2020 Wall Street Reading List

Two Wall Street Journal reporters trace how Mohammed bin Salman went from a little-known prince to the ruler of Saudi Arabia's economy, its oil company and its sovereign wealth fund. The story of Vision 2030, the Aramco listing, the Ritz-Carlton detentions and the Khashoggi killing, and of the bankers, consultants and investors who courted him.

Two financial historians from Queen's University Belfast test one simple model, the bubble triangle, against three centuries of manias, from the South Sea scheme of 1720 to China's 2015 stock market. The result is a rigorous, readable guide to what bubbles need in order to form, why some wreck economies while others leave useful things behind, and what to watch for.

The story of Navinder Singh Sarao, a West London trader who made tens of millions of dollars from his parents' house by spoofing the E-mini S&P 500 futures market, and who US prosecutors later linked to the crash of May 6, 2010. Bloomberg's Liam Vaughan uses the case to explain how electronic markets, high-frequency traders and regulators actually work.

Bloomberg reporter Sarah Frier tells how Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger built Instagram, sold it to Facebook for $1 billion when it had 13 employees, and then lost a long struggle with Mark Zuckerberg over its independence. Winner of the 2020 FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year, and arguably the best case study of a big tech acquisition.

Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings and INSEAD professor Erin Meyer lay out the operating system behind the company: hire and pay for top talent, demand constant candor, then strip away controls such as vacation and expense approvals. A first-hand guide to how culture, not process, let Netflix move from mailing DVDs to streaming to producing its own shows.

Twenty short essays arguing that how you behave with money matters more than how much you know. Housel uses stories of janitors who died rich and executives who went broke to show how luck, risk, patience and the urge to keep up with others decide most financial outcomes, and why staying wealthy is a different skill from getting wealthy.

Oxford economist Daniel Susskind argues that this time the machines really may leave too little paid work to go around, and that the hard problem will be sharing out prosperity rather than producing it. Written before ChatGPT, it is a clear economic framework for thinking about automation, labor's share of income and the tax and welfare policies that may follow.

Piketty's sequel to Capital in the Twenty-First Century argues that inequality is a political choice, not an economic law. Across a thousand-plus pages he traces how societies from medieval Europe and India to colonial empires and modern democracies justified their distribution of wealth, then proposes steep wealth taxes, a capital grant for every young adult and worker power on corporate boards.

New York Times business investigations editor David Enrich traces how Deutsche Bank's push to become a Wall Street power produced two decades of scandal, from Libor rigging and Russian mirror trades to more than $2 billion in loans to Donald Trump. It is a case study in what happens when a bank's growth outruns its controls.

A history of the South Sea Bubble of 1720 that starts with Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley, not with the crash. Levenson shows how the quantitative thinking of the Scientific Revolution gave Britain the tools of modern finance, from life tables to tradable government debt, and how the same tools fed one of history's great frauds before they made the country rich.

A Harvard Business School professor argues that the doctrine of maximizing shareholder value cannot cope with climate change and inequality, and lays out five ways business can change course: shared value, purpose-led firms, new financial metrics, industry cooperation and support for democratic institutions. Useful for anyone weighing ESG claims or long-term capital allocation.

The most widely read case for Modern Monetary Theory, written by its best-known advocate. Stephanie Kelton argues that a country that issues its own currency cannot run out of money, so inflation rather than the size of the debt is the real limit on spending. Anyone who prices Treasuries, trades rates or argues about fiscal policy should know the argument firsthand.

The former Honeywell chief executive explains how he hit quarterly numbers while still funding the investments that paid off years later. Cote's case against short-termism comes from running a large industrial company through a turnaround and the 2008-09 recession, which makes it useful for investors judging how management allocates money and effort.

Gotham Capital founder Joel Greenblatt turns from stock picking to public policy, proposing practical fixes for schools, low wages, immigration, bank regulation and retirement saving. It is a short, opinionated policy book, not an investing manual, and it shows how a value investor reasons about costs, incentives and returns when the asset is a country.

Harvard historian Jill Lepore recovers the story of Simulmatics, a Cold War startup that tried to predict and steer human behavior with computer models, from John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign to the Vietnam War. A history of the first big bet on behavioral data, and a warning about how often its promise outran its results.

A psychologist who barely knew the rules of poker talks Hall of Famer Erik Seidel into coaching her and, within a couple of years, wins a major tournament title. Maria Konnikova's memoir uses that apprenticeship to explore luck, skill and decision-making under uncertainty, the same problems every trader and portfolio manager faces.

Klein and Pettis argue that trade conflicts are not fights between countries but the result of domestic choices that hold down workers' incomes in surplus economies such as China and Germany, pushing excess savings abroad and leaving deficit countries, above all the United States, with debt and lost factory jobs. A core text on global imbalances, capital flows and the dollar.

The textbook version of Columbia Business School's value investing course, rewritten for its second edition. Bruce Greenwald and his co-authors show how to find mispriced stocks, value them from assets, earnings power and franchise economics, and control risk, then profile Buffett, Klarman, Schloss and other practitioners who apply the method.

Two Princeton economists, one of them a Nobel laureate, show that suicide, drug overdose and alcoholic liver disease have pushed down American life expectancy, especially among white adults without a college degree. They lay the blame on a health-care system that drains wages and an economy that shifts power from workers to capital and corporations.