Investing and Financial Management Books

Investing and Financial Management Books

The Taxable Investor's Manifesto: Wealth Management Strategies to Last a Lifetime

Stuart E. Lucas, 2020

adapted description from Amazon.com:

This Manifesto, which combines the deep industry knowledge of a seasoned practitioner with the communication skills of a leading educator, sensibly folds tax incentives into investment strategy in ways that can add profound value over a lifetime to actual results. It includes guidance on how to keep a greater percentage of your profits with a higher probability of success and with less effort; why it’s important to manage the intersection of investment, tax and estate planning; and how to compete for better long-term investment returns against tax-exempt investors.

Impact Imperative: Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Investing to Transform the Future

Pamela Ryan PhD, 2019

adapted description from Amazon.com:

We are at a pivotal moment in history where there are organizations and investors doing immense good, but there are also seemingly insurmountable challenges for our planet that they are trying to overcome: overpopulation, climate change, and economic disparity. Impact Imperative stems from consultations that Dr. Ryan and her colleagues had with over 130 professionals in the burgeoning impact innovation space. As Dr. Ryan shares insights from these "impact innovators" about how to meet the challenges in the next few decades and beyond, she encourages readers to also be a part of the impact revolution.

Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy

Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake, 2018

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Early in the twenty-first century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, R&D, and software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, from tech firms and pharma companies to coffee shops and gyms, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success.

The Complete Direct Investing Handbook

Kirby Rosplock, PhD, 2017

adapted description from Amazon.com:

The Complete Direct Investing Handbook provides comprehensive guidelines, principles and practical perspectives on this increasingly attractive private equity investment strategy. Interviews with leading family office investors, qualified private equity buyers, and top direct investing advisors provide essential insights, and attention to the nuanced processes of direct investing. The books is a hands-on resource for family offices and those investors interested in generating returns through private company ownership to be more effective in creating returns in a complex market.

Real Impact: The New Economics of Social Change

Morgan Simon, 2017

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Impact investment—the support of social and environmental projects with a financial return—has become a hot topic on the global stage; poised to eclipse traditional aid by ten times in the next decade. But the field is at a tipping point: Will impact investment empower millions of people worldwide, or will it replicate the same mistakes that have plagued both aid and finance? In Real Impact, Morgan Simon teaches us how to get it right, leveraging the world's resources to truly transform the economy. Over the past seventeen years, Simon has influenced over $150 billion from endowments, families, and foundations. In Real Impact, Simon shares her experience as both investor and activist to offer clear strategies for investors and entrepreneurs alike.

Catalyzing Wealth For Change: Guide to Impact Investing

Julia Balandina Jaquier, 2016

adapted description from Amazon.com

In spite of the growing interest in impact investing, many families and their advisers find it difficult to develop pragmatic, successful strategies, often not knowing where or how to start. Based on the author’s extensive experience in advising wealth holders and wealth managers on impact investing, the success of her first Guide to Impact Investing, published in 2011, and over 160 in-depth interviews with HNWIs around the world, Julia Balandina Jaquier has developed the expanded and improved edition of the Guide. Catalyzing Wealth For Change is a unique, practice-oriented manual, capable of helping wealth holders and their advisers not only to understand impact investment, but also to become engaged in this field in a meaningful way and to navigate its complexities with success.

The Art of Protecting Ultra-High Net Worth Portfolios And Estates:

Strategies for Families Worth $25 Million to $500 Million

Haitham "Hutch" E. Ashoo and Christopher G. Snyder, 2016

adapted description from Amazon.com

In this book, wealth management experts Haitham “Hutch” E. Ashoo and Christopher G. Snyder use their combined experience to offer valuable investment and family wealth protection strategies. Chapter by chapter, you will learn how you can better protect your family’s wealth. You will discover any gaps in your knowledge―and you’ll be able to bridge those gaps with specific information that will lead to practical action. Mr. Ashoo and Mr. Snyder wrote this book to help you and other ultra-high net worth families, through prudent planning and investing, to mitigate financial disasters that leave so many others in ruin. They have sound, innovative ideas to share and insights that will help you manage not only the financial side of your affairs better but also the nonfinancial issues and challenges many families like yours face. When you integrate wealth management with life planning, merging soft life issues with complex financial strategies, your human and financial capital will both flourish.

Working With the Emotional Investor: Financial Psychology for Wealth Managers

Chris White and Richard Koonce, 2016

adapted description from Amazon.com:

An invaluable resource for wealth managers advising individuals, couples, and families, this book explains why human emotions drive all investor behavior and makes a powerful case for why advisors need to be aware of such emotions in advising clients―especially in high-stakes situations.

Making Money Matter: Impact Investing to Change the World

G. Benjamin Bingham, 2015

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Making Money Matter satisfies the growing longing for a financial overview that can offer practical advice and demonstrate how money is a social tool. It introduces the reader to common money mistakes, and the dysfunctional nature of the current financial framework. Its overview of the SRI world will inspire investors to push their advisors’ envelope while providing new strategies to meet the demand for positive impact. It provides a philosophical basis for transforming our view of money from an end unto itself to a means to change the world for the better.

Money Secrets: Keys to Smart Investing

Kim Curtis, 2015

adapted description from Amazon.com

Money questions plague all of us at one time or another and penetrate every aspect of our lives, and it doesn't matter how old you are or how much money you have. Money questions like: Do I have enough? Will I have enough? What is enough? Money Secrets: Keys to Smart Investing has the answers you are looking for. You will get solid, realistic, and action-oriented guidance from one of the top wealth management advisors in the country.

The Aspirational Investor: Taming the Markets to Achieve Your Life's Goals

Ashvin B. Chhabra, 2015

adapted description from Amazon.com

Today all of us bear the burden of investing wisely, but too many of us are preoccupied with the wrong priorities—increasing returns at all costs, finding the next star fund manager, or beating “the market.” Unfortunately conventional portfolio theory and the grand debates in finance have offered investors only incomplete solutions. What is needed, argues Ashvin B. Chhabra, is a framework that shifts the focus of investment strategy from portfolios and markets to individuals and the objectives that really matter: things like protecting against unexpected financial crises, paying for education or retirement, and financing philanthropy and entrepreneurship. The Aspirational Investor is a practical, innovative approach to managing wealth based on key goals and the careful allocation of risks rather than responding to the whims of the financial markets.

The Motley Fool Guide to Investing for Beginners

The Motley Fool, 2015

adapted description from Amazon.com:

A guide that will show you (or a friend or relative who’s just getting started): (1) How much you need to start investing, (2) The key steps for building long-term wealth, and (3) Proven ways to find great companies to buy. Understanding these life-changing concepts will get any investor on the path to financial freedom. This guide includes our top investors’ biggest mistakes, insights into different styles of investing, and much more.

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2014

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The book reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish.

The Power of Impact Investing: Putting Markets to Work for Profit and Global Good

Judith Rodin and Margot Brandenburg, 2014

adapted description from Amazon.com:

In The Power of Impact Investing, Rockefeller Foundation president Judith Rodin and Margot Brandenburg, two of the foremost experts in the field, explain what impact investing is, how it compares to philanthropy and traditional investments, where opportunities are evolving around the world, and how to get started. By sharing moving stories of impact investors and the exciting social enterprises benefiting from these investments, Rodin and Brandenburg offer a compelling resource for anyone interested in better understanding the power of impact investing—including retail investors, high-net-worth individuals, and heads of family offices, foundations, banks, and pension funds—while also offering experienced impact investors an opportunity to deepen their knowledge and benefit from the perspectives of other investors.

More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places

Michael J. Mauboussin, 2013

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Offering invaluable tools to better understand the concepts of choice and risk, More Than You Know is a unique blend of practical advice and sound theory, sampling from a wide variety of sources and disciplines. Mauboussin builds on the ideas of visionaries, including Warren Buffett and E. O. Wilson, but also finds wisdom in a broad and deep range of fields, such as casino gambling, horse racing, psychology, and evolutionary biology. He analyzes the strategies of poker experts David Sklansky and Puggy Pearson and pinpoints parallels between mate selection in guppies and stock market booms. For this edition, Mauboussin includes fresh thoughts on human cognition, management assessment, game theory, the role of intuition, and the mechanisms driving the market's mood swings, and explains what these topics tell us about smart investing. More Than You Know is written with the professional investor in mind but extends far beyond the world of economics and finance.

The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor

Howard Marks, 2011

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Howard Marks, chairman and cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management, who has been linked to Warren Buffett for his lucid assessments of market opportunities and risks, now brings his insightful commentary and investment philosophy to everyone.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Second Edition)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2010

adapted description from Amazon.com:

A black swan is an event, positive or negative, that is deemed improbable yet causes massive consequences. In this groundbreaking and prophetic book, Taleb shows in a playful way that Black Swan events explain almost everything about our world, and yet we—especially the experts—are blind to them. In this edition, Taleb has added a new essay, On Robustness and Fragility, which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.

The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio

William J. Bernstein, 2010

adapted description from Amazon.com:

This down-to-earth book lays out in easy-to-understand prose the four essential topics that every investor must master: the relationship of risk and reward, the history of the market, the psychology of the investor and the market, and the folly of taking financial advice from investment salespeople. Bernstein pulls back the curtain to reveal what really goes on in today’s financial industry as he outlines a simple program for building wealth while controlling risk.

The Little Book of Behavioral Investing: How Not to be Your Own Worst Enemy

James Montier, 2010

adapted description from Amazon.com:

A detailed guide to overcoming the most frequently encountered psychological pitfalls of investing. Bias, emotion, and overconfidence are just three of the many behavioral traits that can lead investors to lose money or achieve lower returns. Behavioral finance, which recognizes that there is a psychological element to all investor decision-making, can help you overcome this obstacle.

The Little Book That Still Beats the Market

Joel Greenblatt, 2010

adapted description from Amazon.com:

In 2005, Joel Greenblatt published a book that is already considered one of the classics of finance literature. In The Little Book that Beats the Market—a New York Times bestseller with 300,000 copies in printGreenblatt explained how investors can outperform the popular market averages by simply and systematically applying a formula that seeks out good businesses when they are available at bargain prices. Now, with a new Introduction and Afterword for 2010, The Little Book that Still Beats the Market updates and expands upon the research findings from the original book. Included are data and analysis covering the recent financial crisis and model performance through the end of 2009. In a straightforward and accessible style, the book explores the basic principles of successful stock market investing and then reveals the author’s time-tested formula that makes buying above average companies at below average prices automatic. Though the formula has been extensively tested and is a breakthrough in the academic and professional world, Greenblatt explains it using 6th grade math, plain language and humor. He shows how to use his method to beat both the market and professional managers by a wide margin. You’ll also learn why success eludes almost all individual and professional investors, and why the formula will continue to work even after everyone “knows” it.

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy

Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D. and William D. Danko, Ph.D., 2010
adapted description from Amazon.com:

The bestselling The Millionaire Next Door identifies seven common traits that show up again and again among those who have accumulated wealth. Most of the truly wealthy in this country don't live in Beverly Hills or on Park Avenue-they live next door. This new edition, the first since 1998, includes a new foreword for the twenty-first century by Dr. Thomas J. Stanley.

The New Financial Advisor: Strategies for Successful Family Wealth Management

G. Scott Budge, 2008

adapted description from Amazon.com:

With financial products becoming increasingly commoditized, the new competitive frontier for many advisors is centered on managing relationships. And as the role of financial advisor evolves from product salesman to solution provider and agent of change, you must develop a more sophisticated sense of how your client's family life and financial life are intertwined—if you intend on excelling in this new environment.

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing

John C. Bogle, 2007

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Investing is all about common sense. Owning a diversified portfolio of stocks and holding it for the long term is a winner’s game. Trying to beat the stock market is theoretically a zero-sum game (for every winner, there must be a loser), but after the substantial costs of investing are deducted, it becomes a loser’s game. Common sense tells us—and history confirms—that the simplest and most efficient investment strategy is to buy and hold all of the nation’s publicly held businesses at very low cost. The classic index fund that owns this market portfolio is the only investment that guarantees you with your fair share of stock market returns. To learn how to make index investing work for you, there’s no better mentor than legendary mutual fund industry veteran John C. Bogle. Over the course of his long career, Bogle—founder of the Vanguard Group and creator of the world’s first index mutual fund—has relied primarily on index investing to help Vanguard’s clients build substantial wealth. Now, with The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, he wants to help you do the same.

Your Money and Your Brain:

How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich

Jason Zweig, 2007

adapted description from Amazon.com:

What happens inside our brains when we think about money? Quite a lot, actually, and some of it isn't good for our financial health. In Your Money and Your Brain, Jason Zweig explains why smart people make stupid financial decisions—and what they can do to avoid these mistakes. Zweig, a veteran financial journalist, draws on the latest research in neuroeconomics, a fascinating new discipline that combines psychology, neuroscience, and economics to better understand financial decision making. He shows why we often misunderstand risk and why we tend to be overconfident about our investment decisions. Your Money and Your Brain offers some radical new insights into investing and shows investors how to take control of the battlefield between reason and emotion.

Wealth: Grow It, Protect It, Spend It, and Share It

Stuart E. Lucas, 2006

adapted description from Publishers’ Weekly:

Wealth: those who have it want to keep it, but what’s the best way to ensure it doesn’t run dry? Lucas is ideally suited to answer the question. A Harvard Business School graduate who’s worked at wealth management firms, and a fourth-generation heir of E.A. Stuart, the founder of the Carnation Company, Lucas counsels readers who have, or are planning to have, at least a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank. His book teaches them to manage their wealth so it grows, or is at least maintained, for as long as they want, whether that’s one lifetime or several generations. Lucas focuses principally on investing decisions, spending decisions (like whether to engage in philanthropy) and emotional issues. He provides a good balance of in-depth financial guidance and tips on negotiating financial decisions in the family. Lucas uses examples taken from his own family’s experience with fortune, a tactic that lends both credibility and intimacy to his advice. With its frequent plunges into the minutiae of investment options, this book is definitely not light reading. It is, however, a helpful guidebook for those faced with the task of growing, protecting, spending and sharing a large amount of cash.

Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street

Peter L. Bernstein, 2005

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Capital Ideas traces the origins of modern Wall Street, from the pioneering work of early scholars and the development of new theories in risk, valuation, and investment returns, to the actual implementation of these theories in the real world of investment management. Bernstein brings to life a variety of brilliant academics who have contributed to modern investment theory over the years: Louis Bachelier, Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Fischer Black, Myron Scholes, Robert Merton, Franco Modigliani, and Merton Miller. Filled with  in-depth insights and timeless advice, Capital Ideas reveals how the unique contributions of these talented individuals profoundly changed the practice of investment management as we know it today. 

Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

Charles T. Munger, 2005

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Poor Charlie's Almanack contains the wit and wisdom of Charlie Munger: his talks, lectures and public commentary. And, it has been written and compiled with both Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett's encouragement and cooperation. So pull up your favorite reading chair and enjoy the unique humor, wit and insight that Charlie Munger brings to the world of business, investing and life itself. With Charlie himself as your guide, you are about to embark on an extraordinary journey toward better investment, decision making, and thinking about the world and life in general. Charlie's unique worldview, what he calls a 'multidisciplinary' approach, is a self-developed model for clear and simple thinking while being far from simplistic itself. Throughout the book, Charlie displays his intellect, wit, integrity, and rhetorical flair. Using his encyclopedic knowledge, he cites references from classical orators to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European literati to pop culture icons of the moment while simultaneously reinforcing the virtues of lifelong learning and intellectual curiosity.

Creative Capital: Managing Private Wealth in a Complex World

Gregory Curtis, 2004

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Building great wealth is enormously difficult. But maintaining that wealth across the generations is an even greater challenge. In Creative Capital: Managing Private Wealth in a Complex World, Gregory Curtis outlines the investment secrets of the world’s wealthiest families. These “best investment practices” for taxable investors represent the only certain way to preserve and grow private capital in the face of taxes, inflation, investment costs, and the conflicts of interest that are endemic in the financial advisory business. Creative Capital begins with a discussion of the crucial role private wealth plays in America’s remarkable economic and cultural success. In Part Two of Creative Capital, Curtis discusses several broad issues that wealthy families face, including understanding investment risk, conflicts of interest among financial advisors, and the challenge of making sound investment decisions. Part Three is a step-by-step guide to the successful management of liquid wealth, focusing on best investment practices from portfolio design to manager selection to monitoring investment performance.

It Pays to Talk: How to Have the Essential Conversations with Your Family About Money and Investing

Carrie Schwab Pomeranz and Charles Schwab, 2003

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Financial security begins with a conversation, and that’s why Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz has teamed with her father, internationally respected investing pioneer and best-selling author Charles Schwab, to produce this family financial primer. This book will help investors succeed whether the stock market is going up or down, both in the present and in the long term. Throughout the book, the authors stress the importance of having regular and effective conversations about money—with a spouse or partner, young children and teenagers, and aging parents—and offer the perfect road map for starting and continuing those conversations,  including understanding the basics: stocks, bonds and mutual funds; building wealth over time, understanding tolerance for risk, and developing and maintaining the right investment portfolio;  investing for a child’s future and for their secure retirement; estate planning for parents and their older parents; and preparing for life’s unexpected events.

The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens

David Gardner and Tom Gardner, 2002

adapted description from Amazon.com:

This book helps teens stand out from the ho-hum mutual-fund crowd, build a portfolio of stocks they can actually care about, and take advantage of the investor’s best friend—time—to watch their profits multiply.

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Change in the Markets and in Life

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2001

adapted description from Amazon.com:

In Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a professional trader and mathematics professor, examines what randomness means in business and in life and why human beings are so prone to mistake dumb luck for consummate skill. This eccentric and highly personal exploration of the nature of randomness meanders from the court of Croesus and trading rooms in New York and London to Russian roulette, Monte Carlo engines, and the philosophy of Karl Popper. Taleb’s ability to make seemingly arcane mathematical concepts entirely relevant in evaluating and understanding everything from the stock market to the success of those millionaires makes this an articulate, wise, and humorous meditation on the nature of success and failure.

Pioneering Portfolio Management: An Unconventional Approach to Institutional Investment

David F. Swensen, 2000

adapted description from Amazon.com:

During his fourteen years as Yale’s chief investment officer, David F. Swensen has transformed the management of the university’s portfolio.  Largely by focusing on unconventional strategies, including a heavy allocation to private equity, Swensen has achieved an annualized return of 16.2 percent, which has propelled Yale’s endowment into the top tier of institutional funds.  Now, this acknowledged leader of fund managers draws on his deep knowledge of the financial markets to provide a compendium of powerful investment strategies. Swensen presents an overview of the investment world populated by institutional fund managers, pension fund fiduciaries, investment managers, and trustees of universities, museums, hospitals, and foundations.  He offers insights from his experience managing Yale’s endowment, ranging from broad issues of goals and investment philosophy to the strategic and tactical aspects of portfolio management.  This exceptionally readable book addresses critical concepts such as handling risk, selecting investment advisers, and negotiating the opportunities and pitfalls in individual asset classes.  Fundamental investment ideas are illustrated by real-world concrete examples, and each chapter contains strategies that any manager can put into action.

Socially Responsible Investing: More Than Meets the Eye

Amy Domini, 2000

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Put your money where your heart is! It sounds like an oxymoron: Can you really make money as a socially responsible investor? The answer is, unquestionably, yes. The way you invest can contribute not only to your bottom line but also to a just and fair society. In Socially Responsible Investing, Amy Domini, the movement's pioneer and the name behind the Domini 400 Social Index, shows you how.

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

Peter L. Bernstein, 1998

adapted description from Amazon.com:

With the stock market breaking records almost daily, leaving longtime market analysts shaking their heads and revising their forecasts, a study of the concept of risk seems quite timely. Peter Bernstein has written a comprehensive history of man's efforts to understand risk and probability, beginning with early gamblers in ancient Greece, continuing through the 17th-century French mathematicians Pascal and Fermat and up to modern chaos theory. Along the way he demonstrates that understanding risk underlies everything from game theory to bridge-building to winemaking.

Winning the Loser’s Game: Timeless Strategies for Successful Investing

Charles D. Ellis, 1998

adapted description from Amazon.com:

Previously published under the name of "Investment Policy", this title is intended to be simple, straightforward and concise. The challenge of investing is described, and reasons why most investors lose is suggested. Guidance on building an effective portfolio and formulating an investment program is offered.