Quarterly Reading – Summer ’21

Here’s what I’ve been reading the past three months:

• The Theory of Stock Exchange Speculation – This 1874 classic warns about how difficult it is to make money speculating in the market. It filled my old book quota for the quarter. (notes)
• Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises – The book looks at the cycle of financial crises throughout history and the similarities of how each plays out. I set it down after three chapters. It’s a good book, just the wrong time to read it. I’ll revisit it later.
• The Crash and Its Aftermath – It’s the definitive book on the history of the ’29 crash and the worst bear market in stock market history. The author breaks the book down by year (1929, ’30, ’31, ’32, and ’33). Each year follows a similar outline. So if you want to focus on one specific industry like autos or utilities, for example, you can see how stocks in that industry faired in each of the five years. I’m nowhere close to finishing it but the amount of information makes it a great resource to go back to over and over again. It’s also not cheap. I snagged a like-new used copy for half the price!
• Richer, Wiser, Happier – The book popped up in my Twitter feed several times, so I grabbed a copy. The author pulls from numerous interviews with some great investors to distill their experience into lessons on investing and life. I’m about halfway through it and it’s a great book so far. Active investors will likely find it appealing, but there’s something in there for everyone.
• Cases in Financial Planning Analysis – it’s the textbook for the last CFP course. Studying for the exam in November is next. So not quite done with the CFP books just yet but it’ll be nice to free up that reading time in several months.

Need more reading ideas? Try these book lists:

• The Atlantic’s Summer Reading Guide offers a good mix of choices for the summer.
• What’s the Last 10/10 Book You Read? is a curated list of responses to a question asked on Twitter earlier this year.

Last Call

• Ben Graham: Just Plain Lucky? – Safal Niveshak
• Mimetic Stocks, Not Meme Stocks – Anti-Memetic
• Casualties of Perfection – M. Housel
• On Low Treasury Yields – Verdad
• Short-Term Reversal or Short-Term Momentum? – Klement on Investing
• Are Thematic Funds Worthy of the Hype or a Risky Distraction? – B. Johnson
• Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger: A Wealth of Wisdom (video) – CNBC, Transcript
• Jason Zweig: Temperament Is Everything for Most Investors (podcast) – The Long View
• Intangible Value – Sparkline Capital
• The Forgotten Olympic Events – Reuters

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