The most recommended Wall Street books

I loved A Gentleman from Moscow and my friend said yes that’s great but you have to try Rules of Civility. So glad I did!

I was certainly transported to the Jazz Age, martinis, and a heroine who was going to conquer the world. I loved the writing, the turns of phrases, and felt nothing but delight the entire time I read it. Loved descriptions of Manhattan in the 1930s.

The markets are always changing. My ability to maintain performance for over 25+ years I believe comes from my deep foundation in the universal principles that drive market prices.

This book was pivotal in my understanding that some things never change. It is a bit difficult to get through, since it was written in the early 1900s. I think the strangeness of the language forced me to really think through and understand the lessons the book teaches.

In my experience, mental strengthening is step #1. 

Then you need to learn the art of behavioral analysis and economic psychology if you want to be able to consistently understand why markets move so you can begin to forecast those movements…

This book is a great place to get that process started.

Peter Bernstein was one of the great investment writers.

This book is where I got my first taste into the great theorists whose works revolutionized Wall Street such as Harry Markowitz, Bill Sharpe, Myron Scholes, and Bob Merton, all of whom I later had the pleasure of getting to know. I had read about their theories, but hadn’t appreciated the impact they had on the investment industry. Bernstein showed how these luminaries changed the way we think about investments.

This book is for your older children and may be best to read with an adult as there is very minor explicit wording (I've counted one).

I really like this book because it helps with Mindset. When learning about money, can be confusing, exhausting, and overall not fun. Kids want to spend their money, it's human nature, and it's okay to want to feel like that so I am recommending this book because it allows the kids what can happen when they put in the work.

Boys of Brayshaw will absolutely consume you! There is so much suspense, swoony guys, strong female leads, and twists and turns that will have you rushing to the next page. I’ve read this series so many times and will never get enough. These characters will stay with you forever.

And here we are, in the Roaring Twenties, the decade that showed a nation how much trouble an unruly Wall Street can cause the country! The late John Brooks of The New Yorker had a gift for romping through important financial history in the most entertaining way possible. I discovered this gem of his when I was new to covering Wall Street; I’ve turned to it countless times since, both for the facts and for the fun! 

This book is heartbreaking and magical. I thought at first it was a romance novel, but a speculative twist took me by surprise. I became enthralled in those chapters not wanting to leave them. Not quite believing the brilliance of the premise. My daughter had gone through a very similar situation, so every emotion felt raw, and I completely engaged with Anna’s dilemma. How could she choose what to do? I tentatively told my daughter about it and after reading it, she agreed it was amazing too. The ending, which brought me to tears, is hopeful and poignant. It is such a unique story, but I won’t spoil it by mentioning the theme portrayed in it. 

My first experience with a Dean Koontz book was Intensity and wow, did that thriller live up to its title. The same goes for Koontz’s, suspense-packed Devoted – the perfect descriptor for Kipp, a loyal golden retriever who has that magical innate ability dogs seem to have of communicating wordlessly with their humans. At the beginning of the book, we meet Woody, an eleven-year-old non-verbal child with autism who is confident that his father’s untimely death was no accident, but an evil entity that is now after him and his mother. While Woody’s terror grows, Kipp begins his tireless search for Woody, knowing that he could be the only one who can deliver the boy to safety. 

Told with Koontz’s signature page-turning suspense, Devoted is a heart-tugging, immersive thrill-ride, best experienced with your canine best friend snuggled up right next to you. 

Partnoy, a distinguished law professor at Berkeley, is a brilliant chronicler of the people and products in modern financial markets. One could read any of his books and say they were among the best ones on the market and corporate chicanery. But I love his first book, in which he tells the tale of his brief time trading derivatives—back in the very early days of those now world-famous products—among the unsavory characters of a Wall Street trading floor. The story has been told by others since (Wolf of Wall Street, Big Short, etc.) but Partnoy may have done it first. And seeing that world through his young, brilliant, and impressionistic eyes is wonderful. His firm tried to block him from publishing the book, but he did it and has gone on to a magnificent academic career in which he continues to tell it like it is, understanding the… show more.

Retirement Heist is a tour de force. It is a book to make you informed and angry about why pension plans are disappearing in the private sector. In a few words, according to former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Schultz, it was because corporations took financially healthy pension plans and diverted their surpluses to other uses to inflate their bottom lines. They then ended the plans when they inevitably became financially weaker, substituting them for 401(k)s that do not produce near as much retirement security.