Finance Book Recommendations

What’s up guys.

What a crazy week and a half it’s been. Definitely check in on my memes on Insta or Twitter if you haven’t seen the craziness. Let’s step away from all the madness and talk finance books instead. I might have to write some stuff about everything going on - but here’s my initial thoughts.

Things are moving faster and policy makers are acting faster. Social media activity from VCs screaming fire drove the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) panic, while a Bloomberg interview where Credit Suisse’s largest shareholder said “Absolutely Not” to buying more shares (due to regulatory reasons) led to people just focusing on the headline and for Credit Suisse to be sold in a shotgun wedding to UBS within days. Social media and online media is driving faster worries in the banking system. Secondly, policy makers across the globe are acting faster. They’re closing Signature Bank over a weekend, making SVB depositors whole over a weekend, giving First Republic all the help they can, and arranging an European firesale of Credit Suisse to UBS over the weekend. This is the takeaway from the Global Financial Crisis - act quickly at the first sign of weakness and act with a lot of $$$. You gotta keep your head on a swivel because whatever happens next is going to happen fast.

Okay, time to talk about books instead.

I realized I was very overdue in providing some of my favorite wall street and finance books. A lot of these books were very formative when I was super amped to learn more about wall street and are definitely worth a look. I also included some non-finance books that I viewed as very formative. Refreshing through all these books while I was building this list made me remember how much I truly enjoyed these books.

I still read new books throughout the year, but over time, I’ve really stopped reading a ton of books though. Why? I have a hard time focusing/sitting still lmao and also value bulleted summaries/research reports/solid news articles over books/podcasts where information isn’t conveyed concisely or efficiently. I read a lot of finance books in college and during my first year as an Analyst to try to really get into finance. I kinda stopped once I started recruiting for buy-side seats and instead started working on being a better analyst. Additionally, when you’re so used to consuming finance content for work, sometimes you want to step away from reading about the industry a bit. That’s why the last book I read was Fire and Blood, by George R.R. Martin (the writer behind Game of Thrones and the House of the Dragon). I read the Song of Ice and Fire books back in high school, so I enjoyed curling up and reading about the Targaryen dynasty and what’s going to happen on the HBO show House of the Dragon. It should be really amazing television.

https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Blood-Thrones-Targaryen-History/dp/152479628X 

With that said, it’s still nice to curl up with a finance book sometimes and I certainly used to like reading extensive finance books. These aren’t a ranking of books, but a list of finance and philosophical books I found super helpful to me. I included Amazon links at the end of every book.

Here are what I view as My TOP 5 recommendations (in no real order):

1. Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco. Bryan Burrough. I LOVE this book, this story, and the movie. The book covers the classic story of the attempted MBO of RJR Nabisco and the bidding war that unfolded with KKR as a result. I suspect this is the favorite for a lot of people.

   https://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Gate-Fall-RJR-Nabisco-ebook/dp/B000FC10QG

2. Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits. Kevin Roose. One of my favorites as an analyst. This book told several different stories about the lives of young investment bankers who just started on the street following the Global Financial Crisis. A journalist interviews them on their experiences and how the inordinate sum of money they now make changed their relationship with family, friends, and what they elected to do in life.

   https://www.amazon.com/Young-Money-Streets-Post-Crash-Recruits/dp/0446583251

3. Liar’s Poker. Michael Lewis. We all know Michael Lewis, he’s the GOAT of finance books (The Big Short, Flash Boys) AND at some point, he’s going to be writing a book about SBF and FTX. Michael started as an analyst at Salomon Brothers out of school and this tale covers his time there and gives us a great glimpse of what wall street was like in the 1980s.

   https://www.amazon.com/Liars-Poker-Norton-Paperback-Michael/dp/039333869X

4. The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader’s Guide to Speculator Excess. Turney Duff. You’ll think twice about party favors after this book. Turney battled with a coke addiction during his time on the street and it really hurt his life. Turney’s book on his non-traditional rise on wall street ends with you reflecting on making sure you’re playing by the book and not putting your health on the line. I highly recommend this one.

   https://www.amazon.com/Buy-Side-Street-Traders-Spectacular/dp/0770437176

5. 100 Baggers: Stocks That Return 100-to-1 and How To Find Them. Christopher Mayer. I love this book – it’s a great rundown of some of the most successful stock stories over the past several decades. Did you know one of the best investments ever was buying Monster Energy stock – look at this thing

   https://www.amazon.com/100-Baggers-Stocks-100-1/dp/1621291650

Okay, here are the rest of my financial book recommendations. There’s no real order or ranking for this one too, just a list in terms of what came to mind.

1. Distressed Debt Analysis: Strategies for Speculative Investors. Stephen Moyer. This book is more expensive and probably only worthwhile to get when you’re actually in credit and using it in practice. This book is a great walkthrough on distressed debt and every step along the way between evaluating a new opportunity to buying the paper to thinking through the restructuring process.

   https://www.amazon.com/Distressed-Debt-Analysis-Strategies-Speculative/dp/1932159185

2. The Predators’ Ball: The Inside Story of DREXEL BURNHAM and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders. Connie Bruck. Many of us love the tales of Drexel Burnham, especially since they were the pioneer to create and expand the high-yield bond market. The alumni list from Drexel is pretty impressive –with Apollo founded out of Drexel, and key alumni such as Rich Handler and Ken Moelis.

   https://www.amazon.com/Predators-Ball-Burnham-JunkBond-Raiders/dp/0140120904

3. Merchants of Debt: KKR and the Mortgaging of American Business. George Anders. If you’re going to read about Wall Street in the 1980s – you HAVE to spend some time reading about KKR. The story of the founding fathers of the leveraged buyout is fascinating.

   https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Debt-Mortgaging-American-Business/dp/1587981254

4. The Caesars Palace Coup: How a Billionaire Brawl Over the Famous Casino Exposed the Power and Greed of Wall Street. Sujeet Indap and Max Frumes. Another classic restructuring book. I didn’t like the parts near the end as much (felt like there were too many character summaries) – but a solid book. A good way to learn about why everyone memes about Apollo.

   https://www.amazon.com/Caesars-Palace-Coup-Billionaire-Corruption/dp/163576677X

5. Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street. Sheelah Kolhatkar. Loved this book about the Hedge Fund legend (and now Mets owner) Steve Cohen. This book takes us through the beginning of Cohen’s rise all the way through all the insider trading allegations that plagued his hedge fund.

   https://www.amazon.com/Black-Edge-Inside-Information-Wanted/dp/0812995805

6. What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence. Stephen Schwarzman. A really good book by one of the PE Kings. Initially, Schwarzman was a BSD at Lehman, becoming an MD at 31. Steve and his boss struck out on their own in 1985 to build Blackstone, the biggest PE firm in the world. Steve is worth roughly $30B and this youtube video right here is one of the best things a young person can watch.

   https://www.amazon.com/What-Takes-Lessons-Pursuit-Excellence/dp/1501158147

7. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. Niall Ferguson. I found this book really fascinating. This book covers the rise of money, stock markets, and banking throughout the 21st century. Eventually becoming a PBS television series, Ferguson talks about the history of some of the first-ever stock market bubbles and ponzi schemes. It’s a really nice history book and it’s kinda funny to draw parallels to recent market events.

   https://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177

8. A Random Walk Down Wall Street. The Time Tested Strategy for Successful Investing. Burton G. Malkiel. This book slaps – Malkiel is one of the founding voices in the efficient-market hypothesis movement and suggests buying and holding index funds, with some active management around the edges.

   https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/0393330338

9. Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder. Nassim Taleb. To give a bit of a preface, calling something antifragile is basically saying that whatever is under pressure reacts convexly to stress/variation/curveballs/disaster and in fact comes out stronger. The book does a great job digging into the relationship between fragility and outcomes, as well as emphasizing the importance of having “skin in the game” and how bad decisions are often made by those who don’t have the proper incentives. Even if you don’t read an entire Taleb book, this is someone you should read up on. The more notable book that Taleb wrote was “The Black Swan” where he leverages his time as an options trader to explain that instead of trying to predict Black Swan events, people are better off identifying areas of vulnerability and building robustness around negative events.

   https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Nassim-Nicholas-Taleb-audiobook/dp/B00A2ZIZYQ

10. Dead Companies Walking: How A Hedge Fund Manager Finds Opportunity in Unexpected Places. Scott Fearon. A really solid book. The author, Scott Fearon, a hedge fund analyst, describes the characteristics he sees among companies he believes are “dead men walking”. I really enjoyed this, especially as a credit guy always on the lookout for red flags.

    https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Companies-Walking-Opportunity-Unexpected/dp/1137279648

11. Confidence Game: How Hedge Fund Manager Bill Ackman Called Wall Street's Bluff. Christine S. Richard. This was before Bill Ackman had annoying tweets. For 6 years, Ackman warned that MBIA, an insurer of municipal bonds and asset/mortgage-backed securities was going to get into trouble given they had sold short billions of dollars worth of credit default swaps. Ackman was criticized and smeared deeply, and the ambitious NY AG at the time, Elliott Spitzer, came after him hard. This is a really good read, with Ackman ending up with $1.1B on the trade.

    https://www.amazon.com/Confidence-Game-Manager-Ackman-Streets/dp/1118010418 

12. Double your Profits in 6 months or less. Bob Fifer. This book is the template for the “zero-based budgeting” (which means requiring all expenses to be justified annually) that Brazilian PE firm 3GCapital (owner of QSR and Anheuser-Busch) gained notoriety for. This book walks through 78 ways to aggressively cut costs. https://www.amazon.com/Double-Your-Profits-Months-Less/dp/088730740X 

13. The Intelligent Investor. Benjamin Graham. This is the OG investing book by the founding father of value investing. Warren Buffett went on to follow Graham's school of thought to a T. In this book, Graham leverages the experience of investor mania he saw in the roaring 20s and the subsequent crash to tell value investors to avoid the noise and rely heavily on investing in companies based on intrinsic values. "In the short-term, the stock market acts like a voting machine, and in the long-term, the stock market acts like a weighing machine."

    https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661 

14. Principles. Ray Dalio. While Dalio has also become annoying on Twitter, this was a nice book about life from a billionaire who built an empire hedge fund from the ground up. Key messages include - 1) being realistic/facing the truth and acting accordingly 2) being radically open-minded to new ideas and ways of doing things 3) navigating and mastering being able to thoughtfully disagree with people. https://www.principles.com/

15. Invent and Wander. The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos. This book is a collection of the most thoughtful things Jeff Bezos has said or written in public, whether it was in SEC filings, annual letters, or in an interview. This is a good look into the mind of one of the smartest guys in the world and how he prioritizes innovation and focusing on your customer.

    https://www.amazon.com/Invent-Wander-Collected-Writings-Introduction-ebook/dp/B08BCCT6MW 

16. The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan. Sebastian Mallaby. A long read, but a really fascinating one. One of the biggest takeaways I had from reading this book years ago was learning about how The Fed, which is supposed to be non-partisan, can consistently be (and has historically been) pressured by political forces.

    https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Knew-Times-Greenspan/dp/0143111094

17. Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World. Tom Wright. You'll never look at Leo DiCaprio the same after this one. Or Evan Spiegel. This is the fascinating story of Jho Low (who is currently on the run) and how he siphoned billions from Malaysia. This mess entangled GS, The Wolf of Wall Street, Paris Hilton, and several other high-profile players. https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Whale-Fooled-Hollywood/dp/031643650X 

18. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. John Carreyrou. If you watched The Dropout then you got a good sense of how crazy the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos story was. The WSJ's Carreyrou, the journalist who unwound the Theranos fraud, wrote about this crazy story.

    https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X

Other Finance resources – YouTube and Google! You can learn A TON by just googling or watching YouTube videos of things instead of wasting time watching Season 4 of You or Season 3 of Westworld. There’s an infinite amount of information out there that you can gather, so I recommend finding some nice articles to read, newsletters to read, podcasts to listen to, YouTube videos to listen to and start asking Chat-GPT some questions.

Non-Finance Books:

Some of these non-finance books I consider to be kinda entry-level, as in I read some of these in high school, but generally I like a lot of the lessons you can take away from them. Some I’ve read more recently though (such as this first one) and endorse heavily.

1. The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance. Tom Brady. Brady's methods are pretty intense, but look this guy played football at a high level until the age of 45!! He clearly got something right. I definitely don't completely follow Tom's advice (I drink and I don't like a lot of plant-based food), but there was A LOT I learned from this book. From focusing your workouts to making sure you're loosening your muscles, to eating the right foods to reduce inflammation, to zoning in on being properly hydrated, to finding the right supplements to make sure you're getting all the right vitamin intake in, and from cutting as much processed food as possible from your eating patterns - this book is a great deep-dive to improve your health and longevity. IMO - being in finance is kinda like a sport, you need to make sure you're taking the steps to increase your longevity in the industry and a lot of that centers on eating healthy and exercising accordingly. I feel like I'm in the best shape of my life personally, and a lot of it comes down to taking notes from this book. https://www.amazon.com/TB12-Method-Lifetime-Sustained-Performance/dp/1501180738 

2. Meditations. Marcus Aurelias. One of the absolute GOAT books. This Roman Emperor's philosophical belief of stoicism zones in on reducing negative emotions (what you can’t control) and maximizing positivity/realism to further develop character. One of my favorite quotes is – “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

   https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/1503280462

3. The Art of War. Sun Tzu. "Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak." "The wise warrior avoids the battle." There's a countless number of great quotes from this legendary book. Working in finance is not actually like The Art of War - but super intense ppl make the comparison to this book all the time.

   https://www.amazon.com/Art-War-Sun-Tzu/dp/1599869772 

4. The Prince. Niccolo Machiavelli. "It is better to be feared than to be loved, if one cannot be both." "Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception." This is another classic tactical book a lot of Wall Street people love.

   https://www.amazon.com/Prince-Niccolo-Machiavelli/dp/1503017826

5. An Enemy of the People. Henrik Ibsen. A 1882 Norwegian play turned into a book by the legendary Arthur Miller (The Crucible, Death of a Salesman) where a local Doctor discovers the town's public baths (a big economic driver) is contaminated. Following this discovery, he is vilified by the local politicians, who elect to pursue economic growth over safety, and then sway the local populace into ostracizing the Doctor. There's an obvious parallel here, but I'm not tryna get political. Steve McQueen played the Doctor in the movie lol. Also Arthur Miller put out some banger literature, definitely one of my favorite authors in high school/college.

   https://www.amazon.com/Enemy-People-Adaptation-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143105582

6. The Last Lecture. Randy Pausch. This was an immensely sad book. The author is suddenly diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 46 and given six months to live. Randy spends his last semester speaking to students and colleagues and encouraging them to live their best life, be kind, and pursue their dreams.

   https://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-Pausch/dp/1401323251

7. A Song of Ice and Fire. George R.R. Martin. This series was what Game of Thrones was based on. There are 5 books in this series, there were supposed to be 2 more but it doesn't seem like he's ever going to write them. The writing is incredible and makes you feel like you're walking around Westeros. Game of Thrones was known for killing off major characters, so when you flip through the books you might find your favorite character gone on the next page. The books are significantly better than the TV shows. There were several interesting characters who didn't make it to the TV Show because HBO didn't want to spend the money/was lazy and wanted to focus on existing characters. Martin never finished the books before the TV Show concluded, and noted he'd like to end his books a different way. The TV show started making up stuff on its own half way through Season 5. If you noticed Game of Thrones getting really bad after Season 4, it's because the writers needed to start coming up with their own material.

   https://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Song-Fire-Book/dp/0553386794

8. The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald. A personal banger for me. The shallowness of several characters and lessons of Jay Gatsby has a lot of good parallels to people and stories you may come across in NYC or another big city. If you’re going to go from rags to riches like Jay make sure you do it ethically and don’t spend all your $$$$ trying to impress shallow people who don’t actually care about you. https://www.amazon.com/Great-Gatsby-F-Scott-Fitzgerald/dp/0743273567 

   I really debated adding these two next books, but it’s worth the evaluation. I know some of y’all love these next two books and some of you hate them.

9. Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand. Debated including this because there will be some eye rolls, but it’s worth bringing up with caveats. The two catches here are 1) you should not read the entire thing and 2) the philosophy is way too cold to seriously follow. Re: point 1 - the book is very long and it’s full of Rand saying the same thing over and over again. It’s way too long. Better off trying to find an abbreviated version. The John Galt speech is a repetitive snooze fest. Honestly, a bunch of essays/writings about the lessons are fine too. The movies may be a better ROI than reading that whole thing too tbh…although the acting is pretty subpar. Re: point 2 – while a key message in the book is individualism, taking ownership of your own life/choices, and not owing anyone anything…a lot of the book comes off as very remorseless and uncompassionate if you try applying it in a real setting. Defining everyone who isn’t a capitalistic, objective businessman as a “looter” is a bit harsh. I mean, there's a point in the book where a train goes off the rails and Rand writes about how it’s all the passengers’ fault. I won’t dive too much more into this, as it’s clearly a book that divides people. This isn’t a hill I’m trying to die on, so to each their own. But there are some incredible quotes in this book and here are some of my favorite quotes:

   1. “Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.”

   2. “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

   3. “If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?" “I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?" “To shrug.”

   4. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”

      https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145 

10. The Fountainhead. Ayn Rand. This book may be better than Atlas Shrugged tbh. Like the last book, this book also stresses individualism > collectivism and challenging tradition in favor of creativity (and the ownership of it). There’s a lot of the same philosophies as in Shrugged so I reaffirm a lot of the earlier points I laid out, and again, this is also one of those books that should probably be cut down by 25%.

    https://www.amazon.com/Fountainhead-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191153

Here's additionally some of my other favorite quotes from my readings:

From Black Edge:

This isn’t from a book – but this is the pinned post on my Twitter for a reason – I love this friggin memo man.

That’s all on my end! New newsletter coming out over the coming weeks. I hope this sparked some new reading ideas!

Best, HYH.