The following contains affiliate links. Please see Disclosures
Recommended Books
There’s an incredible amount of information available for free, but I also wanted to provide a list of some of my favorite books:
Personal Development:
How To Win Friends & Influence People: Dale Carnegie is a legend for a reason, his advice works. This is a must-read for anyone in a role that requires interacting with other people. The book was written before World War 2 and is not always the most politically correct, but learning how to take an interest in someone else and effectively communicate will help you throughout your career and life.
Taking Responsibility: This is an excellent timeless philosophy book about taking control of your own life and doing so through ethical individualism. Braden holds a PhD in Psychology and is also known for his work around the Psychology of self-esteem. I was fortunate to read this book early in my college career and it helped instill a sense of ownership of my life.
Drive: This was one of the best books I read while working in both sales and sales management. Understanding what motivates people is a valuable life skill.
Wall Street
Barbarians At The Gate: I’m not sure if its the close connection I have to some of the geography or knowing people who personally know characters in this book, but Barbarians at the Gate details corporate excess, the capitalistic process of activist investing and resolving corporate excess, and the wild investment banking/junk bond days of the 1980s. The book reads like a fiction novel but is one of the great business stores of the 20th century. Personally, I expect to see another round of this in the future. It will not be leveraged/management buyouts as much as it’ll be activist investors trying to sway index funds and their proxy advisors to vote with them.
Den Of Thieves: If you want to understand the inner-workings of Wall Street, this is your book. Most of the high level leaders on Wall Street were underlings during the 1980s junk bond craze. The methods of earnings change, but the mindset does not. This is a must read for anyone close to finance.
Investing Advice: Beginner
Related Post: Can You Give Me Investment Advice?
The Simple Path To Wealth: JL Collins makes investments simple and shows you the benefit of focusing only on index investing while building your wealth.
Investing Advice: Advanced
Once someone is nearing financial independence, I believe they should focus on the amount of risk and volatility in their portfolio. The investment goal should be to avoid a significant permanent loss of capital while achieving near market returns.
The Most Important Thing: Howard Marks is the co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, a firm that’s achieved a thirty year track record of solid returns to the market, keeping up with the market in good times while beating the market in downturns. For further reading, I reviewed his second book, Mastering The Market Cycle.
The Intelligent Investor: Benjamin Graham is the founder of value investing and Warren Buffet’s original mentor. Learning how to evaluate an investment’s intrinsic value and paying less than its value is the core of value investing.
Dear Chairman: I’ve personally been a fan of following activist investors over the years. Benjamin Graham made a name for himself in one of the first activist fights between him and Northern Pipeline in 1927 and this book documents entertaining activist fights over the last 100 years.
Money Mindset:
The Millionaire Next Door: This was the light bulb moment for me. The term “rich” is often exchanged when someone should be described as “income affluent”. There’s a different between earning/spending a lot of money and having a lot of money. The Millionaire Next Door was outstanding and eye opening research into who the millionaires actually are in the United States vs. who people believe the millionaires are.