Warren Buffett – Top 10 Books To Read

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Warren Buffett – Top 10 Books To Read by S&C Messina

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Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham

Description

"A road map for investing that I have now been following for 57 years." --From the Foreword by Warren Buffett

First published in 1934, Security Analysis is one of the most influential financial books ever written. Selling more than one million copies through five editions, it has provided generations of investors with the timeless value investing philosophy and techniques of Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd.

As relevant today as when they first appeared nearly 75 years ago, the teachings of Benjamin Graham, “the father of value investing,” have withstood the test of time across a wide diversity of market conditions, countries, and asset classes.

This new sixth edition, based on the classic 1940 version, is enhanced with 200 additional pages of commentary from some of today’s leading Wall Street money managers. These masters of value investing explain why the principles and techniques of Graham and Dodd are still highly relevant even in today’s vastly different markets. The contributor list includes:

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Featuring a foreword by Warren Buffett (in which he reveals that he has read the 1940 masterwork “at least four times”), this new edition of Security Analysis will reacquaint you with the foundations of value investing?more relevant than ever in the tumultuous 21st century markets.

The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

Description

This classic text is annotated to update Graham's timeless wisdom for today's market conditions...

The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham, taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of "value investing" -- which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies -- has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949.

Over the years, market developments have proven the wisdom of Graham's strategies. While preserving the integrity of Graham's original text, this revised edition includes updated commentary by noted financial journalist Jason Zweig, whose perspective incorporates the realities of today's market, draws parallels between Graham's examples and today's financial headlines, and gives readers a more thorough understanding of how to apply Graham's principles.

Vital and indispensable, this HarperBusiness Essentials edition of The Intelligent Investor is the most important book you will ever read on how to reach your financial goals.

Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders, 2013 by Warren Buffett

Description

The 2013 paperback and 2014 hardcover are currently out of print. A new paperback is currently being created and should be available shortly. -- Explorist Productions

Warren Buffett first took control of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., a small textile company, in April of 1965. A share changed hands for around $18 at the time. Forty-nine letters to shareholders later, the same share traded for $177,900, compounding investor capital at just under 21% per year -- a multiplier of 9,883 times.

This book compiles the full, un-edited versions of every one of Warren Buffett's letters to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. In addition to providing an astounding case study on Berkshire's success, Buffett shows an incredible willingness to share his methods and act as a teacher to his many students.

There are hundreds of books about Buffett's life, advice, and methods. These are his actual letters -- word for word -- a "lesson plan" of his views on business and investing. You can find most of the letters for free on Berkshire's website, but this compiles them into a well-designed, easily readable format.

Features of the book:

  • Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder letters from 1965 to 2013 (726 pages), including 1965-1976 letters not available on Berkshire's website
  • Tabulated letter years so you can easily flip to the desired letter
  • Topics index
  • Company index
  • Person index
  • Charts of: Growth in Berkshire's book value and market price relative to benchmarks, Insurance float and performance, the operating businesses of Berkshire

The Most Important Thing Illuminated by Howard Marks

Description

Howard Marks's The Most Important Thing Illuminated distilled the investing insight of his celebrated client memos into a single volume and, for the first time, made his time-tested philosophy available to general readers. In this edition, Marks's wisdom is joined by the comments, insights, and counterpoints of four renowned investors and investment educators: Christopher C. Davis (Davis Funds), Joel Greenblatt (Gotham Capital), Paul Johnson (Nicusa Capital), and Seth A. Klarman (Baupost Group).

These experts lend insight into such concepts as "second-level thinking," the price/value relationship, patient opportunism, and defensive investing. Marks also adds his own annotations, expanding on his book's original themes and issues. A new chapter addresses the importance of reasonable expectations, and a foreword by Bruce C. Greenwald, called "a guru to Wall Street's gurus" by the New York Times, speaks on value investing, productivity, and the economics of information.

***

Howard Marks, the chairman and cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management, is renowned for his insightful assessments of market opportunity and risk. After four decades spent ascending to the top of the investment management profession, he is today sought out by the world's leading value investors, and his client memos brim with insightful commentary and a time-tested, fundamental philosophy. Now for the first time, all readers can benefit from Marks's wisdom, concentrated into a single volume that speaks to both the amateur and seasoned investor.

Informed by a lifetime of experience and study, The Most Important Thing Illuminated explains the keys to successful investment and the pitfalls that can destroy capital or ruin a career. Utilizing passages from his memos to illustrate his ideas, Marks teaches by example, detailing the development of an investment philosophy that fully acknowledges the complexities of investing and the perils of the financial world. Brilliantly applying insight to today's volatile markets, Marks offers a volume that is part memoir, part creed, with a number of broad takeaways.

Marks expounds on such concepts as "second-level thinking," the price/value relationship, patient opportunism, and defensive investing. Frankly and honestly assessing his own decisions--and occasional missteps--he provides valuable lessons for critical thinking, risk assessment, and investment strategy. Encouraging investors to be "contrarian," Marks wisely judges market cycles and achieves returns through aggressive yet measured action. Which element is the most essential? Successful investing requires thoughtful attention to many separate aspects, and each of Marks's subjects proves to be the most important thing.

"This is that rarity, a useful book."--Warren Buffett

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip A. Fisher

Description

Widely respected and admired, Philip Fisher is among the most influential investors of all time. His investment philosophies, introduced almost forty years ago, are not only studied and applied by today's financiers and investors, but are also regarded by many as gospel. This book is invaluable reading and has been since it was first published in 1958. The updated paperback retains the investment wisdom of the original edition and includes the perspectives of the author's son Ken Fisher, an investment guru in his own right in an expanded preface and introduction

"I sought out Phil Fisher after reading his Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits...A thorough understanding of the business, obtained by using Phil's techniques...enables one to make intelligent investment commitments."

Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2013 by Carol J. Loomis

Description

Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway into something remarkable— and Fortune journalist Carol Loomis had a front-row seat for it all.

When Carol Loomis first mentioned a little-known Omaha hedge fund manager in a 1966 Fortune article, she didn’t dream that Warren Buffett would one day be considered the world’s greatest investor—nor that she and Buffett would quickly become close personal friends. As Buf­fett’s fortune and reputation grew over time, Loomis used her unique insight into Buffett’s thinking to chronicle his work for Fortune, writ­ing and proposing scores of stories that tracked his many accomplishments—and also his occa­sional mistakes.

Now Loomis has collected and updated the best Warren Buffett articles Fortune published between 1966 and 2012, including thirteen cover stories and a dozen pieces authored by Buffett himself. Loomis has provided commentary about each major arti­cle that supplies context and her own informed point of view. Readers will gain fresh insights into Warren Buffett's investment strategies and his thinking on management, philanthropy, public policy, and even parenting. Some of the highlights include:

  • The 1966 A. W. Jones story in which Fortune first mentioned Buffett.
  • The first piece Warren Buffett wrote for the magazine, 1977’s “How Inf lation Swindles the Equity Investor.”
  • Andrew Tobias’s 1983 article “Letters from Chairman Buffett,” the first review of his Berk­shire Hathaway shareholder letters.
  • Buffett’s stunningly prescient 2003 piece about derivatives, “Avoiding a Mega-Catastrophe.”
  • His unconventional thoughts on inheritance and philanthropy, including his intention to leave his kids “enough money so they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.”
  • Bill Gates’s 1996 article describing his early impressions of Warren Buffett as they struck up their close friendship.

Scores of Buffett books have been written, but none can claim this work’s combination of trust between two friends, the writer’s deep under­standing of Buffett’s world, and a very long-term perspective.

Insurance and Behavioral Economics: Improving Decisions in the Most Misunderstood Industry by Professor Howard C. Kunreuther

Description

Insurance is an extraordinarily useful tool to manage risk. When it works as intended, it provides financial protection to individuals and a profitable business model for insurance firms and their investors. But it is broadly misunderstood by consumers, regulators, and insurance executives. This book looks at the behavior of individuals at risk, insurance industry decision makers, and policy makers at the local, state, and federal level involved in the selling, buying, and regulating of insurance. It compares their actions to those predicted by benchmark models of choice derived from classical economic theory. When actual choices stray from predictions, the behavior is considered to be anomalous. With considerable sums of money at stake, both in consumer premiums and insurance company payouts, it is important to understand the reasons for anomalous behavior. Howard Kunreuther, Mark Pauly, and Stacey McMorrow examine these anomalies through the lens of behavioral economics, which takes into account emotions, biases, and simplified decision rules. The authors then consider if and how such behavioral anomalies could be modified to improve individual and social welfare. This book is neither a defense of the insurance industry nor an attack on it. Neither is it a consumer guide to purchasing insurance, although the authors believe that consumers will benefit from the insights it contains. Rather, this book describes situations in which both public policy and the insurance industry's collective posture need to change. This may require incentives, rules, and institutions to help reduce both inefficient and anomalous behavior, thereby encouraging behavior that will improve individual and social welfare.

Introduction to Ratemaking and Loss Reserving for Property and Casualty Insurance 3rd edition by Robert L. Brown

Description

This text provides a basic foundation of knowledge concerning two fundamental building blocks of property/casualty actuarial work: ratemaking and loss reserving. Although the material is of property/casualty origins, the methods presented have potential application in other insurance areas including health insurance and risk management. The text contains a number of worked examples and end-of-chapter exercises. The fourth edition reverses the order of chapters three and four from previous editions. The estimation of the ultimate claim payments is a necessary first step in both the loss reserving process and ratemaking process. Determining the ultimate losses is more comprehensively covered in the loss reserving chapter, and the ratemaking process often relies on the estimates of ultimate losses determined in the loss reserving process. As a result, the loss reserving chapter now comes before the ratemaking chapter. The frequency and severity section of the loss reserving chapter has been revised to demonstrate the closure method of estimating ultimate losses. The chapter on intermediate topics has been updated to include deductible pricing, as this alternative approach to the ratemaking in chapter four is typically used for pricing various deductible options. Finally, the fourth edition has been updated to reflect industry changes and includes even more exercises than previous editions.

The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities, Eighth Edition by Frank J. Fabozzi

Description

The Definitive Guide to Fixed Income Securities?Revised and Updated for the New Era of Investing

For decades, The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities has been the most trusted resource in the world for fixed income investing. Since the publication of the last edition, however, the financial markets have experienced major upheavals, introducing dramatic new opportunities and risks.

This completely revised and expanded eighth edition contains 31 new chapters that bring you up to date on the latest products, analytical tools, methodologies, and strategies for identifying and capitalizing on the potential of the fixed income securities market in order to enhance returns. Among the world’s leading authorities on the subject, Frank J. Fabozzi, along with Steven V. Mann, has gathered a powerful global team of leading experts to provide you with the newest and best techniques for taking advantage of this market. New topics include:

  • Electronic trading
  • Macro-economic dynamics and the corporate bond market
  • Leveraged loans
  • Structured and credit-linked notes
  • Exchange-traded funds
  • Covered bonds
  • Collateralized loan obligations
  • Risk analysis from multifactor fixed income models
  • High-yield bond portfolio management
  • Distressed structured credit securities
  • Hedge fund fixed income strategies
  • Credit derivatives valuation and risk
  • Tail risk hedging
  • Principles of performance attribution

Invaluable for its theoretical insights, unsurpassed in its hands-on guidance, and unequaled in the expertise and authority of its contributors, this all-new edition of The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities delivers the information and knowledge you need to stay on top of the market and ahead of the curve.

Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies, 5th Edition by McKinsey & Company Inc.

Description

The number one guide to corporate valuation is back and better than ever

Thoroughly revised and expanded to reflect business conditions in today's volatile global economy, Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies continues the tradition of its bestselling predecessors by providing up-to-date insights and practical advice on how to create, manage, and measure the value of an organization.

Along with all new case studies that illustrate how valuation techniques and principles are applied in real-world situations, this comprehensive guide has been updated to reflect new developments in corporate finance, changes in accounting rules, and an enhanced global perspective. Valuation, Fifth Edition is filled with expert guidance that managers at all levels, investors, and students can use to enhance their understanding of this important discipline.

  • Contains strategies for multi-business valuation and valuation for corporate restructuring, mergers, and acquisitions
  • Addresses how you can interpret the results of a valuation in light of a company's competitive situation
  • Also available: a book plus CD-ROM package (978-0-470-42469-8) as well as a stand-alone CD-ROM (978-0-470-42457-7) containing an interactive valuation DCF model

Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies stands alone in this field with its reputation of quality and consistency. If you want to hone your valuation skills today and improve them for years to come, look no further than this book.

And, as a bonus, to avoid the mistakes that Warren Buffett has made repeatedly on debt investments, please check out: Distressed Debt Analysis: Strategies for Speculative Investors

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