Finance

A highly subjective selection of books related to finance. Amazon links are not referrals, it is just a convenient database to refer to. I have omitted 'standard textbooks’ as everyone has their favourites, so the below are (almost) all easy reading, i.e. no equations.

Broadly chronological and progressive in complexity of financial instruments

• Liar's Poker (Lewis, Equities and fixed income in the 80's)

• Den of Thieves (Stewart, Michael Milken and junk bonds in the 80's)

• Barbarians at the Gate (Burrough and Heylar, LBO's in the 80's)

• FIASCO (Partnoy, Derivatives in the 90's)

• When Genius Failed (Lowenstein, Long Term Capital Management, quant traders from Liar's Poker)

• Smartest Guys in the Room (McLean and Elkind, Enron)

Traditional investment banking

• Accidental Investment Banker (Knee, M&A)

Big picture

• Too Big To Fail (Sorkin, The credit crunch)

• Infectious Greed (Partnoy, Structured finance from the 80's - 00's)

• Treasure Islands (Shaxson, Tax havens)

• Against The Odds (Bernstein, Risk through history)

• Fooled by Randomness (Taleb, Chance vs skill)

Quantitative trading

• Dark Pools (Patterson, Systematic trading)

• The Quants (Patterson, Maths and mathematicians in finance)

• More Money than God (Mallaby, Mostly background on the managers themselves)

Trading

• Option Volatility and Pricing (Natenberg, Options and volatility)

• Dynamic Hedging (Taleb, Options and hedging)

• All About High Frequency Trading (Chan, HFT)