A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation
Why do markets keep crashing and why are financial crises greater than ever before? As the risk manager to some of the leading firms on Wall Street–from Morgan Stanley to Salomon and Citigroup–and a member of some of the world’s largest hedge funds, from Moore Capital to Ziff Brothers and FrontPoint Partners, Rick Bookstaber has seen the ghost inside the machine and vividly shows us a world that is even riskier than we think. The very things done to make markets safer, have, in fact, created a world that is far more dangerous. From the 1987 crash to Citigroup closing the Salomon Arb unit, from staggering losses at UBS to the demise of Long-Term Capital Management, Bookstaber gives readers a front row seat to the management decisions made by some of the most powerful financial figures in the world that led to catastrophe, and describes the impact of his own activities on markets and market crashes. Much of the innovation of the last 30 years has wreaked havoc on the markets and cost trillions of dollars. A Demon of Our Own Design tells the story of man’s attempt to manage market risk and what it has wrought. In the process of showing what we have done, Bookstaber shines a light on what the future holds for a world where capital and power have moved from Wall Street institutions to elite and highly leveraged hedge funds.

The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm
Though business professors Bruner and Carr approach their subject, the spectacular financial crisis that gave America the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, with grave pedantry, they devote the majority of the book to the more colorful events and personalities of the crisis, which even academic prose cannot dull. The chronicle follows one speculator's attempt to corner the copper market, which leads to panic, the failure of banks and trusts and the impending bankruptcy of New York City. In the midst of chaos, one man was able to halt the domino effect with calm, character and capital: J. Pierpont Morgan. The Panic, the authors note, hit America at a moment eerily similar to our own: coming off 50 years of postwar economic expansion with a Republican "moralist" in the White House, an increasingly interventionist government, the formation of enormous new corporate conglomerates and a muckraking news media fueling resentment.

The Complete Guide to Day Trading: A Practical Manual From a Professional Day Trading Coach
Do you want to be a day trader? Every day, millions of dollars change hands in the markets, presenting the perfect opportunity for people just like you to make significant money and profits through the art of day trading. But here's the question: is day trading right for you? And, if it is, how do you get started? In his new three-part guide, professional day trading coach Markus Heitkoetter lays out a simple, proven system for trading success. From the basic essentials of trading to the actual process of making money in the markets, he'll cover it all. Loaded with easy-to-use information, proven and reliable strategies and guidelines, and a practical hands-on approach to the industry, The Complete Guide to Day Trading is your own personal manual to success in the markets.

Making Big Money Investing In Foreclosures Without Cash or Credit
In this thoroughly updated guide, bestselling author Peter Conti shows real estate investors how to: -Understand the concepts involved in investing in foreclosures -Find a motivated seller -Structure the deals, including how to buy with little or nothing down -Negotiate with sellers in foreclosure, including how to overcome obstacles and close deals -Avoid costly contract pitfalls -Hold on to newly acquired properties and grow a portfolio for long-term equity build-up. Peter Conti pulls all the pieces of the transaction together into a step-by-step action plan, so that investors can apply what they have learned and start making money.

Green Investing: A Guide to Making Money through Environment Friendly Stocks
You can make money and be socially responsible. In Green Investing, Jack Uldrich profiles 100 of the world's leading green companies and offers readers a model portfolio for investing in clean, sustainable products. This book offers: guidelines for smart investing, long- and short-term trends in green investing, the bullish and bearish aspects of each investment, and a sample portfolio of green stocks. If you want to save the planet and make money, Green Investing is the book for you.

Beating the Street
by Peter Lynch, John Rothchild
Beating the Street examines famed money manager Peter Lynch's common sense approach to the stock market and individual securities analysis. For both layman and expert, he provides clear insights into the seemingly complex task of making money in the stock market. Lynch, for those unfamiliar with the pantheon of investment gods, managed Fidelity's flagship Magellan fund for more than 20 years, compounding one of the most fantastic performance records ever.

Stock Patterns for Day Trading
Written by a professional full time stock trader who makes his living from short term trading in individual stocks, this book discloses, in detail, the strategies and methods he uses in his own trading, and provides invaluable advice to those who seek to profit from short term and intraday price swings.

How I Trade for a Living
Making a living trading from home is the dream of just about every trader and active investor. Gary Smith offers his simple trading strategy, without the complex indicators or heavy charts, that can be used by anyone anywhere to make a killing and earn a living.

Day Trading For Dummies
Want to succeed as a day trader? This plain-English guide shows you how day trading works, identifies the all-too-numerous pitfalls, and gives you a step-by-step action plan to get started. From classic and renegade strategies to the nitty-gritty daily practices, you'll see how to keep a cool head and manage risk while you buy and sell your positions. Discover how to: Set up your accounts and your office, plan and research trades, comply with regulatory issues, leverage limited capital, profit from price drops and make better portfolio decisions.

Technical Analysis of Stock Trends (7th Ed.)
The #1 all-time classic on analysis of bar charts. Many knowledgeable technicians consider this to be best book on chart patterns ever written! It is absolute MUST reading for any student of technical analysis. In addition to chart patterns themselves, explores the psychology that lies behind their evolution and resolution.

Street Smarts
This book was written by two expert traders who have teamed up to write a text that every serious trader should not be without. It is considered one of the best manuals on short term trading. This book is written for the active trader. It is a compilation of strategies that the two of them have been trading with for the last 15 years in both equities and futures.

Encyclopedia of Trading Strategies
The Encyclopedia of Trading Strategies is for traders who want to take the next step to consistently profitable trading. The authors--themselves seasoned veterans of the futures trading arena--pinpoint the trading methods and strategies that have been shown to produce market-beating returns. Their rigorous and systematic backtesting of each method, using the same sets of markets and analytic techniques, provides a scientific, system-based approach to system development...to help you assemble the trading system that will put you on the road to becoming a more consistently profitable trader.

Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom
The book is clearly written and makes generous use of practical examples and models. The principles he [Tharp] promotes for traders, if followed closely, can be applied to a wide group of investors. This book book gets directly to the heart of what it takes to be a successful trader.

Professional Stock Trading: System Design and Automation>
Learn the art and science of trading systems from professional speculators. The authors share powerful long and short trading strategies that span all time frames, including over one hundred annotated charts with commentary and rationale. The book contains a complete implementation of a professional trading platform, including dozens of TradeStation strategies, indicators, and functions. Further, advanced trading techniques such as pair trading and float trading are explained. These systems are integrated into a fully automated framework for position sizing and trade management. Finally, follow the authors as they track their stock selections throughout the week in real time.

Recommended Reading

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. Levitt has a knack for making that principle relevant to our daily lives, which could make this book a hit. Malcolm Gladwell blurbs that Levitt "has the most interesting mind in America." Click here for more details

Fortune's Formula : The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street
Fortune's Formula is a fascinating study of the connections between such seemingly unrelated topics as gambling, information theory, stock investing, and applied mathematics. The story involves the stunning brainpower of men such as MIT professor Claude Shannon, who single-handedly invented information theory, the science behind the Internet and all digital media; Ed Thorpe; and John Kelly of Bell Laboratories, who developed the "Kelly criterion," a now-legendary investment strategy for maximizing growth while controlling risk. Initially, Shannon and Thorpe took Kelly's theory to Las Vegas and applied it to roulette and blackjack. Later, they took it to Wall Street and cleaned up--Shannon made a personal fortune while Thorpe created the highly successful hedge firm Princeton-Newport Partners. They both discovered that Kelly's system was particularly effective when applied to arbitrage (minute price differences that result from market inefficiencies). As Poundstone ably demonstrates, the merits of Kelly's criterion are still hotly debated today. Click here for more details

Economic Facts and Fallacies
Economic Facts and Fallacies exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues-and does so in a lively manner and without requiring any prior knowledge of economics by the reader. These include many beliefs widely disseminated in the media and by politicians, such as mistaken ideas about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, as well as economics fallacies about academia, about race, and about Third World countries. One of the themes of Economic Facts and Fallacies is that fallacies are not simply crazy ideas but in fact have a certain plausibility that gives them their staying power-and makes careful examination of their flaws both necessary and important, as well as sometimes humorous. Written in the easy-to-follow style of the author’s Basic Economics, this latest book is able to go into greater depth, with real world examples, on specific issues. Click here for more details

One Up On Wall Street
Lynch, director of the Fidelity Magellan Fund, the nation's largest equity fund ($9 billion in assets), argues that average investors can beat Wall Street professionals by using the information that they encounter in their everyday lives. For example, Lynch invested in Hanes after his wife told him about the popularity of L'eggs pantyhose. Other winning stocks that average investors could have picked well before Wall Street became aware of them include LaQuinta motels, the Limited clothing store chain and Agency Rent-A-Car, note the authors. They advise readers to look for spectacular growth among companies that sound dull; do something disagreeable; are spinoffs; are buying back their own stock. They caution readers to avoid companies touted as the next IBM or Xerox; that are diversifying ("diworseifying"); that depend on a single customer. The book is also a primer on how the stock market works and is written in a light, entertaining style. Click here for more details

Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets
Superb book, exceptionally well written. Both the most comprehensive book on and a standard reference for technical analysis. Provides clear and lucid coverage of all major analytical techniques. Major emphasis on charting as a basis for price forecasting and trading. Click here for more details

The Amazing Life of Jesse Livermore: World's Greatest Stock Trader
Jesse Livermore is considered by many of todays top Wall Street traders as the greatest trader who ever lived. For the first time, in one book: his trading secrets, techniques and stock market methods are revealed. Livermore broke new ground in trading the market. Click here for more details

Dynamic Trading: Dynamic Concepts in Time, Price, and Pattern Analysis
Learn Dynamic Price Projection techniques and how to project well in advance the specific price zones for support, resistance and trend termination. Click here for more details

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
If you've ever spent weekends and nights puzzling over whether to buy, sell, or hold a position in whatever investment--be it stock, bonds, or pork bellies, you'll be glad that you read this book. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is full of lessons that are as relevant today as they were in 1923 when the book was first published. Click here for more details

The Trading Rule that Can Make You Rich
Discusses a simple but effective method for timing market entry, based on a technique used by the legendary W.D. Gann, who said of this method, You can make a fortune by following this one rule alone! Click here for more details

John Murphy on Chart Analysis
Renowned market technician John Murphy presents basic principals of technical analysis in easy-to-understand terms. Click here for more details

The Millionaire Next Door
How can you join the ranks of America's wealthy (defined as people whose net worth is over one million dollars)? It's easy, say doctors Stanley and Danko, who have spent the last 20 years interviewing members of this elite club: you just have to follow seven simple rules. The first rule is, always live well below your means. The last rule is, choose your occupation wisely. You'll have to buy the book to find out the other five. Click here for more details

Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
Personal-finance author and lecturer Robert Kiyosaki developed his unique economic perspective through exposure to a pair of disparate influences: his own highly educated but fiscally unstable father, and the multimillionaire eighth-grade dropout father of his closest friend. The lifelong monetary problems experienced by his "poor dad" (whose weekly paychecks, while respectable, were never quite sufficient to meet family needs) pounded home the counterpoint communicated by his "rich dad" (that "the poor and the middle class work for money," but "the rich have money work for them"). Click here for more details