Im from Canada) but right now here things are pretty slow. I would think with all the economy woes in Europe things would be slower there too. The problem I see with it is that property valuations can change really fast. Eg. you buy a house for 300,000 pounds today and in a few months markets change and now your house is only worth 200,000. Another issue is not selling your property. I know quite a few people that buy and flip and it gets very expensive when you can't sell your porperty and you are stuck paying property taxes and utilities.
Another issue is the sale price. My dad and some of his cronies just finished a buy and flip on a monster house in Toronto. House was worth around 3 million. Once all the renovating was done house ended up selling with a 5% loss.
My recommendation is get into an arrangement where you can make money off renters. Eg. buy an apartment building and rent all the suites. It does not take that much capital since the bank will give you a lot of the property value on loan. This type of investment will give you long term equity growth on the land value while provide you with positive cash flow month to month.
PM me if you want to chat more.
Also check out the library. I just read a great book on real estate investing that is specific to Canadaian Market.

This ^^^^

Im looking for a thesis, e-book or an article about preference shares.

In sweden there are several real estate companies that have preference shares which pay a quarterly dividend of close to 2%.

I want to learn more about the risks associated with these shares.

I know that they carry substantially less market risks than common stocks
and that they have priority over common stock in the payment of dividends and upon liquidation but beyond that i dont know what risk they carry and which numbers i should investigate to estimate their risk.

Their price/earnings ratios are between 5 and 9 which should indicate
they are financially sound companies but what else should i look for?

Bought and read Soros on Soros as suggested and loved it. Thanks.

a few months ago i went through this thread post by post to weed out every book i could find that was worth reading. i also looked at a couple of the suggested reading lists posted in this thread and others like Goldman and JP.

I ended up ordering 51 books through amazon, 22 e-books i was able to find online for free (and im talking about really good books), and currently have another ~80 still in my Wish list.

i have this ADD thing where i start reading a book and move on to another after ~50 pages. so i decided no more of that and i made a promise to myself that i wouldn't buy any more books until i finished the ones i already bought. in june i was able to make my way through a couple of hedge fund/global macro books. i also wanted to start on some value stuff so i read:

Dark Side of Valuation - Aswath Damodaran

More Money Than God; Hedge Funds and The Making Of a New Elite, and

Inside the House of Money;Top Hedge Fund Traders on Profiting in the Global Markets

liked all three. i made sense of a lot of the **** about hedgies i didnt know much about. and i finally got a taste of the value god. just the first of 4(?) books i have of his.

this month i've already started:

Practical Speculation - Victor Niederhoffer

after which I'm going back to the 80's for a little junk bond flavor, corporate raiding, LBOs, greenmailers, poison pills, golden parachutes, etc

Predator's Ball
Den of Thieves
Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, and mayyybe
Memoirs of a Corporate Raider

Next month i'll start off with some private equity and my hero, Steve Schwarzman:

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

Just watched a documentary on Netflix instant watch called The Pit which is about floor trading in coffee at the NYBOT. It was made in 2011, they don't specify but it seems like most of the pit scenes are in the options pits as (at least here in Chicago) those are the only pits that still have actual people in them. Although since there is no coffee pit anymore it could just be very old footage.

It's interesting though and shows the traders baller life style as well as the trials and tribulations. The successes and the failures. It is better than Floored but Floored was very poorly made although very accurate.

It's not until the very end that they start even discussing electronic trading but then it shows how electronic trading devastated the floor once ICE bought NYBOT.

Anyway this former floor veteran would recommend this documentary as it shows what happened to the old school floor traders. It's a very tough transition from floor to screen and the older school you are the harder it is.

^ I watched both of these a couple of weeks ago. Pretty interesting docs. It was unfortunate that many were too stubborn to even attempt trying the transition to the screen. I can understand how intimidating technology can be to some people (older school) but you would think that those talented traders could eventually do well with the new system.

Does anyone know of an interesting book on behavioral finance? I know about the EMH etc. (and the most common situations where it doesn't hold) so it doesn't have to be a complete "beginner's guide to behavioral finance".

aren't you jumping all over the place? or you have some speed reading skills?

Dreman is OK. He has a value slant if you are interested in value investing.