Adam Nash may be the CEO of a $700 million company, but he’s also become something of a personal finance guru.
Nash became the managing director of online investment platform Wealthfront in January 2014 after a career that included stints at Apple, eBay and LinkedIn. He presented his “Personal Finance for Engineers” presentation throughout Silicon Valley to employees of companies such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Dropbox.
Nash is also a reader and, according to Business Internhas a list of nine personal finance books that would be helpful to any entrepreneur or small business owner looking to improve their finances.
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Here are Nash’s best personal finance books:
1. The Wall Street Journal’s Guide to Understanding Money and Investing by Kenneth Morris and Virginia Morris
First written in 1999 and revised in 2004, this book is an introductory guide to the world of finance that aims to use everyday language to understand jargon and explain financial concepts, including buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures and options. The book also offers a guide to spotting financial trends and evaluating the financial performance of companies.
2. The millionaire next door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko
Stanley and Danko’s book was also written a while ago, but its lessons on why some people get rich and some don’t are still valuable. The authors studied many millionaires in the United States, comparing the behavior of individuals who are “sub-accumulators of wealth”, those who have low net worth relative to their income, and those who are “prodigious accumulators of wealth”, or whose wealth accumulation is high relative to their age and income.
3. A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel
Burton Malkiel is an economist from Princeton University and his 1973 book popularized the “random walk” hypothesis of investing. According to Malkiel, asset prices typically exhibit a random walk, and therefore average investors generally cannot choose stocks that will outperform market averages.
4. The Trials of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffet and Lawrence Cunningham
The quality of Warren Buffett’s investment advice is well documented and this book is a collection of some of the Oracle of Omaha’s best writings on topics such as corporate governance, corporate finance and investing. , common stocks, mergers and acquisitions, accounting and taxation.
5. Common Stock and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher
Fisher’s guide to investing has remained in print since it was first published in 1958. An advocate of long-term investing – Fisher’s most famous investment was Motorola stock which he bought in 1955 and owned until his death in 2004 – Fisher’s investment philosophy was based on buying big companies at reasonable prices and selling a stock “hardly ever”.
6. The smart investor by Benjamin Graham and Jason Zweig
Benjamin Graham began teaching value investing at Columbia Business School in 1928 and the first edition of The smart investor was published in 1949. This approach to investing is based on prioritizing the actual performance of stocks, rather than daily market fluctuations.
7. Devil Take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor
The subtitle of Devil Take the Hindmost is “A History of Financial Speculation” and Chancellor takes the reader through a plotted history of the evolution of market speculation from 17th century Holland to Internet-fueled speculation and foreign currencies of the 1990s.
8. When genius failed by Roger Lowenstein
When genius failed is an unauthorized case study of the creation, success and then spectacular collapse and bailout of the American hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management. All of this happened in just five years, with Long-Term Capital Management going from a fund that managed over $100 billion in assets to a fund that needed a bailout from the Federal Reserve. Bank of New York.
9. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L Bernstein
Bernstein’s book is all about risk, both financial and otherwise. From the scientists and amateurs who discovered the notion of risk, against the gods examines concepts such as probability, uncertainty, the difference between chance and skill, how investing and gambling interact, and rational decision-making versus irrational decision-making.