Recommended Reading List
Below is a list of recommended books that can either help you better understand the industry background and its history or broaden your knowledge about finance and investing. They contain affiliate links and we may earn a commission from your purchase. However, our recommendations are always based on our own experiences and what we believe will add value to your career and life. You’re our first priority. Now and always. We hope you’ll enjoy these books every bit as much as we have.
= Investment Banking
= Private Equity
= Hedge Fund
= General Financing
Get to Know the Industry Background and Its History
The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs
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The House of Morgan
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The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.
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Dethroning the King: The Hostile Takeover of Anheuser-Busch
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Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Banker
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King of Capital
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Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
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The Money Wars: The Rise & Fall of the Great Buyout Boom of the 1980s
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When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
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King Icahn: The Biography of a Renegade Capitalist
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More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite
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Understanding Wall Street
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The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital
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Lessons from Private Equity Any Company Can Use (Memo to the CEO)
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The Alchemy of Finance
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Big Debt Crisis
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The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor
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The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
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The Outsiders
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Distressed Debt Analysis: Strategies for Speculative Investors
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You Can Be a Stock Market Genius
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Fooling Some of the People All of the Time
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One Up on Wall Street
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Margin of Safety
View >Learn the Technicals for the Job
Reflections from Our Own Experience
We don’t recommend any books for technicals. Reason is three-folds. First, it’s really difficult to learn how to perform the analysis from reading. This is something you learn by watching how it should be done and then do it yourself. It has to become part of your muscle memory. Would you trust a surgeon who learned to perform surgery by reading? Second, books often skip over some of the granular but important details that you’ll often encounter when you execute the analysis yourself. It’s a source for confusion. And last but not least, it’s just practically inconvenient. Pages will reference financial numbers on other pages. You’d have to go back and manually find these numbers in order to follow what the author is talking about. We thought it was pretty frustrating. Did we mention they’re also mind-blowingly dry?
Instead, we think the best way to learn technicals is through an online course. We’ve vetted the different courses and found the best one.
Online Finance Course
Learn accounting, financial statements, earnings quality, company filings, corporate valuation, DCF analysis, multiples, etc.