Jason Zweig

What happens when a young hedge fund manager spends a small fortune to have lunch with Warren Buffett? He becomes a true value investor. This book traces the arc of a transformation. Author Guy Spier started his career as a Gordon Gekko wannabe -- brash, short-sighted and entirely out for himself. Then, a series of transformations and self-realizations led him from an investment banking job with a third-rate firm to managing his own fund, which has generated tremendous returns for his investors. His journey began with the discovery of Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor, then took him on a path to a life-changing meeting with the renowned investor Mohnish Pabrai, followed by his famous lunch with Warren Buffett. That $650,100 meal proved to be a bargain, teaching Spier some of the most valuable lessons of his life. Along the way, he has gained many powerful insights about investing and business, including: why the right mentors and role models are the key to long-term success as an investor; how a top-notch education can get in your way; why self-knowledge is so critical to becoming a great investor; and how Buffett taught him that the ultimate goal in life is to be true to yourself. This book is an extraordinarily candid memoir that takes the reader into some of the darkest corners of Wall Street. It's also a remarkably smart and practical guide to what it takes to become a successful investor. Most important, Guy Spier provides those who want to take a different path with the insight, guidance and inspiration they need to succeed on their own terms.

Over 5 million copies sold around the world. The original book from Morgan Housel, the New York Times bestselling author of Same As Ever. Doing well with money isn't necessarily about what you know. It's about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money – investing, personal finance, and business decisions – is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don't make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life's most important topics.

“One of the best investing books ever written.” —Charlie Munger From an award-winning financial journalist, a fresh and insightful book that draws on interviews with more than forty of the world’s super-investors to demonstrate that the keys to building wealth also apply to everyday life. Billionaire investors. If we think of them, it’s with a mixture of awe and suspicion. Clearly, they possess a kind of genius—the proverbial Midas Touch. But are the skills they possess transferable? And do they have anything to teach us besides making money. In Richer, Wiser, Happier, William Green draws on interviews that he’s conducted over twenty-five years with many of the world’s greatest investors. As he discovered, their talents extend well beyond the financial realm. The most successful investors are mavericks and iconoclasts who question conventional wisdom and profit vastly from their ability to think more rationally, rigorously, and objectively. They are master game players who consciously maximize their odds of long-term success in markets and life, while also minimizing any risk of catastrophe. They draw powerful insights from many different fields, are remarkably intuitive about trends, practice fanatical discipline, and have developed a high tolerance for pain. As Green explains, the best investors can teach us not only how to become rich, but how to improve the way we think, reach decisions, assess risk, avoid costly errors, build resilience, and turn uncertainty to our advantage. Green ushers us into the lives of more than forty super-investors, visiting them in their offices, homes, and even their places of worship—all to share what they have to teach us. From Sir John Templeton to Charlie Munger, Jack Bogle to Ed Thorp, Will Danoff to Mohnish Pabrai, Joel Greenblatt to Howard Marks, Green explains how they think and why they win. Profound, practical, and “unexpectedly illuminating” (Peter Diamandis), Richer, Wiser, Happier provides “many nuggets of wisdom” (The Washington Post) that will enrich you both financially and personally.

Wall Street Journal bestseller! Poker champion turned business consultant Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions as a result. In Super Bowl XLIX, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made one of the most controversial calls in football history: With 26 seconds remaining, and trailing by four at the Patriots' one-yard line, he called for a pass instead of a hand off to his star running back. The pass was intercepted and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carroll actually make a great move that was ruined by bad luck? Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there is always information that is hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making? Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most people, it's difficult to say "I'm not sure" in a world that values and, even, rewards the appearance of certainty. But professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don't always lead to great outcomes and bad decisions don't always lead to bad outcomes. By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don't, you'll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You'll become more confident, calm, compassionate and successful in the long run.