Same as Ever
What stays the same when everything changes. Housel makes the case that human behavior is the only honest market model.
Ledge Reads · 32 entries
Curated investing library, read at your own pace.
A curated shelf of investing classics — memos from Howard Marks and Warren Buffett, books from Graham, Munger, Klarman, Lewis, and the durable behavioral-finance reads that shaped how we think about markets. Each entry carries a one-line takeaway so you can pick what's worth your next hour.
Books
26 entriesThe Psychology of Money
Twenty short lessons on how people actually think about money — and why that's usually irrational. The defining personal-finance read of the decade.
Capital Returns
Marathon Asset Management's capital-cycle investing — buying when industries are starved of capital, selling when they're flooded. Counterintuitive and durable.
Misbehaving
Thaler's history of behavioral economics' rise — the field that now anchors every retirement-plan default and every trading-app nudge.
The Outsiders
Eight unconventional CEOs who beat Welch's GE on capital allocation by 20x. The portrait of capital allocation as the single most undervalued executive skill.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Nobel-winning psychologist on the two systems of thought driving every investment decision. The dominant behavioral-finance text of the 21st century.
The Most Important Thing
Marks's distillation of two decades of memos. Twenty 'most important things' — second-level thinking, market cycles, and the role of luck.
The Big Short
The 2008 housing crisis told through the handful of investors who saw it coming. Lewis's portrait of analytical conviction against consensus.
Too Big to Fail
Sorkin's day-by-day reconstruction of the 2008 financial crisis from inside the Treasury and the major banks. Definitive primary-source account.
Poor Charlie's Almanack
Munger's mental-models compendium. Multidisciplinary thinking, inversion, lattice-of-models — the textbook for thinking better.
Good to Great
Collins's Level 5 leadership and 'flywheel' framework. Distilled from 21 great companies vs their direct competitors.
Bogle on Investing
The Vanguard founder's case for low-cost indexing. Bogle's writing democratized investing for everyone with a 401(k).
When Genius Failed
The rise and collapse of Long-Term Capital Management. The cleanest case study in how leverage, complexity, and brilliance can compound into catastrophe.
Devil Take the Hindmost
A history of financial speculation from tulipmania to dot-com. Every bubble's pattern is recognizable; only the assets and the technology change.
Innovator's Dilemma
Why great companies fail when faced with disruptive technology. The book Andy Grove credited with shaping Intel's strategic posture in the 90s.
Stocks for the Long Run
200 years of equity returns. Siegel's data-driven case that stocks are the safest long-horizon asset. Now in its 6th edition.
Margin of Safety
Out of print and trading at $1,000+ used. Klarman's Baupost-Group philosophy of value investing with a downside-first lens.
Liar's Poker
Wall Street's 1980s mortgage-bond era from inside Salomon Brothers. Required reading for understanding how trading desks actually behave.
Competitive Strategy
Porter's Five Forces — the textbook that defined modern industry analysis. Every moat-investor's mental model traces here.
Manias, Panics, and Crashes
Kindleberger's framework for diagnosing bubbles in real time. Five-stage model still cited by Fed economists; updated through 2015.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street
The original case for index investing. Now in its 13th edition; the foundational text behind every Vanguard fund flow since.
The Lessons of History
A 100-page distillation of the Durants' 11-volume Story of Civilization. On wealth, war, and human nature — context for any long-horizon investor.
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
Fisher's '15 points to look for' — a qualitative framework for assessing growth companies that influenced Buffett's evolution toward business quality.
The Intelligent Investor
Graham's accessible companion to Security Analysis. Buffett calls it 'by far the best book on investing ever written.'
Where Are the Customers' Yachts?
1940 satire of Wall Street — still the funniest book ever written about the industry, and disappointingly evergreen.
Security Analysis
The 1934 textbook that defined fundamental analysis. Buffett's bible; still in print across seven editions. Dense but foundational.
Memos
5 entriesOn Bubble Watch
Marks distinguishes valuation excess from secular conviction; the question is whether AI-stock prices reflect new economics or familiar mania.
The Indispensable Investor
On why patience and discipline beat brilliance in compounding wealth.
The Calculus of Value Investing
Why value vs growth is a false dichotomy — every investment is a value investment if you do the math right.
Easy Money
The 13-year low-rate environment ended in 2022. Marks frames the regime change as the most consequential shift since the GFC.
Sea Change
The thesis that ushered in 2023's higher-rate paradigm — three sea changes since 1979, with the third just beginning.
Letters
1 entryBerkshire Hathaway 2024 Annual Letter
Buffett's annual reflections on capital allocation, succession, and the durable economics of American business.