Reading
Reading List
Resources that shaped how I think about markets, risk, and performance.
Trading & Systematic Strategies
Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom
Van K. Tharp
The definitive guide to position sizing and R-multiples. Changed how I think about risk/reward permanently.
Expected Returns
Antti Ilmanen
The most comprehensive book on asset class returns I have found. Dense but worth every page.
Systematic Trading
Robert Carver
The most practical book on building systematic strategies I have read. Directly influenced my framework. Carver shows the entire process — from research to portfolio construction to execution — with no hand-waving. All of his books are worth reading.
Trend Following
Michael Covel
A philosophy book, not a strategy book. Covel builds the case for trend following through historical evidence and trader interviews. Think of it as the 'why' without the 'how.' Essential reading to build the conviction and mindset needed before diving into the technical implementation.
Stocks on the Move
Andreas Clenow
A proper strategy book on systematic momentum — specific rules, backtests, and implementation details. Clenow does not just give you a strategy; he teaches you how to think about building robust systems. One of the few books that genuinely bridges theory and practice.
Following the Trend
Andreas Clenow
A complete trend following strategy benchmarked against the best hedge funds in the space. Teaches you how to think systematically and how to behave when the inevitable drawdowns come. Transparent, rigorous, and accessible without dumbing anything down.
Quantitative Trading
Ernest Chan
The book that hooked me on systematic trading. Chan demystifies algorithmic strategies and makes them accessible without requiring millions in capital. Covers mean reversion, momentum, and pairs trading with actual code. A perfect starting point for anyone serious about algo trading.
Algorithmic Trading
Ernest Chan
Chan's second book goes deeper into practical implementation — risk management, execution, and the pitfalls that destroy retail algo traders. Teaches you to be critical of backtests and avoid overfitting. The natural progression after Quantitative Trading.
Trading Volatility
Bennett McDowell
Excellent content on VIX trading, variance swaps, and options strategies — but not a light read. You have to work through it multiple times. If you are serious about volatility as an asset class, this is essential. Assumes solid options knowledge going in.
The Options Hedge Fund
Dennis Chen & Mark Sebastian
One of my first options reads and it completely reframed how I think about the space. The way they combine portfolio management with options selling — acting as a systematic insurer in the market — gave me a different lens on generating income while managing tail risk.
Iron Condors
Mark Wolfinger
Focused and clear. Wolfinger breaks down Greeks, adjustment techniques, and when condors work versus when they do not. Light read, perfect for beginners wanting to understand this specific strategy before moving to more complex volatility approaches.
Buy the Fear, Sell the Greed
Larry Connors
Behavioral-based strategies to spark ideas. Most need updating for current markets, but the concepts behind them remain valid. Connors is excellent at identifying patterns rooted in fear and greed. Use this for inspiration and adaptation, not as a cookbook.
Street Smarts
Linda Raschke
A practical summary of trading setups from a legendary trader. Great for generating ideas to test. The risk management principles are timeless, and her ADX and Bollinger Band strategies are particularly interesting for understanding how discretionary traders approach structure.
Quantitative Momentum
Wesley Gray
Full transparency on the strategy they actually run in their fund. Starts with the benefits of systematic investing, walks through rigorous academic research, and debunks momentum myths to show what actually drives returns. The quality-momentum framework is excellent.
Dual Momentum
Gary Antonacci
One of my cornerstones. The combination of absolute and relative momentum is elegant in its simplicity. Antonacci shows convincingly why buy-and-hold is suboptimal and how a simple rules-based approach can enhance returns while reducing risk. Backtests going back to the 1970s are compelling.
Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard
Mark Minervini
A detailed, step-by-step breakdown of Minervini's SEPA methodology — stage 2 breakouts with strong fundamentals and tight risk management. More discretionary than purely systematic, but highly actionable. A must-read if you resonated with his chapter in Market Wizards.
Risk Management
Antifragile
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Beyond risk management — a philosophy for building systems that gain from disorder. Position yourself to benefit from volatility, not just survive it. The barbell strategy for portfolio construction came from this. Mind-expanding and applies everywhere.
The Most Important Thing
Howard Marks
Risk is not volatility. Marks redefines risk in a way that actually makes sense for long-term investors.
The Black Swan
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb changed the paradigm on risk. The worst outcomes are unknown and unpredictable — and we should be positioned for them regardless. The concept of Black Swans is now mainstream, but this book originated it. Essential for understanding tail risk and why most risk models fail.
Market Stories
The Man Who Solved the Market
Gregory Zuckerman
The history of Jim Simons and Renaissance Technologies — the most remarkable hedge fund ever built. Inspiring and humbling at the same time. Shows what is possible with data, discipline, and genuine intellectual rigor.
The Turtle Traders
Michael Covel
The story of Richard Dennis and William Eckhardt's legendary experiment — taking ordinary people and making them successful traders by teaching them a system. Proves that trading can be learned. Also shows that even with identical rules, results differ based on psychology and discipline.
Confidence Game
Christine S. Richard
Bill Ackman's battle against MBIA during the financial crisis — a story of conviction, research, and near-ruin. A lesson in the difference between being right and being right at the right time. Fascinating look at activist investing and how markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
The Trading Game
Gary Stevenson
A working-class kid becomes the top trader at Citibank. Raw, honest, and eye-opening about how finance really works at big institutions — the politics, the incentives, the disconnect from reality. Very different from the typical trading memoir.
A Man for All Markets
Ed Thorp
My favorite book. Ed Thorp beat the casinos, then beat Wall Street. He invented card counting, built the first wearable computer, and applied quantitative methods to markets before anyone else — even deriving Black-Scholes before it was published. Proof that markets can be beaten with intelligence and discipline.
My Life as a Quant
Emanuel Derman
An honest and somewhat melancholy history of one of the minds behind modern financial models. Derman is candid about the disappointments and compromises of academia and Wall Street. Shows the gap between elegant theories and messy market realities.
Market Wizards
Jack Schwager
The entire series is essential reading. Trading legends with completely different methods all share one thing: discipline, risk management, and conviction. The key lesson is that there is no single path to success — finding what works for your personality matters more than copying anyone else.
The Fund
Rob Copeland
The other side of the Ray Dalio story. Radical transparency sounds great in Principles, but Copeland's investigation reveals the darker reality inside Bridgewater. A necessary counterbalance to the official narrative. Shows that even genius investors can create deeply dysfunctional cultures.
General Finance
Sports & Performance
Value Investing
The Intelligent Investor
Benjamin Graham
The classic. Written decades ago but still deeply relevant. Graham's Mr. Market concept is brilliant for understanding market psychology, and the chapters on margin of safety are timeless. Even if you are not a value investor, the principles around risk and independent thinking are essential.
Security Analysis
Benjamin Graham
The textbook that value investing is built on. Dense and academic, but if you want to understand valuation at a deep level, this is the source. Some numbers and concepts have evolved, but the core principles remain as valid as ever.
The Essays of Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett
A compilation of Buffett's shareholder letters — a concentrated dose of wisdom from the greatest investor. His philosophy of buying great businesses at fair prices is explained with unmatched clarity. You will learn about business analysis, management quality, and long-term thinking.
Poor Charlie's Almanack
Charlie Munger
A must-read. Munger's multidisciplinary approach — his latticework of mental models — is something everyone in finance should internalize. Covers far more than investing. It is about how to think clearly, make better decisions, and live well. RIP to a legend.
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
Philip Fisher
Recommended by Buffett himself. Fisher pioneered growth investing combined with quality — buying exceptional companies and holding them for decades. His scuttlebutt research method remains brilliant. A different lens from Graham's pure value approach, and one Buffett famously synthesized.
You Can Be a Stock Market Genius
Joel Greenblatt
Do not let the title fool you — this is a sophisticated book. Greenblatt focuses on special situations: spinoffs, mergers, bankruptcies, restructurings — where inefficiencies create real opportunities. The examples are dated but the framework for finding mispriced assets is timeless.
The Little Book That Beats the Market
Joel Greenblatt
Greenblatt's Magic Formula — two factors, quality and value, systematically applied. The historical results are compelling. Crowding has reduced the edge, but it remains an excellent framework for generating ideas. Shows that you do not need complexity to beat the market.
Margin of Safety
Seth Klarman
The bible of value investing after Graham. Klarman's risk perspective is invaluable — always ask what can go wrong before asking how much you can make. Out of print and rare, but worth finding. His contrarian approach and focus on absolute returns over benchmarks is refreshing.
Psychology & Behaviour
Fooled by Randomness
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Everything has more randomness than we think. Taleb destroys the narrative fallacy — our compulsive need to explain random outcomes with stories. The concept of alternative histories is powerful for evaluating risk honestly. Humbling and perspective-shifting.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
A masterpiece on how our minds work. The System 1 vs. System 2 framework is fundamental for understanding why we make bad decisions in markets and life. After reading this, you start recognizing your own cognitive biases in real time. Dense but worth every page.
Predictably Irrational
Dan Ariely
We are not just irrational — we are predictably irrational in specific, repeatable ways. Ariely proves this through clever experiments and shows how it maps to market behavior. Very accessible while being genuinely educational. Once you know the patterns, you can work around them.
What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars
Jim Paul & Brendan Moynihan
Criminally underrated. Teaches risk management and trading psychology through a story of spectacular failure. The key insight: all winning strategies are different, but all losing strategies are the same — no risk management, ego, hope. More valuable than 99% of books about winning.
Mindset
Think and Grow Rich
Napoleon Hill
More philosophy than finance. The concept of definiteness of purpose and the importance of a clear goal and persistent mindset is timeless. Some parts feel dated, but the core message on clarity, persistence, and mental framing is worth reading once.
The Millionaire Next Door
Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko
Real millionaires are not who you think. The research showing that high-income professionals often have low net worth while small business owners accumulate wealth quietly is eye-opening. Changes how you think about consumption versus accumulation.
The Richest Man in Babylon
George S. Clason
Wealth-building wisdom told through ancient parables. Pay yourself first, live below your means, make your money work for you. Quick and easy, but a useful reminder of the fundamentals when you get lost in complexity.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Naval Ravikant
One of my favorites. Naval's thinking on specific knowledge, leverage, and building assets that earn while you sleep is brilliant. The sections on happiness and meaning are as valuable as the wealth-building parts. Every page has something worth pausing on.
Classic
One Up on Wall Street
Peter Lynch
Lynch explains markets with a clarity that makes investing feel accessible rather than mystical. His philosophy — invest in what you know, do your homework, think long-term — still holds. The idea that regular people can spot opportunities before Wall Street is genuinely empowering.
Beating the Street
Peter Lynch
Not as strong as One Up on Wall Street, but valuable for seeing Lynch's process applied to real situations. He is honest about his misses as well as his wins. A worthwhile follow-up for anyone who resonated with his first book.
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
John Bogle
Bogle's case for low-cost index funds is backed by data and hard to argue with. Even if you choose active investing, you should understand this perspective. The math on fees compounding against you over decades is sobering. His message: do not try to beat the market — be the market.
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
Edwin Lefèvre
Written in 1923 and it could have been written yesterday. The fictionalized biography of Jesse Livermore captures market psychology with a clarity that has never aged. Patience, cutting losses, letting winners run — timeless lessons told through one of the most fascinating trading stories ever written.