(Part 3) Top products from r/finance

The absolute best resources that I have found for integrating finance with Excel are the books by Simon Benninga. I really wish that they would have taught using his books in school (nearly all of the work I do is Excel based). They can be a little pricey, but I have found that they are more than worth the cost. If you are an absolute beginner and not completely comfortable with beginner financial concepts (or how to implement them in Excel), start out with his Principles of Finance with Excel. If you have a fairly solid grasp of basic financial concepts his book Financial Modeling is a probably the best resource that I have found for building a solid foundation in Excel. One caveat is that the Financial Modeling book is that it is written for pre-Office 2007, so you may have to make some minor adjustments to some of his formulas in newer version of Office.

For more advanced concepts, I have really found the Bionic Turtle channel on YouTube pretty usefull.

Good Luck!

first: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre

Next:
Whichever version of http://www.amazon.ca/Security-Analysis-Foreword-Warren-Buffett/dp/0071592539/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374797721&sr=8-1&keywords=security+analysis

Liar's poker is interesting. Skip wealth of nations in my opinion. I like it, but there are more pressing things to read.

Next, I'd say read this "Options, Futures and Other Derivatives by John C. Hull'


Read Brett Steenbarger's books on managing yourself (enhancing trader performance, and other)

Check out Jeff Augen books on options trading.

next: Trading in the Zone : Maximizing Performance with Focus and Discipline by Ari Kiev


>>>Most importantly, read on different topics.<<<

Read anything by Fabozzi fixed income, mortgages

I had a few in mind, but this was a great help to me: GS summer reading list has great titles: https://www.quantnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Goldman-Sachs-Suggested-Reading-List.pdf

Graham, Bill Gross, John Train, Peter Lynch

I really liked The Predators’ Ball and Den of Thieves


Also, consider spending some money and getting one of these courses: http://www.wallstreetprep.com/programs/ (I'm not affiliated with them, but when they were starting out, I got one of the programs on discount, didn't fully persue it, but I found presentations to be very helpful on valuations and LBO introduction.. I imagine they got even better overtime)

It's been a while since I interviewed, and some more specific information about the role would be helpful. But as general advice, you should do the exercises in Programming Pearls, and not as good but still helpful Programming Interviews Exposed. Project Euler also has good programming finger exercises.

If you need to write code on a white board practice that specifically.

Mic/Mac 201/202? :P

As someone else recommended, Mankiw's Macroeconomics is a pretty standard intermediate text.

For micro, I used [Pindyck and Rubinfeld's Microeconomics] (http://www.amazon.com/Microeconomics-7th-Edition-Robert-Pindyck/dp/0132080230/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377288113&sr=8-1&keywords=microeconomics+rubenfield) for my intermediate text.

Both are decent, but there are many others out there that will suffice. Check Abe books or Amazon for used, older versions.

I stand behind using a textbook, though. We grow up hating them, but going back and reading them when it isn't required if insightful. They are more enjoyable and well written then I ever remember.

I'm not familiar with it. However you might be interested in Lords of Finance. That's a history book about the economics and the central bankers of the Great Depression. It wasn't written with the current crisis in mind, but it covers what happened last time a similar situation arose, and the consequences of the decisions the central banks made. My guess is that after reading that, you're going to be as well informed as most economists. Also it's a very good read!

The benefit is the american consumer. It was all explained in this book https://www.amazon.com/Choice-Fable-Free-Trade-Protection/dp/0131433547

It said that the consumer would benefit even if just your own country dropped trade barriers. This concept is also taught in entry level economics courses.

Empire of wealth http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Wealth-History-American-Economic/dp/0060505125/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373551972&sr=8-1&keywords=empire+of+wealth

50 years in wall street
http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Years-Wall-Street-Part/dp/054813443X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373552186&sr=1-4&keywords=50+years+in+wall+street


http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Years-Wall-Street-Part/dp/0548134448/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373552186&sr=1-5&keywords=50+years+in+wall+street

If you're interested in derivatives there's always the holy grail, Options, Futures and Other Derivatives (Hull)

I mean this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0262027283/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile

Between Benninga, and Hulls "Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives" one should be able to get enough modeling, concept and theory down to be a competent analyst.

Go read the The Volatility Machine by Michael Pettis along with his blog which is also very useful.

He tends to primarily write about the Chinese capital markets but naturally there is going to be a lot of overlap between that and the US dollar as the reserve currency.

Fooled by Randomness

The Black Swan

Predictably Irrational

There is the Fed's structure book, this can help: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pdf/pf_complete.pdf

Alan Blinder has a short practical book about central banking in general.
http://www.amazon.com/Central-Banking-Practice-Robbins-Lectures/dp/0262522608/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1425423155&sr=8-5&keywords=alan+blinder

The Bible of Options Strategies: The Definitive Guide for Practical Trading Strategies

This might be a bit too in-depth, but I learned a lot from this book: The Complete Guide to Capital Markets for Quantitative Professionals.

What I learned losing a million dollars

I’d recommend reading about the Kelly criteria, too.

Some lesser known titles:

• The Fed and Lehman Brothers: Setting the Record Straight on a Financial Disaster, by Laurence M. Ball [Discusses why Lehman was singled out to fail]
  
• Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts, and Bailouts at Citi, by James Freeman [Tell-all about the bank and how the institution relied on well-placed friends in the US government and its role in the 2008 recession]
  
• The Bank That Lived a Little: Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market, by Philip Augar [The rise of Barclays and how it almost rescued Lehman]
  
• Damaged Goods: The Inside Story of Sir Philip Green, the Collapse of BHS and the Death of the High Street, by Oliver Shah [Goes over the plummet British Home Stores' pension funds in 2009]
  
• Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, by Adam Tooze [Starts with Lehman's failure and connects the dots to the current economy, including Putin, Brexit, and Trump]

Diary of a Very Bad Year

Identifying a "biggest single factor" is tricky. It depends on who you ask:

Alan Blinder would say it was under-regulation.

John Taylor blames the Fed for keeping interests rates too low for too long.

Mian and Sufi think it's because households took out too much debt.

Viral Acharya and co-authors think that Fannie and Freddie were allowed to grow too big and implicitly guarantee too many loans.

Gorton and Metrick would point out that the under-regulation of the shadow banking, in particular, played an outsized role in the crisis.

And, obviously, democrats did it unless you're more inclined to believe that the republicans did it