The new world of money
Five new books to better understand stocks, finance and the meltdown.
100 Minds That Made the Market
By Kenneth L. Fisher
Publisher: Wiley India
Pages: 424
Price: Rs 395
The juggernaut that is Wall Street has dominated much of global finance since inception, and Ken Fisher - celebrated columnist at Forbes magazine and CEO of Fisher Investments, a money management firm - is the ideal person to chronicle it. Fisher has written mini-biographies of a 100 pioneers of American finance. Some - such as Vanderbilt or J.P. Morgan - are famous. Others, such as Evangeline Adams, a fortune-teller who churned out market predictions for the wealthy, are not. An entire chapter is devoted to “Crooks, Scandals, and Scalawags.”
Inside the House of Money
By Steven Drobny
Publisher: Wiley
Pages: 414
Price: Rs 850
The world of hedge funds is a secretive one - where fund managers use arcane, complex strategies incomprehensible to you and me - to mint money for investors. Drobny - Co-founder of Drobny Global Advisors, a macroeconomic advisory firm for several global hedge funds - makes this world accessible through several interviews with high-flying money managers such as Clarium Capital Management’s Peter Thiel and Jim Leitner of Falcon Management who reveal their investment strategies and insights into markets.
The Bull Inside the Bear
By Robert Stein
Publisher: Wiley
Pages: 203
Price: Rs 1,500
The best investment strategy today is one where you buy sound stocks for the long haul and hold them, right? Wrong. Or so says Rob Stein - dubbed one of the best, unknown investment managers by BusinessWeek. Stein says that the recent meltdown has ushered the world into an era of great economic uncertainty and that old investment strategies no longer work. Instead, investors need to be nimble and go in and out of sectors depending upon economic and financial market performance.
The Essays of Warren Buffett
By Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham
Publisher: Wiley
Pages: 314
Price: Rs 1,025
Lawrence Cunningham has assembled a feast from the many letters, writings and essays penned by the greatest modern-day investor alive - Warren Buffett. Topics include managerial accountability, valuations and accounting shenanigans. Buffett is also a treat to read for his homespun homilies. Here’s one: “…working with people who cause your stomach to churn seems much like marrying for money - probably a bad idea under any circumstances, but absolute madness if you are already rich.”
Dear Mr. Buffett: What an Investor Learns 1,269 Miles from Wall Steet
By Janet Tavakoli
Publisher: Wiley
Pages: 282
Price: Rs 1,250
If you were lucky enough to be invited to lunch by uber investor Warren Buffett, what in the world would you talk about? This is what confronted Janet Tavakoli - called “The Cassandra of Credit Derivatives” by BusinessWeek - when she sent Buffett her book on credit derivatives. Tavakoli lucidly navigates the mess that led to the meltdown and intersperses her narrative with the many unique conversations she began to have with Buffett at his dining table.
