Ray Dalio - How the Economy Works https://youtu.be/PHe0bXAIuk0
Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
71–80 of 211 posts
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#72For learning I strongly recommend against almost all books mentioned in this thread. They don't really teach how financial systems work in the society or the underlying principles. They give you just a viewpoint. Some of them are good read after you know the basics. You need to pick up real college textbook (or online course) and read the parts that interest you and skim other parts. Example: Introduction to Finance:…
I recommend against Mankiw, and to be honest, macroeconomics as a whole. But particularly undergrad macroeconomics.
Undergrad macro textbooks are more or less designed to teach you how to work a model, and how to prove theorems about a model. But when all is said and done, macro tends not to go the distance and demonstrate how the model relates to the real world. They also get important details wrong. Most of the west doesn’t work on a fractional reserve system anymore, and the main constraint for money creation is not the reserve ratio.
Honestly you’d be better off learning very basic accounting, then learning about bank balance sheets, then learning about basic financial plumbing like the repo market, money market funds, and the fed’s operations.
I like Bruce Tuckman’s book ‘fixed income securities’ for the latter. It’s very practical, without any of the theoretical nonsense you sometimes encounter in advanced texts.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire Incerto book series by Taleb (which includes Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan) are awesome and they are talking about big catastrophic events like the current one. This pandemic is a classic Black Swan event: it's a surprise, it has a major impact and lots of experts will try to say that it was easily foreseeable in hindsight.
It's not a black swan, a pandemic was long on the horizon (think SATS, MERS, Ebola, ...). Just to add: I found taleb pretty opionated and had trouble distinguishing his own opinions from facts/theories.. I'd not recommend his books.
I think it is. Not because there were other potential Pandemics but because of the timing of the Virus. Its comes at a time when social media is in widespread use which means misinformation spreads rapidly which also leads to panic. Generally, social media amplifies everything good and bad. A combination of these factors makes it a Black Swan event.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#74Internship in a Wall Street Firm is better;
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#75This is an online course, not a book, but it changed my understanding of finance. I studied Economics (initially) at university, and never found anything close to as useful as this class: https://www.coursera.org/learn/money-banking
Completely agree, most texts concentrate on teaching outdated fractional reserve based monetary systems. Fractional reserves are no longer the major constraint on an expanding/contracting money supply. This course builds up an understanding of the push/pull factors of modern finance and banking.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#76For learning I strongly recommend against almost all books mentioned in this thread. They don't really teach how financial systems work in the society or the underlying principles. They give you just a viewpoint. Some of them are good read after you know the basics. You need to pick up real college textbook (or online course) and read the parts that interest you and skim other parts. Example: Introduction to Finance:…
The south Asian/international editions of Mankiw are cheap enough if you can find them.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#77I recommend a different approach. Start with a little bit of money in the stock market with a portfolio that you are allowed to change every Sunday. Then slowly understand what caused the value of your portfolio to go down or up and how you can hedge against your risks.(Once you lose or gain money you will get the motivation to read fat books dont worry) In the end its all a risk calculation and the faster you get into doing it the better. I am not rich or with a finance background but this is the approach I am following now.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#78https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13144133-where-does-mone...
Where does Money come From
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#79I have almost 10 years in the finance industry, both buyside and sellside and my take is that, while there are some fundamental principles at play, the world of finance is too messy and complicated for any one book to describe it. An even stronger statement I am willing to make is that no one person correctly and fully understands the financial system. So, once you accept that there is no "correct" answer to how the…
I agree with you. I believe the university textbooks are no good either as they are too far away from the real market. DO you believe that financial history books or even just history books with financial materials might actually be better?
I once read the "Reminiscence Of A Stock Operator" and my edition happens to include large paragraphs of description of the market at that time, and they are really fascinating and I felt that I learnt a lot.
Re: Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, would have played out very well for those top ticking n225 in 1989, esp with every global CB's trying to follow in the footsteps of the BOJ, while everyone is crowding into "diversification" and searching for yield… I consider investors to be the same as speculators, just speculators who think their beliefs will remain valid over long time frames… cause that's the gamble.
So if you don't believe in investing then what are your plans for retirement? Just to save enough money into a bank account?
I didn't say I didn't believe in investing, just that I don't consider it any different from speculating, just the time frame typically involved.