The Founder Bookshelf
Books founders recommend to each other. Browse by topic or by where you are as you grow, mark what you've read, and add what's next.
36 books on Finance for timeless
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Five market crashes and the lessons they left behind.
A History of the United States in Five Crashes examines five major American stock market meltdowns: the Panic of 1907, Black Tuesday in 1929, Black Monday in 1987, the...
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Why low-cost index funds usually beat stock pickers.
Malkiel popularizes the random walk hypothesis, arguing that stock prices move unpredictably and that few investors can consistently beat the market. He surveys...
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How a legendary fund manager picks winners by doing the homework.
Peter Lynch walks through how he picked stocks at Fidelity's Magellan Fund and how individual investors can do the same. He details his research process, his approach...
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The insider-trading scandals that defined 1980s Wall Street.
Den of Thieves details the insider-trading scandals of the 1980s centered on figures like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. James B. Stewart reconstructs how a web of...
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The original field guide to bubbles, manias, and herd behavior.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a 19th-century survey of mass folly, from the Tulip mania and the South Sea Bubble to the Mississippi...
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How high-frequency traders rigged the stock market, and who fought back.
Flash Boys investigates how high-frequency trading firms exploited tiny speed advantages to front-run ordinary investors. It follows a group led by Brad Katsuyama who...
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We mistake luck for skill far more than we admit.
Nassim Taleb argues that humans routinely confuse luck with skill and underestimate the role of chance in life and markets. Drawing on probability, psychology, and his...
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How four central bankers steered the world into the Depression.
Lords of Finance tells the story of the four central bankers whose decisions in the years between the world wars helped trigger the Great Depression. Liaquat Ahamed...
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The classic anatomy of how financial bubbles form and burst.
Manias, Panics, and Crashes lays out a recurring pattern behind financial crises: a wave of speculation, a credit-fueled mania, a sudden panic, and a crash. Charles...
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Protect your downside first, and the upside takes care of itself.
Seth Klarman lays out a risk-averse approach to value investing, centered on buying assets well below their intrinsic value to leave a cushion against error. He...
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Top traders explain how they really beat the market.
Schwager interviews some of the most successful traders of the era to uncover what separates them from the rest. Across markets and styles, common threads emerge...
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Economics made plain, useful, and surprisingly readable.
Naked Economics strips the jargon out of economics and explains how markets, incentives, prices, and policy actually work in everyday life. Charles Wheelan walks...
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Ordinary observation can beat Wall Street's professionals.
Peter Lynch argues that everyday investors have an edge over Wall Street because they spot great products and companies in daily life before the pros do. He explains...
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The rich buy assets, not the appearance of wealth.
Kiyosaki contrasts the money lessons of his educated but cash-strapped poor dad with those of his entrepreneurial rich dad. He argues that financial education, owning...
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A healthy organization beats a smart one every time.
In his first straight nonfiction book, Lencioni argues that organizational health, not just strategy or finance, is the single greatest competitive advantage. He lays...
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How money, credit, and finance shaped human history.
The Ascent of Money traces the evolution of finance from ancient lending and the birth of banking through bonds, stock markets, insurance, and real estate. Niall...
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How a handful of outsiders saw the housing crash coming.
The Big Short follows a small group of investors who recognized that the subprime mortgage market was a fraud waiting to collapse and bet against it. Michael Lewis...
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The rare, unpredictable events are the ones that matter most.
Nassim Taleb examines black swans: rare, high-impact events that are unpredictable in advance yet rationalized in hindsight. He critiques our overreliance on...
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Plain advice on low-cost, long-term index investing.
Drawn from the Bogleheads online community, the book offers straightforward guidance on building wealth through low-cost index funds, diversification, and sensible...
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A practitioner's manual for the inner workings of a VC fund.
Mahendra Ramsinghani offers a comprehensive look at venture capital from the investor's operational side, covering how funds are raised, deals are structured, value is...
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Heads I win, tails I do not lose much.
Pabrai distills a low-risk, high-return value investing framework inspired by Indian Gujarati business owners and Warren Buffett. He emphasizes buying simple,...
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Buffett's shareholder wisdom, organized into a coherent philosophy.
Lawrence Cunningham curates and thematically arranges Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters into a structured book on investing and business. It...
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Why economies get stuck and how demand drives employment.
Keynes challenges classical economics by arguing that aggregate demand, not just supply and self-correcting markets, determines overall output and employment. He...
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The timeless bible of disciplined value investing.
First published in 1949, The Intelligent Investor lays out Benjamin Graham's philosophy of value investing for the defensive and the enterprising investor. It teaches...
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Beat the biggest investing risk: your own brain.
Montier walks through the most common psychological biases that sabotage investors, from overconfidence and loss aversion to herd behavior. Drawing on research in...
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Own the whole market, keep costs low, and win.
John Bogle makes the simple, powerful case for low-cost index fund investing. He shows how fees, taxes, and trading costs quietly erode returns, and argues that buying...
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A simple formula for buying good companies cheap.
Greenblatt lays out his magic formula, a simple rules-based method of buying good businesses at bargain prices using return on capital and earnings yield. Written in...
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Lessons in private investing straight from the field's pioneers.
The book collects interviews and case studies with leading private equity and venture capital investors, drawing out the management lessons behind their biggest deals....
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Most real millionaires live below their means, not large.
Based on years of surveys, the authors show that most American millionaires are not flashy spenders but disciplined savers who live frugally, budget carefully, and...
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Get out of debt with a clear step-by-step plan.
Ramsey lays out a sequence of baby steps to escape debt, build an emergency fund, and build wealth, starting with the debt snowball method. He emphasizes behavior and...
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The hidden economics behind coffee, cars, and prices.
Harford reveals the economic logic behind everyday transactions, from why a cup of coffee costs what it does to why some countries stay poor. He explains scarcity...
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Eight centuries of data showing crises always rhyme.
This Time Is Different analyzes financial crises across sixty-six countries and eight centuries, covering government defaults, banking panics, currency crashes, and...
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A blow-by-blow account of the 2008 crisis as it unfolded.
Too Big to Fail is a detailed, behind-the-scenes narrative of the 2008 financial crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Andrew Ross Sorkin reconstructs the...
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How brilliant minds and too much leverage nearly broke the financial system.
When Genius Failed chronicles the rise and spectacular collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund staffed with Nobel laureates and star traders. Their...
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Find profits hidden where most investors never look.
Greenblatt shows how individual investors can find outsized returns in overlooked special situations like spin-offs, restructurings, and merger securities. He argues...
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Money is life energy, so spend it deliberately.
The book reframes money as the life energy you trade your hours for, then walks through a nine-step program to track every dollar, cut spending, and align money with...
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