Recommended Reading

Today, a wealth of publications on topics such as financial planning, the markets and economy, self improvement, and more are available to individuals. As an avid reader and client advocate, Randy has compiled a selection of books he feels clients may find particularly useful.

Investments and Investing

The Intelligent Investor
A book of Practical Counsel by Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett (designer). Since its first publication in 1949, The Intelligent Investor has been one of the all-time most important and influential guides to investing. As a basic guide to establishing a rational investment framework, the book's insights are as sound and useful as ever. The Intelligent Investor is still widely considered one of the best introductions to investing available. Graham has proven to be one of the most successful and influential investment gurus ever, and his work has guided some of today's most successful businesspeople.

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Personal Finance
Kenneth M. Morris, Alan M. Siegel (Contributor)

Personal Finance for Dummies
Eric Tyson
Here is expert and trustworthy advice that cuts through the jungle of statistic complexity to show listeners how to make easy work of their own finances, no matter what their income level.

Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Next Generation
David N. Dreman
Dreman is the king of the contrarians. With original research, Dreman has come up with some startling results, which he lays out in great detail in his book. I won't go through all the calculations, but he demonstrates that, when you take inflation and taxes into account over a 15-year horizon, bond returns are actually negative – while those for a diversified stock portfolio are strongly positive. So get the book, and get the stocks.

Stocks for the Long Run : The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns and Long-Term Investment Strategies
Jeremy J. Seigel
James K. Glassman of The Washington Post called Stocks for the Long Run "one of the 10 best investment books of all time" and Forbes called it "a simply great book." Stocks remains the classic, step-by-step guide to building a portfolio of both domestic and foreign stocks that maximizes your return while minimizing your risk. With valuable information, thought-provoking research and lucid, entertaining prose, Jeremy Siegel invites all investors to build wealth the historically proven way – in the stock market. Barron's praised Siegel by declaring that Stocks "should command a central place on the desk of any 'amateur investor' or beginning professional."

Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds
Charles MacKay, Andrew Tobias
A complete repackaging of the classic work about grand-scale madness, major schemes, and bamboozlement--and the universal human susceptibility to all three. This informative, funny collection encompasses a broad range of manias and deceptions, from witch burnings to the Great Crusades to the prophecies of Nostradamus.

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings
Philip A. Fisher
Fisher is widely acknowledged as one of the pioneers of modern investment theory, and his philosophies continue to be regarded as gospel by today's investors. This classic investment book, first published in 1958, fascinates investors because it enables them to discern the origins of some of today's most popular investment philosophies.

Options As a Strategic Investor
Lawrence G. McMillan
This blockbuster bestseller – more than 100,000 copies sold – is considered to be the bible of options trading. Now completely revised and updated to encompass all the latest options trading vehicles, it supplies traders and serious investors with an abundance of new, strategic opportunities for managing their investments. Examples make clear the power of each strategy in carefully defined market condition.

The Wall Street Guide to Understanding Money & Investing
Kenneth M. Morris, et al.
The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money & Investing initiates you into the mysteries of the financial pages – buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures and options, spotting trends and evaluating companies. For those who are curious but intimidated by everyday financial jargon, this guide offers a literate, forthright and lively alternative.

Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Mutual Investor
John C. Bogle
Bogle's vision of the mutual fund industry and mutual fund investing is elucidated clearly, including the benefits of simplicity in investing, the level of consistent profits to be made from index funds, the importance of low costs to investment profits, and the place of bonds in the investment portfolio.

Markets and the Economy

It’s Not As Bad As You Think
by Brian Wesbury

On the Profession of Management
Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, is on the cover of Forbes magazine this week. His book, On the Profession of Management, which was published earlier this year, is a collection of 13 of his best articles that have appeared in the Harvard Business Review over the last 30 years.

The Essays of Warren Buffet
A thematically organized collection of Warren Buffett's letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, selected, arranged and introduced by Professor Lawrence Cunningham.

The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market
George Soros
Soros reveals the investment strategies that have made him the most powerful and profitable investor in the world today. He provides an excellent guide of the marketplace, along with the specific economic and political history of recent times.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street: Including a Life-Cycle Guide to Personal Investing
Burton Gordon Malkiel
An unconventional guide to investing in Wall Street tells how to put together a broad portfolio of stocks through sidestepping the experts and how to rate the potential of a stock, bond, money market fund, or other investment.

Corporate Finance

Complete Finance Companion
The Wharton School
There are always books around to tell you how to turn your company into a truly successful venture. The trick is to find on that really works. The Complete Finance Companion ($39.95, Financial Times Pitman Publishing) is, by far, one of the most impressive I've seen in a long time. It's subtitled "The Latest in Financial Principles and Practice from the World's Best Finance Schools," and draws upon the accumulated wisdom of The Wharton School, The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and the London Business School.

Corporate Finance
Stephen A. Ross, et al.
"As an MBA student I found this one of the best books presented in the program. A truly clear, concise and student friendly book."

Getting It Right
Robert J. Barro
A collection of essays based on Barro's (economics, Harvard U.) contributions to The Wall Street Journal arguing the libertarian economic stand of property rights and free markets and identifying the areas of government interference that hinder or help economic growth.

Devil Take the Hindmost
Edward Chancellor
The book is worth reading ... in part because it is enjoyable to read of other people's folly, not to mention their avarice and stupidity. And Mr. Chancellor tells the tales well.

The Edge of Chaos
Bernice Cohen
Spanning two centuries and across three continents (Europe, America and Asia), the author provides a fascinating history on some famous and not so famous financial events. Beginning with the 1720s Mississippi and South Sea Companies to the great global crashes of 1929 and 1987, Bernice Cohen provides us with a strategy for tracking market trends and cycles, and protecting our investments against the next financial crash.

Personal Development

Body For Life
Bill Phillips
"Bill Phillips had been publishing bodybuilding magazines and marketing nutritional supplements for years when he had a weird revelation at a trade show: many of the most loyal and enthusiastic readers he had were totally out of shape. From that uncomfortable realization came his popular Physique Transformation Contest (top prize that first year: Phillips's own Lamborghini), now world famous, and this book.

Ageless Body, Timeless Mind
Deepak Chopra
There is nothing inevitable about aging – that is the inspiring message from Dr. Deepak Chopra. "Once again Dr. Chopra presents us with information that can help us live long, healthy lives. For all those interested in a long, full life, this book is a valuable resource." – Bernie Siegel, M.D.

Quantum Healing
Deepak Chopra
Quantum Healing shines with the mystery, wonder and hope of "miraculous" recoveries from cancer and other serious illnesses. Dr. Chopra brings together the most recent research on this topic from Western medicine and the Ayuervedic medical tradition.

8 Weeks To Optimum Health
Andrew Weil
Dr. Andrew Weil translates the brilliant insights and discoveries he outlined in his bestselling book "Spontaneous Healing" into a week-by-week, step-by-step program for enhancing and protecting present and lifelong health. The subject of an eight-part PBS-TV series.

Power Sleep
James B. Maas
A revolutionary and powerful approach to success in the workplace. Jim Maas's guide will help you achieve peak performance when everyone else is asleep at the switch.

Organizing from the Inside Out
Julie Morgenstern
Julie Morgenstern, founder of Task Masters, offers a three-step organizing system that can be applied to any space or situation. The plan is tailored to each individual's psychological needs and ensures, once and for all, a strategy that won't break down. 20 photos.

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff — And It's All Small Stuff
Richard Carlson
From the co-author of the bestselling Handbook of the Soul comes a collection of short essays on attaining peace of mind by learning to let go of small aggravations.

Don't Sweat The Small Stuff With Your Family
Richard Carlson
From the author of the number one New York Times breakout bestsellers Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... And It's All Small Stuff and Don't Worry, Make Money comes Don't Sweat the Small Stuff with Your Family. It's an audiobook filled with appealing strategies for achieving a worry-free home life.