Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

Send feedback

What is it?
Screenshots, up to 3 (optional)
or paste one with Ctrl+V

We use your email only to reply to you.

IA

Investors and the history of markets

Long-run return studies, investor memoirs and profiles, and histories of investing ideas, hedge funds and stock exchanges.

Start here

  1. Confusion de ConfusionesJoseph de la Vega, 1688
  2. Stocks for the Long RunJeremy J. Siegel, 1994
  3. Anatomy of the BearRussell Napier, 2005
  4. The World's First Stock ExchangeLodewijk Petram, 2014
  5. VC: An American HistoryTom Nicholas, 2019
Joseph de la Vega · 1688

Dialogues on trading Dutch East India Company shares in 1680s Amsterdam.

Jeremy J. Siegel · 1994

US returns since 1802 show stocks beat bonds and cash over every long period.

“his book "Stocks for the Long Run" contributed greatly to the bull market's middle years” — Howard Marks

Source: Oaktree memo 'Irrational Exuberance'

Recommended by: Howard Marks

Russell Napier · 2005

What markets looked like at the US stock bottoms of 1921, 1932, 1949 and 1982.

Lodewijk Petram · 2014

How trading in Dutch East India Company shares grew into the first stock market.

Tom Nicholas · 2019

American venture capital traced back to whaling, and why it took the shape it has.

Edwin Lefevre · 1923

A speculator modelled on Jesse Livermore learns to read and trade the market.

“The finest trading book ever written is Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin LeFevre. It is colloquial reminiscences by a legendary speculator of the mistakes and lessons he learned over a…” — Barton Biggs

Source: Biggs calling it the finest trading book ever written

Recommended by: Barton Biggs, Bill Miller, Colm O'Shea and 5 others

Fred Schwed · 1940

Why Wall Street grows rich on fees while its clients' results stay ordinary.

“recommended reading for those with a healthy disdain for Wall Street and its practices as well as an interest in post-boom psychology” — Nick Sleep

Source: Nomad Investment Partnership, Interim Report for the period ended June 30th, 2002, p. 10

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Nick Sleep, Warren Buffett and 4 others

Adam Smith · 1968

Markets as a game of crowd psychology, seen through 1960s go-go Wall Street.

“One of the great books about investing is Adam Smith's 'The Money Game' which was published in 1967.” — Barton Biggs

Source: Biggs on one of the great books about investing

Recommended by: Barton Biggs, Howard Marks, Mohnish Pabrai and 5 others

Adam Smith · 1972

Wall Street from the late-1960s boom to the 1970 to 1973 collapse.

Peter L. Bernstein · 1992

How Markowitz, Sharpe, Fama, Black and Scholes built the theory of modern finance.

Joe Nocera · 1994

How credit cards, money market funds and discount brokers reached ordinary Americans.

Peter L. Bernstein · 1996

How people learned to measure risk, from early probability to portfolio theory.

“I think some of the books that are a must would be Peter Bernstein's book about risk, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk.” — Charles de Vaulx

Source: De Vaulx naming Bernstein's book a must-read on risk

Recommended by: Charles de Vaulx, Jim Collins and 8 others

John Rothchild · 2001

Three generations compounding a fortune through insurance stocks

“When John Rothchild combines history and biography with investing in one package, history illuminates the biography and investing. This is a sparkling book on each level, but even more so as an…” — Peter Bernstein

Source: Bernstein on Rothchild mixing history, biography and investing

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Peter Bernstein and 1 other

Leon Levy, Eugene Linden · 2002

A value investor's memoir from the 1950s to the dot-com crash, on market psychology.

“Personal biographies, the histories, are the most interesting. I have Benjamin Graham's personal biography, also the biography of Leon Levy, The Mind of Wall Street. These are all great.” — Chris Mittleman

Source: Mittleman on why investor biographies are the most useful reading

Recommended by: Chris Mittleman

Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh, Mike Staunton · 2002

Stock, bond and bill returns for sixteen countries from 1900 to 2000.

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai

Charles D. Ellis · 2004

How Capital Group built its long-term investing culture.

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai

William Poundstone · 2005

The Kelly criterion for sizing bets, from Bell Labs to casinos and hedge funds.

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai

James Grant · 2008

Collected Grant's essays; title listed on grantspub.com books page

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai

Rodney N. Sullivan · 2010

Edited collection of Graham's own writings and interviews

Sebastian Mallaby · 2010

Hedge funds from Alfred Winslow Jones in 1949 through Soros, Robertson and beyond.

“It's hard to imagine anyone will ever write a better book on the subject.” — Paul Graham

Source: Paul Graham on X (Apr 8, 2021)

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Paul Graham, Josh Wolfe and 1 other

Jasmina Hasanhodzic · 2010

Forecasting prices from past prices, from Babylonian records to quantitative trading.

Scott Wapner · 2018

Ackman against Icahn over Herbalife; the MLM model argued in public.

“Wall Street"-esque battle between Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn over unlikely target Herbalife.” — Marc Andreessen

Source: @pmarca, 'Thread: Books I've recently read and recommend'

Recommended by: Marc Andreessen

More financial history