I delve into Fooled By Randomness every week or two. There is always something new, always something that I skimmed over the last time. Anybody who invests, trades, or speculates should have a copy of Fooled By Randomness, and should read it every week, instead of watching the mindless drivel of the financial “news” channels.

Against the Gods travels an incredible historic journey through to our modern ideas of risk management, portfolio insurance, prospect theory, and many others.

The Alchemy of Finance by George Soros

George Soros is undoubtedly one of the most successful investors in the world today. The Alchemy of Finance is his difficult to read but powerful book explaining his “Theory of Reflexivity”—the forces that drive boom and bust cycles in the financial markets.

This text presents standard techniques and modern developments in a practical and intuitive manner. It is intended for non-financial managers and business students interested in the practice of financial management. Emphasis is on the managerial applications of financial analysis.

The Art of Short Selling by Kathryn Staley

Short Selling as an investment technique is not well understood by the majority of investors. The concept of “sell high, buy low” baffles many people. Short selling is often considered “un-American”. For a variety of reasons, short selling is markedly more difficult than being long—that is, buy low and sell high. In her book, Kathryn Staley does a great job of explaining how to go about finding flaws, over-valuations, or downright fraud in a business when its share prices are high and prior to a collapse.

Berkshire Hathaway Owner's Manual by Warren Buffett

In the Berkshire Hathaway Owner's Manual, Warren Buffett in 1983 set down thirteen owner-related business principles that he thought would help new shareholders understand Berkshire Hathaway's managerial approach. Each principles has a short commentary added to it.

Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letters by Warren Buffett

Since 1977, Warren Buffett has written a thoughtful and honest letter to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. The web site contains archives of these letter that are excellent reading for any investor.

Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Next Generation: Beat the Market by Going Against the Crowd by David Dreman

All stock-market investors embrace the motto “Buy low, sell high”. Few act accordingly, however, for to do so would require that we go against the crowd, buying stocks that are out of favor and selling Wall Street's darlings. Powerful psychological forces prevent us from pursuing a contrarian investment strategy, although it consistently beats the market, according to David Dreman, a seasoned money manager and long-time columnist for Forbes magazine. One of the Street's best-known and most articulate contrarians, Dreman has updated his 1982 investment classic, Contrarian Investment Strategies, using recent research on investor psychology. His revised book combines proven techniques for selecting undervalued stocks with fresh insights on how to defy, and thereby profit from, the popular fears or enthusiasms of the moment.

George Soros is a legend in the world of finance, a man whose name is known from Wall Street to Wuhan, from Manchester to Moscow, from Brussels to Bangkok. His Quantum Fund has been the best-performing investment fund in history and his foundations have helped reshape the post-Cold War world. Now Soros applies all of his wisdom, expertise and insight to explain what's happening in the collapsing global economy.

The Education of A Speculator by Victor Niederhoffer

Victor Niederhoffer was at one time the United States Squash Champion. His occupation as a futures trader leads him to many and varied insights about the human condition.

As a former associate of George Soros, Victor Niederhoffer is well placed to comment on the good, bad, and ugly aspects of the game of speculation.

Practical Speculation by Victor Niederhoffer and Laurel Kenner

Practical Speculation is the latest book by Victor Niederhoffer and his collaborator Laurel Kenner. In this latest book, Victor and Laurel team up to write columns of investment and trading advice for a variety of financial web sites. Where The Education of A Speculator could be described as “philosophical”, Practical Speculation is what its title implies. It's a wonderful presentation of statistical tests of numerous hypotheses of all kinds, practical trading advice, and more. I especially like an entire chapter devoted to the debunking of technical analysis.

Every Investor's Guide to High-Tech Stocks and Mutual Funds: Proven Strategies for Picking High-Growth Winners by Michael Murphy

Michael Murphy is the author of the California Technology Stock Letter, in which he focusses on high technology companies in the semiconductor, communications, and bio-tech arenas. Michael Murphy created an analytic called “Growth Flow”—a measure that takes into account a company's investments in Research and Development.

Financial Statement Analysis: A Practitioner's Guide by Martin Fridson

Martin Fridson is also the author of Investment Illusions, in which he cuts through much of the mythology surrounding investing lore. In Financial Statement Analysis, Martin Fridson conducts you through rigourous examinations of companies' financial statements.

James Morton put together a great book consisting of essays and articles from some of the best brains in the investment business.

The book is organised into seven sections, with topics ranging from Surveying the Investment Spectrum through Building Blocks for successful investing to Learning from Living Legends.

Mark Ritchie is one of the principals of Chicago Research and Trading, one of the more successful commodity trading companies in the world. In this highly interesting book, though, Ritchie talks not about trading, but about his life as a Christian. He examines the contradictions society creates for people in the business communities and talks of his experiences in places as diverse as Afghanistan and the Brasilian rain forest.

How to Be a Billionaire by Martin Fridson

Martin Fridson, author of Financial Statement Analysis and Investment Illusions, studied a number of people who have reached the status of being worth one billion dollars or more.

Investment Biker by Jim Rogers

One of the most inspirational books I have read in a long time. Jim Rogers founded the Quantum Fund along with the great investor George Soros.

Upon “retirement” from the business at age 37, Rogers said “what I'd always wanted to do was to ride my motorbike around the world”. So Rogers and his then lady friend Tabitha Estabrook took to the roads on their bikes.

Two years and one hundred and ten thousand kilometres later, they'd been all around the world. This book is a must read for Rogers' precision insights into international economics, politics, travel, and having fun.

Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers

Starting around 1999, Jim Rogers went on another around-the-world trip to see the state of the world at the Millennium. Visit Jim Roger's web site to see the maps of his travels, and his commentaries of the trip. One thin you can say about his books—he certainly comes up with catchy play-on-word titles.

Visit Jim Roger's web site to see the maps of his travels, and his commentaries of the trip.

This book is subtitled A savvy Wall Street Pro Explodes Popular Misconceptions About the Markets. He starts off with Why Bad Things Happen to Good Investment Strategies, works through Smoke and Mirrors and ends up with the Deficient Market Hypothesis. All in all, this is a great read to destroy much of the so-called conventional wisdom.

Jack Schwager is a partner of Wizard Trading, a futures trading company. Jack Schwager is the author of Schwager on Futures—a comprehensive two-volume work on the fundamentals and technical issues of trading commodities and futures.

Market Wizards and New Market Wizards are collections of interviews with some of the foremost traders in the world. For me, the recurring theme in the interviews is the mental set or psychology necessary for effective trading at all levels.

Between the two books, people that Jack Schwager interviews include Paul Tudor Jones, Ed Seykota, Michael Steinhardt, William O'Neill, Jim Rogers of Investment Biker fame, William Eckhardt, Stanley Druckenmiller (head trader at Soros' funds), Victor Sperandeo, and Linda Bradford Raschke, among many others.

Jack Schwager is a partner of Wizard Trading, a futures trading company. Jack Schwager is the author of Schwager on Futures—a comprehensive two-volume work on the fundamentals and technical issues of trading commodities and futures.

Market Wizards and New Market Wizards are collections of interviews with some of the foremost traders in the world. For me, the recurring theme in the interviews is the mental set or psychology necessary for effective trading at all levels.

Between the two books, people that Jack Schwager interviews include Paul Tudor Jones, Ed Seykota, Michael Steinhardt, William O'Neill, Jim Rogers of Investment Biker fame, William Eckhardt, Stanley Druckenmiller (head trader at Soros' funds), Victor Sperandeo, and Linda Bradford Raschke, among many others.

Martin Zweig's Winning on Wall Street by Martin Zweig

Nicknamed Trader Vic, Victor Sperandeo tells his story of how he trades stocks and options. Victor Sperandeo has been a professional trader for three decades. His book is lucid.

Reviewer John Sweeney (from Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities) wrote, Here's a simple review in three steps:

1.  Buy this book!
2.  Read this book!
3.  See step 2.

The Motley Fool started as an on-line investment forum on America Online. This book is a distillation of all the discussions and theories and research that have taken place over the years of the Motley Fools. The book systematically knocks over much of the accepted “wisdom” of the traditional investment community. If you want to be your own investor, here's a great place to start.

Author Tom Dorsey is one of the principals of Dorsey Wright and Associates—an investment advisory and portfolio management firm. In Point and Figure Charting, Tom Dorsey provides a clear explanation of this venerable price tracking system. This is much more than a book on technical analysis—Tom also covers issues of market risk, watching the NYSE bullish percent indicators, and sector rotation.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel

The first edition of Random Walk appeared in 1973. in this book, Malkiel debunks both fundamental analysis and technical analysis. The author has seen no reason to change his views in the intervening thirty years.

Riding the Millennial Storm by Nury Vittachi

Nury Vittachi writes a regular column for the South China Morning Post. Riding the Millennial Storm is a biography of Doctor Marc Faber, a well-known investment advisor based in Hong Kong. Doctor Faber is known as Doctor Doom, because he has a goodly portion of economic pessimism in his investment outlook, which he publishes in his newsletter The Gloom, Boom, and Doom Report.

One of the especially interesting chapters in Millennial Storm is titled Vanishing Cities, in which Doctor Faber discusses what the shifting of trade routes can do to once populous and prosperous centres of population.

Jack Schwager is back again with his relatively recent (2001) Stock Market Wizards book. Whereas his previous books Market Wizards and New Market Wizards concentrated primarily on commodity, options, and currency trading, Stock Market Wizards focuses on a collection of investors who have made their names in the stock markets. What is truly remarkable about the interviews is the widely disparate methodologies employed by the various investors, even when they arrive at similar results.

Super Stocks is Kenneth Fisher's concepts of investing in small companies that are destined to grow by large multiples.

Unlimited Wealth: The Theory and Practice of Economic Alchemy by Pilzer

Valuing Wall Street: Protecting Wealth in Turbulent Markets by Andrew Smithers and Stephen Wright

The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy by Robert Hagstrom

The Warren Buffett Way: Investment Strategies of the World's Greatest Investor by Robert Hagstrom

What Works on Wall Street: A Guide to the Best-Performing Investment Strategies of All Time by James O'Shaughnessy

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein

Ralph Wanger is the managing director of the very successful Acorn fund. Wanger illustrates many of his ideas with entertaining and insightful metaphors. One of Wanger's best metaphors is the Inside Zebra—the zebras on the inside of the herd are relatively safe from lions, but they don't get the best grass; the zebras on the outside of the herd get the best grass but take more risks.