121–130 of 274 posts
Top of my list would be "the ascent of money", by Harvard Prof Niall Ferguson. It explains what money and financial instruments are, by telling the stories of their history. Hes a great story teller, and for each aspect of finance that he explains, there's a story of a famous piece of history which it caused. For example, the application of oriental maths to finance caused a huge boom for Italian bankers, especially…
"Economics in one lesson" is a classic worth reading and thinking about. While you don't necessary have to follow the libertarian way of thinking it guides you to, it still shapes your critical thinking about economic policies a lot.
I'd recommend textbooks or corsera rather than pop econ books. Mostly Harmless Econometrics - Angrist and Krueger Principles of microeconomics - Mankiw (beginner) Intermediate microeconomics - Varian (intermediate) You also want to cover finance and time series - I don't know what would be good there.
Alternatively, don't learn from books, but the markets themselves. Open a Paper Trading account via Think or Swim. Begin a steady diet of Bloomberg / WSJ / CNBC every day. Whenever a word or idea is mentioned that you don't understand, Google it or consult Investopedia. Figure out what the Fed actually does. How debt and credit markets work. The microstructure of physical and electronic commodities trading. Maybe ski…
Don't know if the WSJ is still a good source today, but "a steady diet" of one or more of these day to day sources and watching what they get right and wrong will do you a world of good.
Top of my list would be "the ascent of money", by Harvard Prof Niall Ferguson. It explains what money and financial instruments are, by telling the stories of their history. Hes a great story teller, and for each aspect of finance that he explains, there's a story of a famous piece of history which it caused. For example, the application of oriental maths to finance caused a huge boom for Italian bankers, especially…
There is also a TV series based on this book, I think, which is fairly good.
Seems to be available in full and bad quality on Youtube.
I still think one of the best textbooks on economics is Paul Samuelson's Economics. Assuming you mean macro-economics that is.
This one was recommended by the former head of NYMEX to me when I started my career in trading. Written about Jesse Livermore who made and lost his fortune multiple times. He was often blamed for rigging the market, but his lesson is simple: you basically can't rig the market; it will destroy you way more easily. Take what the market gives you and be happy it even decided to give you that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Good call on the Hull recommendation - How do you feel about Natenberg's Option Volatility and Pricing? What do you trade, out of curiosity? (Career software engineer and fledgling options trader here, these were recommended to me when I first started learning. Still looking to make an industry change.)
Natenberg is solid, IMO better than Hull.
There are some nuances in pricing that will not really be captured in either book. For example, you don't learn that the implied vol of a one-week deep-in-the-money call should be lower than the same-strike put vol in cases where you have a dividend going ex the day before earnings. You will likely exercise the call before earnings to capture the dividend, so you shouldn't price in theta (or, from another angle, variance) for the event. And the thing is, every good options trader views these nuances differently.
All you really need to know about options pricing is: Greeks to understand the risk, skew/kurtosis/etc to understand the limitations of Black Scholes, and how to make sure your inputs are reliable so you can think critically about what constitutes a "fair" price.
To build past those basics, you have to take some kind of view on the name/sector/market. Understanding the product is mainly a means to an end---that end, of course, being an elegant way to express your views about the market.
Any corporate finance textbook, probably; Brearly Myers, Corporate Finance, https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Corporate-Finance-Richard-...
Watch the Yale/Stanford lectures opencourseware on Financial Markets with Schiller; http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/econ-252-11
Nicholas Taleb, Black Swan; https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Frag...
Harry Markopolos, Nobody Would Listen, https://www.amazon.com/No-One-Would-Listen-Financial/dp/0470...
Michael Lewis, Liars Poker, https://www.amazon.com/Liars-Poker-Norton-Paperback-Michael/...
"Leveraged Sellout", Damn It Feels Good To Be A Banker, https://www.amazon.com/Damn-Feels-Good-Be-Banker/dp/14013096...
The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch
"Economics in one lesson" is a classic worth reading and thinking about. While you don't necessary have to follow the libertarian way of thinking it guides you to, it still shapes your critical thinking about economic policies a lot.
EIOL is a representation of one school of economic thought up to a certain time. It includes many of the principles taught to high school and 101-level college students, but it may mislead readers who are unaware that there are other models, and other conclusions, that more recent research have uncovered. In other words, it's much like recommending a book that includes the Aristotelian and Galilean theories of gravit…