(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best finance books

( please guys have fun with my answer, obviously a lot of things here are jokes. take home what fits you ).

AFAIK There is actually one OTS online platform for trading crypto, which is very buggy and have a very amateur community ( even veterans on that platform are generally noobs ), the backtest isn't even close to realistic unless you somehow compensate the slippage and some other "real life" problems ( i'm far from having the magic sauce myself, but i can tell when shit smells funny ).

Don't even try to use one of the fast bots available there, they will generally just loose your money quickly before you can actually realise wtf is going on. They have a market place with paid the strategies and they are generally very unreliable, specially because the norm is to hide the source code of the paid strategies and post backtests - not live links -, so basically it could be just a fake strategy doing the other side of the creators trade not to say backtests are generally far from the results you get in the real world, at least the backtests in @ cryptotrader.

The support is very poor and slow, some questions are simply ignored and the UI is lame ( euphemism here ), http://cryptotrader.org

Still it's the only algo trading platform for crypto i manage to have running 24hours to generate some profit while i'm building my own - so far i'm only trading ETH margin on poloniex because of it's volume.

The good side is that the language used for the bots is coffee script which is one of the most pythonish languages out there 😉

I'm a beginner myself but i already have profitable bots earning consistently ( i had to learn how to do my own after only loosing money with the famous bots out there ).

Other relevant comments:

• Quantopian backtest engine is python based and actually open source: https://github.com/quantopian/zipline
  
  
• Even tough quantopian doesn't trade crypto, they have very valuable tutorials which you will surely benefit from: https://www.quantopian.com/tutorials/getting-started their youtube channel is cool: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC606MUq45P3zFLa4VGKbxsg/videos and also make sure you try out their IPython examples, they are pretty fun: https://www.quantopian.com/research/Tutorials%20and%20Documentation
  
  
• If you like python you probably know you should stay away from .NET and Java and C and whatever other boring languages people might recommend you, python is cool and awesome, you don't want to spend your time typing irrelevant verbosy stuff, you want to react and test stuff quickly - and have cool friends, .NET and Java programmers are notoriously the most boring people around. There is a couple of other nice other languages available, but it's not important to talk about this now.
  
  
• IMHO you are less likely to make good stress-free money with algo trading if you have a very academic approach , you might end up trapping yourself into parts of the business that won't make a big difference in your profits, obviously, studying is always good and you can always learn something from anyone and anything, remember: learning what not to do is actually learning too! not to say you won't probably learning without burning yourself a little bit. The market is 24 hours so unless you know what you doing you will probably end up not sleeping loads of nights.
  
  
• IMHO, HFT is a no go because the rate limit on important API functions is generally ridiculously limiting AND unless you have a lot of crypto to trade ( therefore paying less fees or no fees ) or a very very solid strategy the fees will eat you.
  
  
• If you want to get inspired, watch videos on youtube about algo trading, good keywords on youtube are "Ninja Trader strategy builder", "metatrader expert advisor", etcs.. there is always something to learn from those videos.
  
  
• You will eventually find other options, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2at6ZzRIIhc but they generally sux balls big time, or aren't just relevant anymore ( generally both ) or are never released: http://cryptybots.com
  
  
• Leonardo looks great, but it seems unfinished ( i might be wrong ) and i'm not sure to which degree you can create your own strategies in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hib3xR6Ci1w&feature=youtu.be
  
  
• Since your most important skill will be "making profitable strategies" i reckon you should understand trading to a degree you won't blow your account in a couple of weeks. This book will probably help you out: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Trade-Second-Techniques-Profiting/dp/0071775145 ( there are loads of other books you can find for sure that might suit you better ), goes without saying you should do your home work and learn a lot about indicators so you start grasping the basic building blocks and start thinking for yourself instead of being a script kiddie.
  
  
• This market is about money and if someone is rich with algo trading someone probably wouldn't be around giving advices for free, so trust no one other than you, if they are talking too much either they don't make money or they just had a line of coke. Don't even trust me!!
  
  To wrap it up:
  
  
• I'm willing to help and team up with smart people if think that would be a good idea, please get in touch.
  
  
• If You plan to level up your learnings in no time i would be willing to give you a crash course on how to trade ETH on poloniex exchange for a donation, give you some basic ideas and code and then we take it from there, we can then potentially become friends and create stuff together if we see turns out to be interesting for both of us.
  
  
• My email is capybara.trades@gmail.com feel free to get in touch if you feel like:
  
  
• You want to become a friend
  
• If you would like to buy some of my time and experience in form of an "easy and fun to learn" masterclass
  
• If you don't know how to code but want to do automated trading and you willing to pay for some basic programming classes
  
  
• If you found any of these information useful, don't feel shy send me a btc tip @ 1DNvZwFpFj9C6YNf9bAhx5bQd66RssXbyp ( pro tip: every time somebody tips me Justin Bieber dies a little more )

Come now, I'm trying to engage you. Like this entire time.

ALL I SAID WAS HAVE SKILLS THAT CAN MAKE YOU STABLE AND HELP YOU HAVE A DAYJOB SO YOU CAN WORK ON YOUR DREAMS IN STABILITY.

Like I said that four times or something like that.

Over and over again.

Have skills people will pay for. Make sure you don't hate those skills but you don't have to have a passion for it. Work on your fun thing. It's unlikely to be the next Beatles because there's not enough brain space, but if it makes you happy, hobbies are great!

Somehow that came out

>NOBODY SHOULD EVER BE HAPPY. ALL ARE SLAVES!

Or something. I'm not sure how I could be more clear.

Anyone I know I haven't cited much here's an info dumb

http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Stagnation-Low-Hanging-ebook/dp/B004H0M8QS Tyler Cowen is one of the World's best most sober economists. You should fall in love with him (even if he sounds autistic)

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI

Machines might be becoming substitutes instead of completments. This could cause problems even if we were socialists. We have no idea how to handle that

http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/ All the best happiness research in one post

http://www.amazon.com/Worthless-ebook/dp/B006N0THIM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334194677&sr=1-1 A good book about the economics of college degrees

http://www.amazon.com/The-Happiness-Hypothesis-Finding-ebook/dp/B003E749TE/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334194701&sr=1-1-spell

Jonathan Haidt is sexy and cool and also a psychologist.

http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html How to do what you love only also be practical and not ruin your life.

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html How to get fuck you money if you can identify a good start up and work that hard. (also finance

http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-ebook/dp/B00139XTG4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334194849&sr=1-1 Why all the advantages of artists go to a few while most are forgotten because they have trouble finding a fanbase

http://www.amazon.com/The-Consolations-Philosophy-Alain-Botton/dp/0679779175/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334194919&sr=1-3 How Ethical Philosophy can help with not having your favorite external circumstances.

Why modern therapy owes much of it's usefully to ideas generated by old greeks

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy-Psychotherapy-ebook/dp/B005TQU5KA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334194962&sr=1-1

So yea, I hope that made up for claims you find spurious.

>The good traders GameKyuubi was wrong about only one thing: There aren't any good traders.

If you haven't seen a good trader yet, does that mean they do not exist?

Nobody had ever seen a black swan. For thousands of years, that meant that they didn't exist. Until someone saw one, of course.

You are running into a fundamental problem of inductive logic, and it's preventing you from seeing trading rationally. If you want to read more on how this matters to traders, I'd suggest The black swan by Nassim Taleb

>There are lots of us who believe we are good traders. But we aren't. Of course, some of the loudest voices on Reddit regularly remind us about how well they time the market. Except when they don't time the market well.

Here is the first misconception about trading. The best traders have never timed the markets. They utilize arbitrage opportunities, which exist in countless forms across every asset class, and rarely have anything to do with market timing.

I highly recommend reading The Quants if you're interested in learning how successful traders operate, as well as their history. It's not only extremely informative, but highly entertaining

>A paper published last October by the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley entitled "Do Day Traders Rationally Learn About Their Ability?" used nearly 15 years of stock market day trading data to conclude that all day traders are irrational, the vast majority of day traders lose money, and even when day traders are successful, they "irrationally attribute success disproportionately to their ability rather than luck."

Now this I agree with. The vast majority of traders are terrible at trading, and when they do win, it's because they are lucky, not because they are smart. One of the fundamental books on Wallstreet for understanding this is What I learned losing a million dollars

The entire story is about an extremely successful trader who lost everything on one bet, mainly because his entire life before that had been a string of extremely lucky coincidences, and he never realized it.

>Of course, their success was due to their unique trading ability and not the fact that the entire market rose like a rocket.

Keep in mind, the best traders are always benchmarked against an asset or index. This is called beta weighing. If you make less money trading then you would have from just holding the bench marked asset, you have effectively lost money from trading.

>Warren Buffett, the most successful investor of modern times, has often said that he only invests in what he knows. His preferred holding period: forever. With that model, his company, Berkshire Hathaway, has averaged a 19 percent annual return since 1965 which means it has risen more than 1 million percent.

There are a lot of reasons for Warren Buffet's success, but it's worth pointing out that it's a lot more complex than just picking a security and holding it forever. If you want to learn about value investing, and the fundemental analysis behind it, check out Security Analysis

It's written by Ben Graham, the guy who taught Warren Buffet everything he knows. Arguably the most important concept in the text is called [investing with a margin of safety](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_of_safety_(financial)

Bitcoin definitely has intrinsic value. The problem is, nobody knows what that intrinsic value is worth. Since there is no currently known method of valuing a decentralized network (although progress is being made) Warren Buffet wouldn't touch bitcoin with a 10 foot pole, and if you want to invest in value, the way he has, you shouldn't either.

>Trading is no solution for intelligent people. What we need are new ways to use cryptocurrency.

Ouch man, that's harsh. I'm interested in why you correlate hodling with intelligence. IMO, there are dumb people hodling, and dumb people trading. Most of the time, it's those who form an opinion based on a single source, or worse yet a single quote, who are dumb. It's those that think in absolutes, and without a healthy degree of skepticism.

According to Ben Graham, it's not the speculators or the investors that are dumb. It's the people that can't tell the difference between the two.

EDIT: Sorry, typed this up real quick at work. Spelling and grammar mistakes everywhere.

I highly recommend you read this book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Millionaire-Expat-Wealth-Living-Overseas/dp/1119411890/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=52448126799&gclid=Cj0KCQjw_OzrBRDmARIsAAIdQ_KeDdsjTeChP_4rHNNnIUlfAmwap-1oL9Yqk3nLcddwoUCxWXvcnosaAi_vEALw_wcB&hvadid=259054353107&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9045945&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=9053870257787646908&hvtargid=kwd-328342526337&hydadcr=24403_1748879&keywords=millionaire+expat&qid=1568391732&s=gateway&sr=8-1

​

I've read it twice, and keep going back to it to re-read sections of it.

​

I'm not a pro, but I'm an american abroad, I've lived through several years of doing my taxes incorrectly, having to to through the streamlined process to correct that, so I've learned many things the hard way.

Things to consider, how long to you plan on being in the UK? Are you wanting to buy, for the sake of buying or is this going to be a long term place to live or a longer term rental property? I ask this because i've just moved to the UK, and i'm considering the same thing, but don't plan to stay here long term, it actually doesn't make much sense to buy, UNLESS... i'm ok with holding onto it long term to rent, and deal with that while living overseas somewhere else.

Do you have a credit card? If not, you need to get that ASAP, you have to start building your credit slowly. I have a high tier account type with HSBC, and i've called to ask about a home loan, they might pull my info from my previous country, but building credit in the UK is best. I don't know the actually timing but i'm assuming this is going to take 1-2 years until a bank is willing to loan me a significant amount of money.

Your money in 401K/403B is great, just make sure you don't contribute to it illegally. The laws are complex, depending on if you use FEIE or another method, you aren't allowed to contribute. Again, i'm not a pro, you should consult a tax professional to navigate the loopholes or "options" you have.

Is there any reason why you are leaving the 45K sitting in a a savings account? Is that so that you can tap into that money to buy the house? If you read the book above, and you like that strategy, you could invest that into low cost funds... Learn how to calculate compound interest (if you don't already know) and play around with calculators to see how that 45K will grow over 10,15,25, 35 years. You need it in the stock market, and you need to keep contributing.

Aside from a company pension that they are matching for you, as an American you need to really learn all the implications of investing abroad. If you don't know about all the tax implications, i would suggest you stop investing in anything in the UK, except your company pension with company match, and figure that stuff out.

It is usually much easier (tax wise) for Americans to send money back to the US, invest with a expat friendly institution like Schwab.

Everything i'm telling you is covered in the book above, i'm not the author or connected with him, i'm just an expat who had to figure it all out on my own, and was really happy when i came across this book mentioned in an expat post about a year ago.

This is just scratching the surface, i would also suggest you talk with an adviser about it as well. (i'm using: https://planvisionmn.com/ )

​

You can invest 15 buck in the book, and 100 USD in one year of Planvisions service and you'll come out much more informed than when you started.

​

FYI - one more thing for you, I had my bank reach out to my bank in my previous country (it was the same bank) and they have pulled my credit history there, and they gave me a credit card. It may or may not work for you, but that's a starting place, vs the common, wait 3-6 months and come back to apply.

I was in your position a couple weeks ago as a beginner, and here are some of the resources I found useful to learning the basics:

• Read all of the basics on the r/personalfinance sidebar, it has some pretty good advice.
  
  
• Read all of the sidebar frequently asked questions on the /r/investing sidebar.
  
  
• Read If You Can by William J Bernstein. Its a short pamphlet with some additional assigned reading found inside that will fit what you’re looking for. (I've personally read the first two 'homework' assignments and they were very good.)
  
  
• Read The Richest Man in Babylon by George S Clason.
  
  
• Read The Little Book on Common Sense Investing by John C Bogle. It's a very well written short book highlighting the power of Index Funds. It's very clearly biased (he was the one who basically invented them and also founded Vanguard), but is absolutely worth the read.
  
  
• Read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. This can apparently be likened to the Bible of Value Investing. Certainly much longer than all the previous reading, but also worth taking the time to read and learn. I found the additionally commentary chapters by Jason Zweig very helpful.
  
  Im currently reading A Random Walk Down Wallstreet, and it’s definitely very valuable and worth reading. Highly recommend.
  Hopefully this helps and at least gives a starting point.
  
  Good luck!

Articles from reputable sources are a decent source of knowledge, but some quality business books will get you an infinitely better understanding of concepts. Here is my personal business book list if you want to get a "universal generalist" understanding of business:

• Business Creation - The Lean Start-up
  
• Value Creation - How to Make Millions With Your Ideas
  
• Marketing - Getting Everything You Can Out Of Everything You Got / All Marketers Are Liars
  
• Sales - Pitch Anything
  
• Value Delivery - Indispensable
  
• Accounting/Finances - Financial Intelligence / Accounting Made Simple
  
• Understanding the Human Mind - Making Sense of Behavior
  
• Productivity - Getting Things Done
  
• Problem Solving - The 80/20 Principle
  
• Decision Making - Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions
  
• Negotiation - 3-D Negotiation
  
• Management - Growing Great Employees
  
• Project Management - Making Things Happen
  
• Statistics - Marketing Metrics
  
• Corporate Knowledge - The Effective Executive
  
• Corporate Strategy - Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies
  
• Creativity - The Creative Habit
  
• Personal Finance - Your Money or Your Life
  
  I am graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce Honors degree in May and I can easily say that one of these books (average price ~25$) has significantly more content than most individual classes I have taken (~600$). However, keep in mind that business knowledge and business acumen are two entirely different things. Knowledge is easily obtainable through books like these, and acumen is the result of applied experience with decision making. In short, it is one thing to be book smart, but it is another to get out there and actually apply it. No one can give you that in the form of an article or book - you have to do that yourself.
  
  edit: added links to amazon

Yes, you should be cautious of direct messages, especially if they're trying to sell you a course, coaching, or "use this platform, it's the best, here's my affiliate link".

Some great, free resources for learning day trading:

• James Mason from Transparent Traders (has a great FB group, too): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC39bOkqMQ3rd0xIFkFZt94w
  
• SMB Capital (watch their free webinar, it's amazing, and they might have the only course over $1,000 that is actually an awesome investment BUT you can absolutely learn enough to get started for free): https://www.youtube.com/user/smbcapital
  
• Beginner Trading on YouTube (lots of free content and they stream every morning from 8am EST until 11-ish AM): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIAaNr5U1el0LScWQr8b2Yg
  
• The Boiler Room (Connor is awesome, tons of free content coming from him all the time!): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNVxqV5plTxTx3D_57ai5Ow
  
  For some paid resources, I recommend the following books / audiobooks:
  
  
• How to Day Trade for a Living by Andrew Aziz: https://www.amazon.com/How-Day-Trade-Living-Management/dp/1535585951
  
• Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas: https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Zone-Confidence-Discipline-Attitude/dp/0735201447
  
• One Good Trade by Mike Bellafiore (who is a co-founder of SMB Capital): https://www.amazon.com/One-Good-Trade-Competitive-Proprietary/dp/B00904ACVE/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=one+good+trade&qid=1566060937&s=books&sr=1-1
  
• The PlayBook by Mike Bellafiore: https://www.amazon.com/PlayBook-Inside-Professional-Trader-Paperback/dp/013518889X/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=one+good+trade&qid=1566060937&s=books&sr=1-2

So lead generation and client care isn't the hard part, it's going to be the cold calling.

Knowing what to say, how to sound confident, how NOT to sound like a sleezy salesman, etc.

Once you understand the product, the industry, and your competitors, technically its easy. You are a professional problem solver there to help them. They want your help, they NEED your help. If you believe that and you truly stand behind your product /service, then cold calling is easy. It's something you will want to do in order to improve the lives of others.

One thing that is big for me is standing while cold calling. Get up, hangs big in the air, smile on your face... It comes through in your voice and you feel more confident and calm. Amy Cuddy did some research on this. Check out her Ted Talks about it. Pretty famous work and it's so true.

https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are

I recommend reading Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount. This particular book will be right up your alley. I got it on audible. It's a short 8 hours and listening to it a bit faster, you can easily knock it out in 6 hours while driving, cooking, working out, shopping, etc. It will service as a good starting point.

https://www.amazon.com/Fanatical-Prospecting-Conversations-Leveraging-Telephone/dp/1119144752

I see that Intelligent Investor by Graham has already been posted but that's certainly a good one. However it can be a bit dry for most readers and if you would prefer something a bit fresher I would read Deep Value by Toby Carlisle. He discusses and critiques Graham's teachings along with the strategies of other notable value investors such as Buffet, Icahn, Greenblatt and many others all in a more modern tone. It's been the bible for my own value investing strategies.

Other books to look into are:

• Dhandho Investor by Monish Pabrai (lots of simple strategies and examples for small risk - big payoff investments)
  
• Education of a Value Investor by Guy Spier (good for understanding the discipline and mental state of a good value investor)
  
• Michael Lewis books such as Big Short and Flash Boys (These are less for learning investing and more for generating your own interest in finance with some fantastic writing. It's also good for learning what the reality of the markets and Wall Street are.)

My background: I'm a business attorney working in part with small businesses and also an entrepreneur in my own right for a marketing services company separate from my practice of law.

I often see people pursuing startups going after the flashy book titles that are on the less technical side.

While this can be fine, I'd really recommend doing as much research as you can stomach into the nitty gritty, often un-fun things that people don't care for. As a lawyer, plenty of this is fun for me, but I appreciate that it's hard to hold one's attention on legal issues or accounting.

For example, I always hear people say good things about that Lemonade Stand accounting book: https://www.amazon.com/Accounting-Game-Basic-Fresh-Lemonade/dp/1402211864. You may not need to do the accounting yourself when you start a business, but you probably will, and even if you don't, it's better to have some sort of handle on it to oversee whoever's doing it.

So learn the basics of accounting and try to put them in to practice in your personal life. Plot out your personal budget, if you don't already. Practice with tracking and sorting your expenses. You can even do this with the free accounting apps out there like Wave. Fundamentally, business accounting isn't all that different than personal, so read the basics then practice!

I wish I could think of some valuable books that explain some basics of the legal side of small business formation and operation, but I guess since I do it myself I don't really know of any offhand, go figure.

I'm also a big advocate for branding. This isn't just logo design, it's a ton of stuff, and not always the obvious stuff. Branding is especially important for a newcomer, because you don't have the history...so you might as well try and brand like you're established! My go to here is: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Brand-Identity-Essential-Branding/dp/1118099206

• The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• Security Analysis - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• The Interpretation of Financial Statements - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• Financial Shenanigans: How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks & Fraud in Financial Reports - Howard Schilit
  
  
• Applied Value Investing - Joseph Calandro
  
  
• Analysis for Financial Management - Robert Higgins
  
  
• Margin of Safety - Seth Klarman
  
  
• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings - Philip Fisher
  
  
• One Up On Wall Street - Peter Lynch
  
  
• Beating The Street - Peter Lynch
  
  
• The Essays of Warren Buffett - Warren Buffett
  
  
• Snowball: Warren Buffett and The Business of Life - Alice Schroeder
  
  
• Buffett Beyond Value - Prem Jain
  
  
• Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond - Bruce Greenwald
  
  
• You Can Be A Stock Market Genius - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• The Little Book That Beats The Market - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• The Big Secret for the Small Investor: A New Route to Long-Term Investment Success - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator - Edwin Leferve
  
  
• Fooled By Randomness - Nassim Taleb
  
  
• The Black Swan - Nassim Taleb
  
  
• Poor Charlie's Almanack - Charlie Munger
  
  
• Rediscovered Benjamin Graham - Janet Lowe
  
  
• The Theory of Investment Value - John Burr Williams
  
  
• Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger - Peter Bevelin
  
  
• Security Analysis and Business Valuation on Wall Street - Jeffrey Hooke
  
  
• Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment - James Montier
  
  
• Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset - Aswath Damodaran
  
  
• The Dark Side of Valuation - Aswath Damodaran
  
  
• Financial Statements: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding and Creating Financial Reports - Thomas Ittelson
  
  
• Buyout - Rick Rickertsen
  
  
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert Cialdini
  
  
• Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes: Lessons from the New Science of Behavioral Economics - Gary Belsky
  
  
• The Warren Buffett Way - Robert Hagstrom
  
  
• The Most Important Thing - Howard Marks
  
  
• Competition Demystified - Bruce Greenwald
  
  
• Accounting For Value - Stephen Penman
  
  
• Distressed Debt Analysis - Stephen Moyer
  
  
• Bankruptcy Investing - Ben Branch
  
  
• The Vulture Investors - Hilary Rosenberg
  
  
• Creating Value Through Corporate Restructuring - Stuart Gilson
  
  
• Distress Investing - Martin J Whitman
  
  
• The Aggressive Conservative Investor - Martin J Whitman

This is better than buying and praying but be wary of many factors when designing a trading system.

​

1. Overfitting: When you are backtesting any strategy, there is a danger of overfitting the dataset. A more appropriate way to model this is to separate your data into training and test sets. Then you design your system using the training dataset, then test the performance against the test set. I like to randomly sample the historical data or randomly generate data that has a similar shape to make sure that I'm not overfitting.
   
2. Tax: If you haven't included the tax drag on your investment strategy, you could see the real returns be negative. For example, if I hold a token for over 12 months in the US, my tax rate is half (around 20%) of what I would pay for a short-term gain (nearly 40%). If you are trading in a taxable account, this can be ruinous. If you're trading in a Roth or other tax-free (deferred) account, go nuts!
   
3. Market slippage: You'll frequently find that you cannot enter the market exactly at the market close. Luckily in cryptos you don't have to worry about overnight gaps, but just because the historical data shows a closing price is no guarantee that you can fill your orders at that price. What is the gap between your bid-ask spread? What is the depth of the order book at each day's close?
   
4. Psychology: Unless you are a sociopath, you won't follow your strategy perfectly. You'll sell too early or buy too late, even if your technical indicators are correct.
   
5. Transaction Costs: Every transaction in the crypto space carries a significant cost with it. It can be .25% or more. With a 10-day moving average, you will be trading frequently and those fees will accumulate.
   
6. Risk Management: How large of a position will you allocate to ETH? What do you do when you have a market that tanks overnight, bypassing your stop-losses? How much are you willing to risk on a specific signal?
   
   Be careful. What you have discovered is valuable, but if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. It doesn't mean it can't be done, but identifying a buy/sell signals is only 5% of your trading system.
   
   ​
   
   If you are interested in developing these types of systems as a career, consider reading Quantitative Trading: How to Build Your Own Algorithmic Trading Business by Ernest P. Chan. It's an excellent starting point for building trading systems.
   
   ​
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Quantitative-Trading-Build-Algorithmic-Business/dp/0470284889
   
   ​
   
   I have made all of these mistakes and more over the past 10 years as a professional investor. I love this stuff, so I'm happy to answer any questions you guys have about your systems. Maybe I can help save you a little pain and suffering!

I was hoping you'd know! I say we start with the very basics, we can model our course off of what would normally be covered in a financial accounting I class. 2 books were recommended to me.

The first is Financial Statements which gives a nice overview of the 4 financial statements including a brief description of what each line means.

The second was The Accounting Game

I personally learn better from a systematic approach like what is used in "Financial Statements" but I suspect a better approach for reddit would be something like "The Accounting Game." I anticipate that most of our students would be entrepreneurs or other users of accounting information rather than hopeful accountants. In that vein we could go through the process of starting a small business and show how the basic transactions would be recorded. Including how to set up spreadsheets as was ops original request.

What are your thoughts, would you be interested in taking the lead on something like this?

> Is this really just a bullshit game of fluking the right pattern at the right time?

If you haven't read Market Wizards , you absolutely must. The point is not to be inspired by their towering successes, rather it is to realize that people can and do make it as traders. More importantly, it's realize that everyone does it differently. But it's important to work through the stories and see how hard it was for many people, it's not enough just to read what someone else says about it.

> Why are there so many?

Because humans are inventive and creative! The fact that there are so many ways of making trading work is something we traders should be grateful for, because it means there's likely something out there that suits each trader.

>How do you even begin picking a strategy or pattern or whatever to learn or study.

In some ways, I think you let it come to you.

Read about what other people do. Some of it you will automatically think is just BS, or recognize that your current life circumstances just don't let you test out that approach.

Some of other stuff will naturally appeal to you (and don't make the mistake of thinking because you want to do it, so does everyone else, so it can't be any good). Follow that up. Investigate it, learn a lot about it, throw away the stuff that doesn't work.

If someone, somewhere made an approach work, then you're in with a chance of making it work too, so long as it's a good fit for you. Your personality, your style of intelligence, your risk tolerance levels, your available time, your stress tolerance, your view on the market, your view on the way the world works in general. Don't worry about trying to find the best strategy, or the most profitable one, or the true strategy. You only need one that works for you.

I'll give you some books to use as a starting point. You want to start out as generally as possible and then follow what interests you. Someone can give you a list of top books, but if they don't fascinate you enough to really dig in deep and reflect on them to sate your own curiosity, you'll just be scratching the surface. I don't care what it is, you can make money anywhere in the markets. So starting generally will help you find out what direction to go.

So, that said, these are the ones I'd recommend starting out with
https://www.amazon.com/Market-Wizards-Updated-Interviews-Traders/dp/1118273052
https://www.amazon.com/Reminiscences-Stock-Operator-Edwin-Lef%C3%A8vre/dp/0471770884
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400063515/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684840073/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809045990/

Some less conventional ones I really liked
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1578645018/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1422121038/

Chaos theory describes some properties that pop up again and again in markets. I really liked this one.
https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Simplicity-Bringing-Order-Complexity/dp/140006256X

I also highly recommend finding a few good books on behavioral investing, just to get acquainted with the common mistakes investors make (how you can avoid them, and how you can exploit them). I don't have a lot here because the books I read are outdated and you can find better. So one example:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470067373/

But in general reading about psychology will help you understand the world better, and that's always a good thing.
https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061339202

SAVE YOUR MONEY. If I were you I would only use about $1000 to $2000 because there is a high probability you will lose it all. You need to practice your trading strategies a lot.
I recommend reading this book.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Day-Trade-Living-Management/dp/1535585951

Also beware of people selling you trading course and how to get rich quick daytrading or any of that BS. It takes consistency and good trading psychology to be a profitable trader.

And also you are 18yrs old. You need to start saving money in the long term. Look at high interest savings accounts, high growth stock mutual funds, index funds, etc...

Good luck.

Ooh I watch many beauty YouTuber so favourite videos are my most beloved. Wish this could become a monthly thread!

Beauty: This month I've been really enjoying the Em Cosmetics Color Drops Serum Blush. I have the colour Rose Milk and it gives my cheeks a subtle, dewy glow. Tempted to get all the colours now!

Skincare: It's a toss up between The Inkey List Brighten-i Cream and Sunday Riley Tidal Water Cream. Also looking for a new hydrating concealer - what are your faves, ladies? I recently broke up with Tarte Shape Tape. It was just so thick and cakey on me.

Shoes: Have been wearing these TB Dior J'Adior slingbacks and while they're not the most accurate (the shape of the toe box is a bit off), they are really comfy and come in a size 42. Score!

Bag: Kudos to the ladies who shared this Ferragamo purse - it's perfect for running errands in town.

Book: Late to this party but I swallowed Bad Blood by John Carreyrou in two days and am re-reading it! Love juicy corporate scandal stories like these, am waiting to read Million Dollar Whale by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope next.

Fashion: Have been living in these GAP cigarette jeans. They're so soft and comfy.

Solid list so far. If you're going to the real advanced value stuff, these are what I'd consider absolute, must reads:

• Accounting for Value by Stephen Penman
  
• Financial Statement Analysis and Security Valuation by Stephen Penamn
  
• What Works on Wall Street
  
• Quantitative Value
  
• The Manual of Ideas
  
• The Art of Value Investing
  
• It's Earnings That Count
  
• What's Behind the Numbers?
  
  The second Penman book is an actual textbook, but IMO probably the single best valuation book out there. The first one is a summary-of-sorts of the text, but if you have the time and money, definitely get the text.
  
  And as /u/persistencepays posted, the Greenwald, Dreman, and Montier books are all excellent too.

Say no more, fam.

You don't need a degree to run a business. Having your own business allows you to experiment with these books first hand instead of taking some professor's word for it. Professor's usually just read what the book says. If they were actually good at running a business they'd probably be doing that.

• Business Creation - The Lean Start-up
  
  
  
• Value Creation - How to Make Millions With Your Ideas
  
  
  
• Marketing - Getting Everything You Can Out Of Everything You Got / All Marketers Are Liars
  
  
  
• Sales - Pitch Anything
  
  
  
• Value Delivery - Indispensable
  
  
  
• Accounting/Finances - Financial Intelligence / Accounting Made Simple
  
• Understanding the Human Mind - Making Sense of Behavior
  
  
  
• Productivity - Getting Things Done
  
  
  
• Problem Solving - The 80/20 Principle
  
  
  
• Decision Making - Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions
  
  
  
• Negotiation - 3-D Negotiation
  
  
  
• Management - Growing Great Employees
  
  
  
• Project Management - Making Things Happen
  
  
  
• Statistics - Marketing Metrics
  
  
  
• Corporate Knowledge - The Effective Executive
  
  
  
• Corporate Strategy - Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies
  
  
  
• Creativity - The Creative Habit
  
  
  
• Personal Finance - Your Money or Your Life

TTM squeeze is just one of a few setups I use and like any other indicator it works great except when it doesn't. John Carter makes it sound way too easy having a bunch of red dots telling you to get ready to buy in. Having said that when I do trade it, it can return 100%+ on option trades.

If you're going to look into it you'll need to use it as a confirmation for price action; make sure there's a trend happening and set your own price targets. The last trade squeeze I played was for FB just a few days before the daily breakout on 6-Sept. The stock had been trending up for months and was testing 126.50. It then broke up $4-5 and my options went from $2 to ~$5.

When backtesting I found it works well for FB, AAPL, NFLX but sucks with DIS, IBM. I experimented using it on TSLA 1min charts during the first hour of the day but have since let that one go coz TSLA is crazy.

But yeh I'm still playing around with it to get a better hit rate, mixing it with MACD, 8EMA etc. If you haven't already, read John Carter's book, Mastering The Trade:
https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Trade-Second-Techniques-Profiting/dp/0071775145

It has a heap of great setups that I have since started using and seem to work pretty well, if you have an idea of what you're doing.

Thank you very much for elaborating. I was hoping that you wouldn't take offense at my question. I'm a heavy cryptocurrency investor and have considered stretching myself relatively thin but fortunately have enough discipline. I am currently reading the book Bad Blood by John Carreyrou which is a great story that has some parallels to what you are describing. At one point, Theranos described themselves as having positive cash flow for x-consecutive months. Which, if one were able to see everything that a major investor would be able to see, they'd know that not a penny of that was from legitimate revenue but was from rounds of investors who believed the crap being "sold" to them. I wish you the best in your financial recovery and your ability to learn from an awful situation.

Do you have access to free printing by any chance? perhaps you can get an electronic copy and just print it?

I'm guessing that you're young, based on your talk about allowance. I don't recommend Intelligent Investor, as there might be some prerequisites that you are missing. The book is pretty accounting heavy terms, and you should have at least a basic knowledge of corporate accounting before reading it. Save this one for when you can look at all 3 financial statements and know what ever item on those statements mean.

You might this one to be more of an easier read: "The Little Book That Beats The Market". This one tries to get you to think about companies as businesses instead of tickers with a fluctuating price. You won't need any knowledge of corporate accounting for this one.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0470624159/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1394658640&sr=8-1&keywords=the+little+book+that+beats+the+market&condition=used

If you want to learn some corporate accounting, I recommend this one as it an easy read and catered to beginners. Also, it's $4 on Amazon so your allowance can go a long way.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1416573186/ref=sr_1_2_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1394658943&sr=8-2&keywords=interpretation+of+financial+statements&condition=used

I don't recommend Random Walk On Wall Street for your level. EMF is basically something that says the average investor cannot do better than the average investor (duh), in the grand scheme.

As mentioned in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Warren-Buffett-Interpretation-Financial-Statements/dp/1416573186/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410454357&sr=1-16&keywords=investing+warren+buffett

These are some of the key indicators to look at.(You could obviously look at more) I look at these also and it really helps to paint a true picture of a company WHEN you use them and compare these to the same indicators of a competing company in the same space.(i.e Coca Cola vs Pepsi)

Income Statement

• 1. Gross Profit Margin
     
• 2. Operating Profit Margin
     
• 3. Net Profit Margin
     
• 4. Return On Equity
     
• 5. Retained Earnings
     
• 6. Diluted Earnings Per Share
     
• 7. P/E
     
     Balance Sheet Analysis
     
     
• 1. Cash & Short Term Investments
     
• 2. Long Term Debt
     
• 3. Current Liabilities
     
• 4. Working Capital
     
• 5. Working Capital Per Share
     
• 6. Current Ratio
     
• 7. Debt to Equity Ratio
     
• 8. Cash - Current Liabilities(do they have enough Cash to cover their current liabilities. A good company usually does)
     
     You also would want to look and see if they provide a dividend and have a history of increasing their dividends.
     
     When you compare these numbers from one company vs another - over say a 5-10 yr period - it really gives you a good analysis and the ability to see which company is doing better than the other.
     

In addition to all the great advice here, I'd recommend you read The Elements of Investing. It's short, easy to read, and has lot of really great advice applicable to passive index fund investing that you need to know before starting. PM me if you'd like a sample (ahem) of the book.

If I were you, These are some steps I would take to increase my odds of getting a VC job assuming you are new the field and don't have $$ you can afford to easily lose.

A- No experience, little to no money
1- Read at least 5 books about the industry
2- Listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos with VC interviews and teachings
3- Networks with VC
4- Land a job
5- Make money
6- Become a professional VC


Books to read
1- #Breaking Into VC - Bradley Miller
https://www.amazon.com/BreakIntoVC-Investor-Entrepreneur-Professional-Guidebook/dp/1544934343

2Done Deals

3-Essentials of Venture Capital

4- Venture Deals

5- The Business of Venture Capital


Podcasts and radio to listen to
1- Angellist radio
2 - 20 Minutes VC with Harry Stebbings
http://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/
3- Bloomberg radio
4- Investors archives series on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVJalJNQWimC2zWrIHR_bSQ

Networking with VC
You can go on VC firms websites, find some VC partners you admire and email or call them to pick their brain.
You could also attend VC meetings or pitc competitions if you have access to.

These first steps will increase your chance of getting a job or at least an internship leading to a job.

In terms of making money, this is a personal decision up to you. VC firms themselves are funded by Limited Partners such as pension funds or school endowments. So they are pretty much investing other people money in most cases.

All these steps apply if you want to be a professional VC in a traditional sense, a job like one would imagine an investor banker on Wall Street or a doctor working in a hospital.


B- If you have the knowledge and the money likeChris Sacca

Depending on your income, you can start right away and become a VC. If you have money, you can invest in any business venture you want and start practicing your craft. You wouldn't necessarily need to join a firm. You can even start your own firm if you're loaded.

In either case you need to have a deal flow (investment opportunities) and be able to do due diligence. VC is a calculated investment not a lottery.
You would also need a great understanding of the ecosystem of business venture including the relationship between VCs, entrepreneurs and the business opportunities/markets.

Go ahead and become a VC, you do need to get permission from anybody. If you're hungry enough figure it out and GO FOR IT.

Trading and Exchanges

Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives

Option Volatility & Pricing

Option Market Making

Trading Spreads and Seasonals

Algorithmic Trading and DMA

There are more advanced and quantitative resources out there but you will need to wrap your head around these concepts before you go further. I should mention that reading these things won't guarantee to make you a profitable trader but you will "get a better understanding of the field."

Online resources:

Investopedia

Elitetrader (most popular trading forum, lots of posters... mostly bad)

Nuclearphynance (smaller but more advanced community)

Start with a couple of great books -

*Using Excel for Business Analysis by Danielle Stein Fairhurst

• Financial Modeling by Simon Benninga
  
  Those are two very helpful resources I find - the first is great for laying a solid foundation and the second is an iconic book in this space.

That's fine, then. My main concern was that you might be putting your money on the line!

I am not sure that an automated momentum system can't work. In fact, many CTAs (commodity trading advisors... a kind of hedge fund) made consistent returns in 2000-2009 by following pretty simple momentum strategies - generally moving averages or moving average crossovers on a 100-300 day window. Note that the timescale is much longer than yours, and also note that most of those CTAs have been in drawdown since about 2010 (ie they've lost money or just about broken even for the last four years).

But I am pretty certain that an intraday trading system based on trashy, discredited technical analysis isn't going to yield consistent profits, especially when applied by someone who is trading for the first time.

One way to tell if a trader knows what they are doing is to listen to their language - if they talk about technical indicators, fibonacci retracement, elliott waves, entry and exit points, MACD etc then they are a quack. If they talk about regression, signal processing, traing and test sets, regularization, bias/variance etc then there's a chance that they know what they're talking about.

There is fifty years of history building mathematical tools for analysing random processes, making time series forecasts, building regression models, and analysing models out of sample, all of which is generally ignored by the quacks who rely on spurious "indicators" and "entry/exit points". A good place to start is this book -

http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/

and this is a good book for when you've progressed beyond the intermediate level

http://statweb.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/

There are two books by Ernest Chan about quantitative trading that frankly don't tell you anything that will be immediately applicable to creating a strategy (there's no secret sauce) but they do give you a good high level overview of what building a quantitative trading system is all about

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quantitative-Trading-Build-Algorithmic-Business/dp/0470284889/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1406963471&sr=8-2&keywords=ernest+chan
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Algorithmic-Trading-Winning-Strategies-Rationale/dp/1118460146/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406963471&sr=8-1&keywords=ernest+chan

Hope that's helpful.

Venture Deals is a great reference.
There is no shortage of discussion on various blogs, Fred Wilson and Mark Suster are two of the best.

For actually drafting up terms...get a lawyer. Preferably one that deals with companies at your stage and investments on a regular basis.

Valuations are market driven, it's the price that you and the investor can agree upon. Convertible notes and SAFEs do not avoid this, read this outstanding post as to why. Active investors are setting your price based on their other options.

Great! I would recommend starting with The EMyth Revisited and Fanatical Prospecting. Both books are great to give you some good tools to start out with and put you in the right mindset to succeed. I like Managed Services in a Month as well, but realistically if you've worked in the industry at established MSPs, there's not a lot groundbreaking there. It's a good re-affirmation, though.

I understand what you're going through. In Intermediate 1, there will be topics that you've learned in Intro to Financial Accounting, but they will be more in-depth of it.

All I can say is, read the textbook, write notes from what you've learned in the textbook, come to class every day to take lecture notes that your professor will cover (depending how good your professor is), and watch videos on YouTube that cover topics in Intermediate 1. Depending on the professor, you can also ask him for help on a problem or a confusing topic of the class.

I recommend Edspira on YouTube, because if you have any confusion on a topic in Intermediate 1 (like revenue recognition), chances are, Edspira has a video on it. Here's his channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/EducationUnlocked

You can also look up other videos that will help you understand confusing topics, too.

All of this will help you pass the class. Also take mental breaks; take naps, do a quick 5-min break while you're studying, and/or do other hobbies. Don't feel overwhelmed.

I once heard my adviser explain that Intermediate 1 is a make-it-or-break-it class for accounting majors--she wasn't kidding around. I barely passed that class with a C if it wasn't for the textbook and videos on YouTube, as well as taking mental breaks.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: If you need to refresh your memory on the foundations of accounting (such as your Intro to Financial Accounting class), I recommend getting this book. This book simplifies the principles of accounting with an example of a lemonade stand: https://www.amazon.com/Accounting-Game-Basic-Fresh-Lemonade-ebook/dp/B001U29UIU

Two best resources to get up to speed:

1. retirejapan.com
   
2. Millionaire Expat by Andrew Hallam
   
   Long story short, America hates when it's citizens have the gall to leave it's borders and live elsewhere and tries to punish us by not letting us plan for our future.
   
   Best thing to do is open a trading account, probably at InteractiveBrokers since they're one of the only places that will deal with American expats, and invest in things like US-based ETFs.
   
   EDIT: Quick addendum, since I see others suggesting a lot of ostensibly good resources around reddit and the internet at large.
   
   While there are MANY great places to get educated in ways to save and invest, almost all of that information goes out the window when you become an expat. It is a frustrating and sad fact that, especially as US citizens, we have shockingly few options to invest long-term without incurring huge fees/penalties.
   
   By all means, read up, but MAKE SURE that what you're reading is specifically tailored for the expat situation. Otherwise, you may as well just go to the pachinko parlor and try your luck there.

For me volume is the best signal for a breakout. True breakout has volume associated with it. Of course this is just a part of technical analysis, but volume is a very great indicator if you know when to use it and how to interpret it.

Good book I read some time ago: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Price-Analysis-ebook/dp/B00DGA8LZC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484642714&sr=1-1&keywords=volume+price+analysis

Amazon Link - can't recommend it enough, hard to put down and very well weaved together

Carreyrou owns the story - it's hard to describe just what he was up against. All the big names in SV didn't just love Holmes, they praised her, and then they trashed John and the WSJ for going after her.

It took a lot of courage to go against these people and to pursuit the truth in this story. Not to mention that the owner of the WSJ, Murdoch, was a huge personal investor in Theranos (and to his credit didn't intervene to kill the story when Elizabeth asked him to)

I enjoy reading anything Charlie Munger has written (or said). If you don't know, he is Warren Buffett's business partner, and one of the things he promotes tirelessly is reading and understanding mental models from other domains. So in reading Munger, you tend to get some second-hand insights into different mental models.

Munger has also spent his life trying to understand human rationality and irrationality in order to make himself a more rational investor. He has some significant things to say about that that are very insightful.

Someone recently posted a 350 page compendium of Munger's writings and speeches. I'm sure you can find it easily by Googling.

You might also read stuff by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. They spent their careers essentially studying rational and irrational behaviors, and behavioral economics owes a huge debt to them. Michael Lewis just wrote a book about them and their collaboration called The Undoing Project. Having never read a less-than-fascinating book by Michael Lewis, I'll stick my neck out and say it's probably worth reading.

Finally, if you can stand his style and unmitigated pomposity, Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written a few interesting things. The two books I found most interesting (and rewarding) were Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001U29UIU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_1ZlZCbSANXB90

I always recommend this to people who have 0 experience in accounting. My girlfriend wanted to understand what I did on a fundamental level so I gave her this and she enjoyed it. Don't be fooled by the childlike aesthetics, this book actually gave a good clear understanding of the basic concepts. Let me know what you think

• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing - Jack Bogle. He explain why just buy and hold a low cost index fund (like SPY) is the way to go.
  
• The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham. The Bible of Stock Picking. Unfortunately, less than 1% can beat the market long term doing that.
  
• The Single Best Investment - Lowell Miller. Good if you thing is income.
  
• Dual Momentum Investing - Gary Antonnacci. A really good improvement of Jack Bogle's thesis of investing only in index funds.

> Can you recommend any books on coding quant strategies?

http://www.quantstart.com/articles/quantitative-finance-reading-list

Favorites I've read so far:

• Inside the Black Box (if you're totally new to the concept)
  
  
• Quantitative Trading (the second book, Algorithmic trading goes deeper into implementing strategies, also good)
  
  
• Trading Systems (a GREAT book on implementation and the process of testing a strategy)
  
  
• Active Portfolio Management (Kind of a classic, more theory than implementation, requires some fundamental understanding of MPT, CAPM and related concepts. Good chapter on multi-factor risk models)
  
  Also
  
  
• Algorithmic Trading and DMA (Still on my bookshelf, haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but it's supposed to be the book on market microstructure, so if you'er interested in HFT or level-2 algos, this is a good starting point)
  
  Edit: Be prepared to spend about 3 months just randomly browsing Investopedia to crack through all the jargon :)
  
  Also, these guys have some pretty rockin' videos on on everything finance, from "WTF is an ETF?" to "WTF is a European Call Option?" to "How do I manage my pension?", especially useful if you're in the UK. The videos helped me a lot when I was getting started at my current job.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/user/MoneyWeekVideos/videos

When I started investing I didn't know jack shit. Now I make between 30-50k year just in growth and dividends. I started with this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Investing-Lessons-Every-Investor/dp/1118484878

It's a short book, a 1 day read. You'll come out being very very skeptical of "financial planners" and investment bankers who want a piece of your action. It walks you through all the scams, types of accounts, tax benefits, etc. This stuff is all super confusing and they do a nice job of explaining it.

Once you read the book, this will make sense: You might want to think about migrating what you have left over for saving into a Roth IRA over time. (there is a $5500 limit per year/per person and you need to have a separate roth for both you and your husband) Then your growth is tax free.

​

​

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to help you out.


Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, by Feld and Mendelson


Term Sheets & Valuations - A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Term Sheets & Valuations


And of course, The Art of the Deal for when you want something more high-level. Hope this helps!

Great pick on Penman's text!

If you find yourself wanting a more concise run through, Penman's Accounting for Value is excellent as well and much shorter.

What kind of hedging are you looking to do? You say that you understand single commodity hedging, but does that mean you're familiar with trading oil or spark spreads or something?

For a general overview of options, forwards, futures, and swaps, I would refer you to this book that I used this semester in my MBA class. It covers not only the math and fundamentals behind these derivatives, but also, common strategies for purchasing and applying them.

For an overview of commodities trading, you'll need to read and understand this book: The Commodity Trading Manual - Chicago Board of Trade. It's required reading for any new traders.

Hope one of these helps.

Honestly, Anna Couling's books have provided me with a massive amount of illumination.

Other than that, I'm currently reading Robbie Burn's "The Naked Trader" & Rob Booker's "Adventures of a currency trader".

Along with countless others, I'm currently trying to prioritize them and write reviews so I can go back on the main points easily.

Thank god for kindle devices, I can highlight all the important parts and go back.

You and I are in a very similar situation.

I've considered both the options that you are considering, and then I have realized that they are not the ONLY options out there.

I recently started reading this book called "Smart Choices - A practical guide to making decisions" - by John S. Hammond & others, (published by Harvard Business School Press & has excellent reviews on Amazon) which walks you through the steps of making a complicated decision by helping you focus on your desired objectives and coming up with creative solutions. It's actually very engaging and you'll learn a lot about psychology as well.

The thing is that everyone here could suggest option A or option B, and you might be convinced either one of those is great, but there might be 4 or 5 other options to consider in your situation.

I think for a decision as big as this that will literally affect the rest of your life, spending a week or even a few weeks reading and working out your problem on paper will definitely pay off in the long run.

Andrew Aziz's book is great. Covers the basics, strategies, and psychology. Good pacing, and easy to follow.

How to Day Trade for a Living: A Beginners Guide to Trading Tools and Tactics, Money Management, Di https://www.amazon.com/dp/1535585951/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_zcHWBbA3Q1DWP

"Y'all"? Ha you remind me of my friend from da South.

Anyway, getting fixated on a specific journal will not be effective, especially when you are not familiar with the fundamentals. I suggest reading some introductory texts (Hull, Baxter). Then maybe you can move on to Wilmott magazine (school library might have it). Then perhaps you will know enough to search for relevant papers on http://www.ssrn.com/en/.


Hope that helps.

I recommend a book by Brad Feld,

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1119259754/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile

It would also be wise to read the SAFE primer. As a founder of a semi-successful seed stage startup, I wouldn't use a convertible debt note to raise money.

https://www.ycombinator.com/docs/SAFE_Primer.rtf

Plug: https://www.fastcompany.com/3068575/will-ride-hail-be-free-by-2021-the-startup-ad-platform-vugo-says-yes

Top books to get into Finance and trading. This first one is by far the most fundamental book. Most jobs you get you will be asked to read this, and even if you aren't its still an amazing read. Published in 1931, still very relevant today, you will read 10+ times over your Finance career

Reminiscences of a stock operator

Then the Market Wizards series by Jack Schwager

Market Wizards

Hedge Fund Market Wizards

The New Market Wizards

This is where I would start. GL

You’ve got to keep adding to your “funnel”; prospecting will do that for you. Seek out new prospects every chance you get.

I just started reading Jeb Blount’s Fanatical Prospecting and I think most here on this sub will agree: it will answer your questions and help you solve your problems. :)

I haven't read this myself, but I know a few friends that said this book was pretty decent since is focsuses primarily on prospecting.

Robot as in no feeling? Hardly. My point was simply who won a speculative bet is irrelevant to the citizenry. Sorry about the cheap shot aimed at Chavez economic policy. If anything my comment was my own emotional reaction to politics based on slogan not substantive issues. IMO shorting the pound was far from substantive.

The impact of the economic shifts of both globalization and software devastates low skill workers. Just as farmers were radically displaced in "leave" areas a century ago, weavers (just an example I'm familiar with due to a past job) and other low skill jobs are disappearing now (or gone). Global productivity gains amplified by software creates similar social upheaval as the industrial revolution. Within democracies we must address these shifts. Arguing about policies to address these macro trends are critical to strengthen outcomes for citizens.

Whether or not those macro shifts were on voter’s minds or not; the impact is highest in the areas that voted to leave. This shift must be addressed in government policy. Security too but I don’t know anything about securing countries or blocks of countries.

Speculators on the pound are merely a side show. Gamblers who win or lose aren't super interesting. Does a retired person winning or losing a million quid at the Aspers-Stratford casino matter? Good copy maybe. Same with speculators on the referendum. Soros was supposedly long on the pound. Does that make him dumb or altruistic? Supposedly Crispin Odey was short. Is he evil, bad or smart? If they didn't speculate would it have changed the outcome for the london banker who would lose their job given a full Brexit? This is a side show. Money moved from Soros to Odey. Who cares.

As a side matter in the who cares department, all the folks who bet against the pound for other reasons now get credit for predicting Brexit:

1. overvalued currency (e.g., http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/currency/12065157/Pound-is-most-overvalued-currency-in-the-world-analysts-claim.html) OR
   
2. to protect against a black swan event (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00139XTG4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#navbar)
   
   Finally, from a govt. policy perspective, hedge funds shorting the pound should not be conflated with weaknesses in rated collateralized-dept-obligations (CDOs). That’s a different “hedge funds are evil” argument. I’m down with regulatory shifts across rating agencies and CDOs. Rated CDOs obviously didn’t manage risk as advertised. Well-designed regulatory regimes that help prevent misinformation improve market efficiency and benefit citizens IMHO.
   
   
   

Omar, the first thing you need is a little bit of Python. Personally I'm a fan of Code Academy.

If you're looking to understand a little more about common types of trading algorithms, check out this blog post. We've been drafting it a while, and you inspired us to publish it!

I'm also a huge fan of Ernie Chan's book which really explains a lot about the "business" of algorithmic trading.

Here is a link: The Elements of Investing: Easy Lessons for Every Investor https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118484878/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_0GM2BbRHZGEC0

And I suggest the 2nd (or maybe they just refer to it as “updated” like on the cover) because it’s updated to reflect increased trends in e-trading and reduction in managed portfolios like managed mutual funds.

For retirement accounts in particular, I would highly recommend The Elements of Investing by Malkiel and Ellis.

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Investing-Lessons-Every-Investor/dp/1118484878?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

It covers the optimal strategy for how everyday people should invest for retirement: a diversified portfolio of low-cost, broad index funds. It also gives a list recommended funds from various institutions (Vanguard, Fidelity, etc.). If you frequent this subreddit, then the majority of it will sound very familiar. But it's a good introduction for the uninitiated.

I know a pretty good book. It might help.

Haha yes I was joking. I just finished reading Bad Blood the other day, I highly recommend it. I'm not much of a reader but finished it in two days because of how interesting the whole story is.

Check out the book The Accounting Game (non-affiliate link). It's really simple, keeps your interest, and has good practice worksheets. I was someone who hated accounting/finance in college. After reading that book I had a new appreciation for it and a much better understanding of business as a whole.

Also, check out this video on youtube. It's a top hedgefund investor who explains accounting/finance in basic terms in under an hour.

Makes sense now, thanks for explanation. Maybe something about decision-making or more specifically about weighing the options might be useful. I'm thinking that probably Smart choices could be a good book to read.

https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Choices-Practical-Making-Decisions/dp/0767908864

Get a basic background in logic and statistics and their respective fallacies. This will give you the knowledge and tools you need to think critically of 99% of what you find in news media and websites. A good introduction to logic is Harry Gensler's Introduction to Logic textbook. A good guide to statistical fallacies and how to spot them is [The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb] (http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable-ebook/dp/B00139XTG4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421288487&sr=1-1&keywords=the+black+swan+taleb).

Get yourself a copy of this

Everything is very simply laid out and easily explained. I follow this now and feel really comfortable with it.

Regarding tax, no, not taxable if you’re a non resident. You would be liable for tax if you returned home then sold your investments for a profit. But sell beforehand then you’re fine.

Startups are much more complex than real-estate deals, so you aren't going to find as concise of a book as the Art of the Deal, Zero to One as recommended in another comment is a great one though.

For the ethos of startups I would recommend: Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/dp/1449389554

For the nitty gritty of deal making with VCs (I still haven't made it all the way through this one, as it gets very in depth for someone who isn't quite at the point of looking for funding) this seems to be the go-to:
https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1119259754

Hi

Economics is the study of offer and demand. It's all about common sense.

Finance is the inverse of Investing. It's all about how you spread risk. Finance is the study of the relation between the hard working guys with no money who needs money, and the rich guys with money who want to avoid working.

There is a lot of jargon in economics, but it always boils down to big common sense.

For economics, I would suggest you to start with game theory. A good book to start is "the evolution of cooperation".

For finance, I would suggest you learn how to read financial statements. There is a good book called "Warren Buffet and the Interpretation of Financial Statements". The book has nothing to do with Warren Buffet.

http://www.amazon.com/Warren-Buffett-Interpretation-Financial-Statements/dp/1416573186

If you're looking for something more general then check out Market Wizards there's also a whole series with one of the books focused specifically on hedge funds.

I'm just about to start reading it myself so can't comment on it 100% but I recently listened to this podcast that features the author and he has some fascinating stories about various traders/managers so I can only imagine the book is similar in the quality of content.

See if your library has the accounting game it’s a book that teaches accounting basics with a lemonade stand as the example. Super simplistic and easy to follow

Quickbooks is just a tool. You will be better served learning basic accounting principles, and for that I recommend this excellent book:

[The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1402211864/)

Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman. The market has spoken and it's the best.

More seriously, I'd go with Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd. It's a little more dense compared to Intelligent Investor, but definitely digestible with an undergrad understanding of econ.

*Oh, and the Hull text is the derivatives bible.

I’m currently reading this book by John Carter. I’ve found it to be very good, even if repetitive at points.

Mastering the Trade, Second Edition: Proven Techniques for Profiting from Intraday and Swing Trading Setups https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071775145?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf


I’ve also read Trading in the Zone (Douglas) and How To Day Trade for a Living (Aziz) which are also good.

I have not personally done any research, but a lot has been done. A quick google search showed the following:

• http://www.theactivistinvestor.com/The_Activist_Investor/Academic_Research.html
  
  Additionally, there is this book, in which Tobias Carlisle (of Greenbackd fame) provides a great overview of activist investing: https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Value-Investors-Contrarians-Corporations/dp/1118747968
  

In a way, she wanted you to be able to prick your finger, and with just one drop of blood, be able to get blood test results for over a hundred different diseases. The problem was you need lots of blood to test for all the things she claimed she could test for and required lots of professional lab equipment, not just a little box. There is a great book about it that goes into great detail and is a fantastic read called Bad Blood

No prob. There are finance with Excel type books out there that you might also find helpful. To do any actual analysis of a company, you will probably use a spreadsheet. I haven't used them, but the various books by Benninga are pretty popular.

I seriously recommend you buy the accounting game. It really helps people who are new to accounting understand what’s really happening. I would recommend getting in a
Paper so you can actually fill it out.

https://www.amazon.com/Accounting-Game-Basic-Fresh-Lemonade-ebook/dp/B001U29UIU

I was stone faced until 2 STD's.

After a good LOL I decided to give you an upvote and guide you here

One of the best new books on the subject is Deep Value http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Value-Investors-Contrarians-Corporations/dp/1118747968/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412616436&sr=8-1&keywords=Deep+value it's an updated take on Graham's approach to value investing and quantitatively evaluates different variations based upon their back-tested results over long periods of time. Expensive book but worth every penny IMHO.

The book which had the biggest influence on me and changed my view on Investing was from John Bogle, Father of index funds.

This is the one and only one book on index investing you require ;-).
Little book of common sense investing.
Its the number one best seller in mutual fund investing over amazon.

He has written many other books too which you can slowly digest one by one.

"So it turned out Theranos was basically a fraud. They claimed to be able to run 240 tests on just a pinprick of blood. Experts were skeptical, and they were right to be. Yet somehow this company managed to keep going for 11 years in spite of having minimal revenue and a largely non-functional "product". Frequently their tests would fail and no results would be returned to patients, but that's probably for the best since the results they did return were highly unreliable and substantially different from existing tests (ie they were wrong).

An excellent book chronicling the whole saga (written by John Carreyrou, same reporter who wrote the above article) is Bad Blood."

I would think twice about ANF because fashion is so crazy. I bought 100 shares of LB for $90, watch it go to $110 then drop to $80... I couldn't take it and accepted my loss. Athleisure was taking over and instagram influencers destroyed the super model. Now LB is trading in the 30's. Luckily my shares of Nike kept going up, hedging my loss. After this experience, it put me on a quest to study companies much more in depth. I would highly recommend reading Warren Buffet and the Interpretation of Financial Statements if you have the time.

https://www.amazon.com/Warren-Buffett-Interpretation-Financial-Statements/dp/1416573186

​

But who knows. Maybe some instagram social influencer will blow up ANF and put it back on the map. Maybe Kanye will do a collab. You never know. Good Luck!

They're not really "backtesting resources" but Ernie Chan's books all use matlab code examples, and he has all of the full example code on his website (viewable with a password obtained from the book)

• Quantitative Trading: How to Build Your Own Algorithmic Trading Business
  
  
• Algorithmic Trading: Winning Strategies and Their Rationale
  
  
• Machine Trading: Deploying Computer Algorithms to Conquer the Markets
  

Honestly this book is made specifically for people like me and you doing retail business first time. When I was half way I was already doing P&L, Balance sheet etc.
Here is the link to the book
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1402211864/ref=cm_sw_r_em_awd_C48IwbSD00AV2

You could look at the implied growth rate of a stock

Stephen Penman's Accounting for Value has a good overview.

For traders, Mandelbrot's The Misbehavior of Markets for a dose of humility.

Taleb's Black Swan talks about an investing strategy that seems relevant to crypto: keep mostly low-risk liquid assets and invest small amounts in things that can pay off big.

For developers, this is a weird one but my all-time favorite is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Recommend you read Anna Coulling's book...A Complete Guide To Volume Price Analysis
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DGA8LZC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_WRK0AbDJ3B6PD

Relatively low cost if you have a Kindle or Kindle app. Explains why prices in any market are driven down beautifully.

There's an entire school of thought that claims all you need is price and volume. No fancy TA involved. This is a pretty good intro on the subject.

> Corporate profits have risen from approximately $1.4T to $1.6T from the beginning of last year. That is hardly stagnant. Moreover, the longterm trend has seen a massive increase with a near doubling in the past ten years from approximately $1T.

In first quarter 2015, profits were at an all time high, 1.7T, so stop saying they are now. After that, they dropped steadily down to 1.4T by 1st Qtr 2016, and haven't really rebounded back to where they were, granted 4th quarter 2016 has broken the losing streak, but before that they were what industry analysts call stagnant. At the end of the day we're still down 100+ billion from 2015.

I understand what your going through, hell my wife and I went through the same thing around the same age. We took a big risk, and it paid off, it was pretty much just luck and being in the right place and the right time, but we put ourselves in that place and when opportunity knocked we were ready.

You've let someone convince you that the only way your going to make it is via tax policy changes, aka waiting for the government. You've let someone give you a defeatist attitude, and kinda sound like you think society owes you something because you did a few things right. That isn't how life works.

Stop with the sob stories. Make a plan to double your salary within the next year and make it happen.

Try these, they helped me a lot. Using the resume book I got interviews with every company I sent a resume to.

https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Send-Resume-Other-Contrarian/dp/0786865962

https://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Amazing/dp/0399144463

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Investing-Lessons-Every-Investor/dp/1118484878

May not be what you're looking for, but I've heard good things about this book (I've never read it though.)

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou is an excellent investigative book on Theranos.

this one?
https://www.amazon.com/Market-Wizards-Updated-Interviews-Traders/dp/1118273052/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482538868&sr=8-1&keywords=market+wizards&refinements=p_72%3A2661618011

and "Profiting in Both Bull and Bear Markets" - do you mean this one?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1556236832/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3VXS3MWPH9PED

No. But if you do decide to try a paid one I really like BearBullTraders and Andrew Aziz’s book is good, How to Day Trade for a Living: A Beginner’s Guide to Trading Tools and Tactics, Money Management, Discipline and Trading Psychology https://www.amazon.com/dp/1535585951/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_wEuZAbW9M6DXN

Seems like an interesting book. From the Amazon listing , it looks like it goes deeper than "buy quality companies at discount prices". I have a few books I'm working through, but this is on my shortlist for my next one.

I found Bogle's Little Book of Common Sense Investing very helpful.

what specifically are you interested in?

https://www.quantnet.com/threads/quantnet-best-selling-books-of-2012.12190/

https://www.quantnet.com/threads/master-reading-list-for-quants-mfe-financial-engineering-students.535/


http://www.nuclearphynance.com/Show%20Forum.aspx?ForumIDKey=8

-----------

http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~skiena/691/

http://developers.opengamma.com/quantitative-research

http://www.thalesians.com/finance/index.php/Reading_List

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http://www.amazon.com/Primer-Mathematics-Financial-Engineering-Second/dp/0979757622/

commonly heard: "Just read Hull OFOD" http://www.amazon.com/Options-Futures-Derivatives-DerivaGem-Package/dp/0132777428/

http://www.amazon.com/Stochastic-Calculus-Finance-Binomial-Textbooks/dp/0387249680/

Try taking a look at Financial Modelling" by Simon Benninga...great book.

I don't really think it matters too much which version you get, FYI.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Financial-Modeling-Simon-Benninga/dp/0262027283

https://www.amazon.com/Options-Futures-Derivatives-DerivaGem-Package/dp/0132777428

for good measure.

+1

Another resource I found as a good introduction to index funds and investing in general was Burton Malkiel's The Elements of Investing: https://www.amazon.ca/Elements-Investing-Lessons-Every-Investor/dp/1118484878

For the next Cortex book club, I highly recommend John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood about the rise and fall of Theranos.

It'll give you a decent foundation. But I guess, the more important question, is what are you hoping to learn? CFA will cover derivatives, accounting, debt, equities, corp fin., etc. Which might be too much to digest depending on what you want to learn.

You could also consider Financial Modeling by Simon Benninga depending on your goals.

You start here.

This is the most succinct, most comprehensive, clearest book on the subject I've found to date.

Books I’d recommend for trading are

Secrets of a pivot boss- franklin Ochoa

https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Pivot-Boss-Revealing-Profiting/dp/0615391273/ref=nodl_

Mastering the trade - John f Carter

https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Trade-Second-Techniques-Profiting/dp/0071775145/ref=nodl_

The Elements of Investing was the first book recommended to me by a friend, and it taught me ridiculous amounts in about 150 pages. You could tear through this in a day and learn volumes full.

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1118484878/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

You can be a stock market genius https://www.amazon.com/You-Can-Stock-Market-Genius/dp/0684840073

Deep Value https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Value-Investors-Contrarians-Corporations/dp/1118747968/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482441120&sr=1-1&keywords=deep+value

I mean this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0262027283/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile

Between Benninga, and Hulls "Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives" one should be able to get enough modeling, concept and theory down to be a competent analyst.

You can't prove God doesn't exist. Just studying how a cell reproduces makes you think, could there be something or someone behind all this. Where did all this begin and how did it start? We have no way of knowing. So then the question is do you declare God doesn't exist and is a figment. Or entertain the possibility that your knowledge and experience are truly limited and we are weak beings.

Pride in oneself and knowledge is a very dangerous thing.

edit: This is a good book to read on the impact of the highly improbable

Yep, edited my post with the link
https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X

If you were planning to open a brokerage or robo-advisor account there are some who don't mind expat clients. (Questrade and Wealthbar spring to mind.) But it might not be your best option. If you can find a copy of Andrew Hallam's most recent expat investing book it might have some better Couch Potato suggestions.

I hear the book is awesome.
Bad Blood
https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X

He goes pretty much A through Z on everything you’ll need to know on day trading. You won’t regret it.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Day-Trade-Living-Management/dp/1535585951/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=day+trading&qid=1567451446&s=gateway&sr=8-3

You might want to check out a book called The Accounting Game: https://www.amazon.com/Accounting-Game-Basic-Fresh-Lemonade-ebook/dp/B001U29UIU/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me= (Kindle version). It really builds things from the ground up, and assumes you know nothing about accounting. It is one of the first books I read on accounting before I started at WGU.

I'm a big fan of the book about the Theranos debacle, Bad Blood by John Carreyrou. It's a great case study on messiah complexes, bad leadership, and organizational dysfunction.

My suggestion is that you start with this episode:
https://tim.blog/2019/01/17/peter-mallouk/

And read this book:
https://www.amazon.de/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing-ebook/dp/B075Z6HSCJ

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing-ebook/dp/B075Z6HSCJ

Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119144752/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_PcpsDb5WAXQ6X

Now the issue is how to decide.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119259754/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_WliWAbA4JHZVQ

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X/

Note that an update is coming in December.

https://www.amazon.ca/Millionaire-Expat-Second-Wealth-Overseas/dp/1119411890/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1496721218&sr=8-2&keywords=millionaire+expat

https://www.amazon.com/Accounting-Game-Basic-Fresh-Lemonade/dp/1402211864

Complete beginner about to study Mathematical Finance in college.
Should I purchase Options, Futures and Other Derivates (Hull) first, or the Concepts and Practice of Mathematical Finance (Mark Joshi)?

• Quantative Trading by Edward Chan
  
  
• Beat The Forex Dealer by Agustin Silvani
  
  
• The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin
  
  
• Freakonomics by Steve Levitt
  
  
• Hot Commodities by Jim Rogers
  
  

"Venture Deals" by Brad Feld. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1119259754/

Here is the mobile version of your link

Not 100% certain for either of them. Here are a couple of links:

Elements of Investing

Millennial Money

There is a really great book that talks about how British expats get screwed with pension scams and advice on what to do instead. The book is Millionaire Expat by Andrew Hallam.

And that there is a lot of spoofing, half filled orders and similar by bots going on on the real market. Then you have the more physical real world things that the broke you use might be down, there was a circuit breaker for the price that was executed and your algo gets triggered the wrong way

I could recommend this book that talks about algo trading from a general viewpoint https://www.amazon.com/Quantitative-Trading-Build-Algorithmic-Business/dp/0470284889

I’ll be gone In the dark:
https://www.amazon.com/Ill-Be-Gone-Dark-Obsessive/dp/0062319787

In cold blood
https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Blood-Truman-Capote/dp/0679745580

Bad blood
https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X

I don't doubt your experience of him being good boss but if you read Bad Blood him and his firm seem really sleazy. They pressured Carreyrou not to write the book, members of his firm duped Former Secretary of State George Schultz and pressured his grandson to sign documents trying to prevent him from being a Theranos whistleblower. What him and his firm did might not be illegal but it should be. Also, he joined other members of the deep state on the Theranos board which makes me concerned that he his part of the deep state.

> I think you are extremely off here.

What do you mean, are you saying he never hired Black Cube

There was an interesting take on this in The Black Swan, where the author gives you an alternative reality situation, where an FBI agent acts on the indications of a plot to fly jets into skyscrapers and successfully advocates for reinforced cockpit doors in all planes and increased screening of carry-on baggage. In this alternative reality, 9/11 did not happen. Is this guy a hero? No, he's the pain in the ass who wasted millions of airline money and inconvenienced millions of passengers by forcing them to get to the airport earlier. But the fact is that 9/11, like any terrorist attack was a Black Swan: a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics:

• It is unpredictable;
  
  
• it carries a massive impact; and,
  
  
• after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was.
  
  It is impossible for us to know exactly how effective our security forces have been at thwarting any attacks, because it is counter-productive for them to reveal sources and methods. Which makes it awfully convenient for the Government to drive through increased police powers.
  
  What I don't understand is why ASIO needs immunity from killing in self-defence, or why we need further laws to lock people up for advocating terrorism, when existing laws seem to be adequate.

Alright, let's talk about Nassim Nicholas Taleb. If you're not familiar, he's the famously belligerent author of Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, and Antifragile, among other works. I don't think Taleb's views can be fully comprehended in a single day, so I strongly advise going out and reading all his books.

-----
Edit: What I really want to know here is: of those of you who are familiar with Taleb's technical approach to decision theory and how he applies this to the real world, is his decision theory 1) Basically correct, 2) Frequently correct but mis-applied sometimes, or 3) basically incorrect?
-----

On the one hand, I suspect that if he knew about the rationalist community, he would loudly despise it and everything it stands for. If he doesn't already know about it, that is: I remember seeing him badmouth someone who mentioned the word "rationalist" in Facebook comments. He has said in one of his books that Ray Kurzweil is the opposite of him in every way. He denounces the advice in the book "Nudge" by Thaler and Sunstein (which I admittedly have not read - is this a book that rationalists like?) as hopelessly naive. He considers himself Christian, is extremely anti-GMO, voted third-party in the election but doesn't seem to mind Trump all that much, and generally sends lots of signals that people in the rationalist community would instinctively find disturbing.

On the other hand...

Taleb the Arch-rationalist?

Despite the above summary, if you actually look closer, he looks more rationalist than most self-described rationalists. He considers erudition a virtue, and apparently used to read for 30 hours a week in college (he timed himself). I remember him saying off-hand (in The Black Swan, I think) that a slight change in his schedule allowed him to read an extra hundred books a year. When he decided that probability and statistics were good things to learn, he went out and read every math textbook he could find on the subject. Then he was a wall street trader for a couple of decades, and now runs a risk management institute based on his experiences.

He considers himself a defender of science, and calls people out for non-rigorous statistical thinking, such as thinking linearly in highly nonlinear problem spaces, or mis-applying analytical techniques meant for thin-tailed distributions on fat-tailed distributions. (Example of when thinking "linearly" doesn't apply: the minority rule). He loves the work of Daniel Kahneman, and acknowledges human cognitive biases. Examples of cognitive biases he fights are the "narrative fallacy" (thinking a pattern exists when there is only random noise) and the "ludic fallacy" (ignoring the messiness of the real world in favor of nice, neat, plausible-sounding, and wrong, theoretical knowledge).

He defends religion, tradition, and folk wisdom on the basis of statistical validity and asymmetric payoffs. An example of his type of reasoning: if old traditions had any strongly negative effects, these effects would almost certainly have been discovered by now, and the tradition would have been weeded out. Therefore, any old traditions that survive until today must have, at worst, small, bounded negative effects, but possibly very large positive effects. Thus, adhering to them is valid in a decision-theoretic sense, because they are not likely to hurt you on average but are more amenable to large positive black swans. Alternatively, in modern medical studies and in "naive scientistic thinking", erroneous conclusions are often not known to have bounded negative effects, and so adhering to them exposes you to large negative black swans. (I think this is what he means when he casually uses one of his favorite technical words, "ergodicity," as if its meaning were obvious).

Example: "My grandma says that if you go out in the cold, you'll catch a cold." Naive scientist: "Ridiculous! Colds are caused by viruses, not actual cold weather. Don't listen to that old wive's tale." Reality: It turns out that cold weather suppresses the immune system and makes you more likely to get sick. Lesson: just because you can't point to a chain of causation, doesn't mean you should dismiss the advice!

Another example: Scientists: "Fat is bad for you! Cut it out of your diet!" Naive fad-follower: "Ok!" Food companies: "Let's replace all the fat with sugar!" Scientists: "JK, sugar is far worse for you than fat." Fad-follower: "Well damn it, if I had just stuck with my traditional cultural diet that people have been eating for thousands of years, nothing all that bad would have happened." Lesson: you can probably ignore dietary advice unless it has stood the test of time for more than a century. More general lesson: applying a change uniformly across a complex system results in a single point of failure.

For the same sorts of reasons, Taleb defends religious traditions and is a practicing Christian, even though he seems to view the existence of God as an irrelevant question. He simply believes in belief as an opaque but valid strategy that has survived the test of time. Example 1. Example 2. Relevant quote from example 2:

> Some unrigorous journalists who make a living attacking religion typically discuss "rationality" without getting what rationality means in its the decision-theoretic sense (the only definition that can be consistent). I can show that it is rational to "believe" in the supernatural if it leads to an increase in payoff. Rationality is NOT belief, it only correlates to belief, sometimes very weakly (in the tails).

His anti-GMO stance makes a lot of people immediately discredit him, but far from just being pseudoscientific BS, he makes what is probably the strongest possible anti-GMO argument. He only argues against GMOs formed by advanced techniques like plasmid insertion, and not against lesser techniques like selective breeding (a lot of his detractors don't realize he makes this distinction). The argument is that these advanced techniques, combined with the mass replication and planting of such crops, amounts to applying an uncertain treatment uniformly across a population, and thus results in a catastrophic single point of failure. The fact that nothing bad has happened with GMOs in the past is not good statistical evidence, according to Taleb, that nothing bad will happen in the future. There being no good evidence against current GMOs is secondary to the "precautionary principle," that we should not do things in black swan territory that could result in global catastrophes if we are wrong (like making general AI!). I was always fine with GMOs, but this argument really gave me pause. I'm not sure what to think anymore - perhaps continue using GMOs, but make more of an effort to diversify the types of modifications made? The problem is that the GMO issue is like the identity politics of the scientific community - attempt to even entertain a possible objection and you are immediately shamed as an idiot by a facebook meme. I would like to see if anyone has a statistically rigorous reply to taleb's argument that accounts for black swans and model error.

Taleb also strongly advocates that people should put their "skin in the game." In rationalist-speak, he means that you should bet on your beliefs, and be willing to take a hit if you are wrong.

To summarize Taleb's life philosophy in a few bullet-points:

• Read as many books as you can
  
• Do as much math as you can
  
• Listen to the wisdom of your elders
  
• Learn by doing
  
• Bet on your beliefs
  
  Most or all of these things are explicit rationalist virtues.
  
  Summary
  
  Despite having a lot of unpopular opinions, Nassim Taleb is not someone to be dismissed, due to his incredibly high standards for erudition, statistical expertise, and ethical behavior. What I would like is for the rationalist community to spend some serious time considering what Taleb has to say, and either integrating his techniques into their practices or giving a technical explanation of why they are wrong.
  
  Also, I would love to see Eliezer Yudkowsky's take on all this. I'll link him here (/u/EliezerYudkowsky), but could someone who knows him maybe leave him a facebook message also? I happen to think that this conversation is extremely important if the rationalist community is to accurately represent and understand the world. Taleb has been mentioned occasionally on LessWrong, but I have never seen his philosophy systematically addressed.
  
  Taleb's Youtube Channel
  
  Taleb's Medium.com Blog
  
  His essay on "Intellectuals-yet-idiots"
  
  His personal site, now with a great summarizing graphic