Engle, Louis and Henry Hecht. How to Buy Stocks. Little, Brown and Company. [1994]. 
This classic stock primer was first published almost 50 years ago and, with its numerous updates, 
remains an excellent and highly-readable first book on investments. 

Harford, Tim. The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World.
New York: Random House. [2008].
The book's subtitle really describes it: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World. This
book addresses topics such as the economics of risky sex, divorce, racism and huge CEO
compensation.

Harford, Tim. The Undercover Economist. New York: Random House. [2007]
This book discusses applications to everyday life, public policy, business, etc.

Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. New York: Dell Publishing Company. [1955]. 
No, this book isn’t about WWII pilots. Read it and find out for yourself.

Lewis, Michael. Liar’s Poker. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. [1989]. 
A fun, comical and readable description of the author’s experiences and onservations as a trader 
with Salomon. 

Malkiel, Burton G. A Random Walk Down Wall Street. New York: W.W. Norton and
Company.  [1973]. 
This may be the single best book for those ready to start investing and those who think they are 
good at investing. It has been updated several times since 1973 and remains an outstanding and 
highly-readable book.

Nofsinger, John (2004): The Psychology of Investing, 2^nd ed., Prentice Hall. 
An easy to read, short and useful book concerning behavioral finance.

Thaler, Richard H. and Cass R. Sunstein. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth
and Happiness. New York: Penguin. [2009]
This book discusses the behavioral (sometimes seemingly irrational) aspects of how people
make important decisions and what governments can do to react to mistakes in the decision
making processes that plague most people.

Tobias, Andrew G. The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need: Expanded and
Updated.  Harvest Books. [1999].
An excellent, fairly comprehensive and highly readable primer on investing. An excellent book 
to start with. Maybe the only book that some investors will need. 

Wilmott Paul. Frequently Asked Questions in Quantitative Finance. Wiley [2009].

Ben-Horim, Moshe and Haim Levy. Statistics Decisions and Applications in Business and 
Economics, 2nd ed. New York: Random House Business Division. [1984]. 
Basic Business Statistics text with lots of nice finance examples. Perhaps the best elementary 
statistics book for undergraduate and MBA students concentrating in finance. 

Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, New York: John Wiley. 
[1996]. 
A very readable non-technical book describing the history of risk, risk management and 
gambling. 

Bernstein, Peter L. Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street. New York: 
Free Press. [1992]. 
This is a nice non-technical book which focuses on the academic minds and personalities of 
those responsible for creating tools and technique that prevail on Wall Street. 

Brealey, Richard A., Stewart C. Myers and Alan J. Marcus. Fundamentals of Corporate Finance, 
New York: McGraw-Hill. [1995]. 
One of the easiest and best introductory financial management textbooks. 

Brealey, Richard A. and Stewart C. Myers. Principles of Corporate Finance, 5th ed., New York: 
McGraw-Hill. [1996]. 
An excellent and readable corporate finance textbook for readers with somewhat stronger 
analytical abilities. 

Engle, Louis and Henry Hecht. How to Buy Stocks. Little, Brown and Company. [1994]. 
This classic stock primer was first published almost 50 years ago and, with its numerous updates, 
remains an excellent and highly-readable first book on investments. 

Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. New York: Dell Publishing Company. [1955]. 
No, this book isn’t about WWII pilots. Read it and find out for yourself.

Lewis, Michael. Liar’s Poker. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. [1989]. 
A fun, comical and readable description of the author’s experiences and onservations as a trader 
with Salomon. 

Malkiel, Burton G. A Random Walk Down Wall Street. New York: W.W. Norton and
Company.  [1973]. 
This may be the single best book for those ready to start investing and those who think they are 
good at investing. It has been updated several times since 1973 and remains an outstanding and 
highly-readable book.

Nofsinger, John (2004): The Psychology of Investing, 2^nd ed., Prentice Hall. 
An easy to read, short and useful book concerning behavioral finance.

Ross, Stephan A., Randolph W. Westerfield and Bradford D. Jordan (2001). Essentials of 
Corporate Finance, 3rd ed., Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin. 
An excellent introductory corporate finance textbook. 

Tobias, Andrew G. The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need: Expanded and
Updated.  Harvest Books. [1999].
An excellent, fairly comprehensive and highly readable primer on investing. An excellent book 
to start with. Maybe the only book that some investors will need. 
 

For Readers Who Have Completed One

Course in Finance

Ben-Horim, Moshe and Haim Levy. Statistics Decisions and Applications in Business and 
Economics, 2nd ed. New York: Random House Business Division. [1984]. 
Basic Business Statistics text with lots of nice finance examples 

Benninga, Simon. Financial Modeling. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1997. 
Mostly Excel-related. Lots of nice spreadsheet material. 

Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, New York: John Wiley. 
[1996]. 
A very readable non-technical book describing the history of risk, risk management and 
gambling. 

Bernstein, Peter L. Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street. New York: 
Free Press. [1992]. 
This is a nice non-technical book which focuses on the academic minds and personalities of 
those responsible for creating tools and technique that prevail on Wall Street. 

Brealey, Richard A. and Stewart C. Myers. Principles of Corporate Finance, 5th ed., New York: 
McGraw-Hill. [1996]. 
An excellent and readable corporate finance textbook. 

Brown, Stephen J. and Kritzman, Mark P. Quantitative Methods for Financial Analysis, 2nd ed. 
Homewood, Illinois: Dow Jones-Irwin, 1990. 
A general and rather elementary text formed from a collection of dis-connected readings. Used to 
be CFA reading material many years ago. 

Cottle, Sydney, Roger F. Murray and Frank E. Block. Graham and Dodd’s Securities Analysis.
New York: McGraw Hill. [1988] 
Still the Wall Street standard after 40 years of updating. Rumored to be Warren Buffet’s guide to 
investing. 

Engle, Louis and Henry Hecht. How to Buy Stocks. Little, Brown and Company. [1994]. 
This classic stock primer was first published almost 50 years ago and, with its numerous updates, 
remains an excellent and highly-readable first book on investments. 

Foster, George. Financial Statement Analysis, 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice 
Hall. [1986]. 
An excellent text on the analysis of financial statements with an emphasis on how capital 
markets reacts to information. A little less emphasis on accounting issues and more on market 
issues than other financial statement analysis texts. This book may be a bit difficult for some 
readers. 

Ghosh, Sukesh K. Econometrics: Theory and Applications. Prentice Hall [1991] 
A readable basic econometrics text. 

Holden, Craig W. Spreadsheet Modeling in the Fundamentals of Investments. Upper Saddle 
River, N.J.: Prentice Hall. [2002]. 
Discusses the process of spreadsheet modeling for finance 

Malkiel, Burton G. A Random Walk Down Wall Street. New York: W.W. Norton
and Company.  [1973].
This may be the single best book for those ready to start investing and those who think they are 
good at investing. It has been updated several times, but remains an outstanding and highly- 
readable book. 

MacKay, Charles (1841): Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
New York: Crown Publishers.
An all-time classic concerning bubbles and crashes.

Nofsinger, John (2004): The Psychology of Investing, 2^nd ed., Prentice Hall. 
An easy to read, short and useful book concerning behavioral finance.

Pickford, James. Financial Tiimes Mastering Investment. Prentice Hall [2002].
A collection of eclectic and highly readable articles and columns in finance from the Financial Times.

Shiller, Robert J. Irrational Exuberance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. [2000] 
A readable scholarly review of the evidence concerning market efficiency. 

Siegel, Jeremy J. Stocks for the Long Run, 2nd. ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998. 
Easy to read discussion of stock market investing 

Strong, Robert A. Portfolio Construction, Management, and Protection, 2nd ed. Southwestern 
College Publishing, 2000. 
An excellent applied text in portfolio analysis that includes CFA questions, Internet exercises and 
cases. Somewhat quantitative, but less so than the Elton and Gruber discussed below. 

Taggart, Robert.Quantitative Analysis for Investment Management. Englewood Cliffs, New 
Jersey: Prentice Hall,1996. 
A rather general and elementary text. A bit like a condensed investments text with a focus on 
mathematical formulas. 

Tobias, Andrew G. The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need: Expanded and
Updated.  Harvest Books. [1999].
An excellent, fairly comprehensive and highly readable primer on investing. An excellent book 
to start with.
 

For Advanced Undergraduate and Advanced

MBA Students in Finance

Alexander, Gordon J. and Jack Clark Francis. Portfolio Analysis, 3rd ed., Englewood Cliffs, New 
Jersey: Prentice Hall. [1986]. 
A nicely written portfolio analysis text with academic citations. 

Ben-Horim, Moshe and Haim Levy. Statistics Decisions and Applications in Business and 
Economics, 2nd ed. New York: Random House Business Division. [1984]. 
Basic Business Statistics text with lots of nice finance examples 

Benninga, Simon. Financial Modeling. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1997. 
Mostly Excel-related. Lots of nice spreadsheet material. 

Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, New York: John Wiley. 
[1996]. 
A very readable non-technical book describing the history of risk, risk management and 
gambling. 

Bernstein, Peter L. Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street.
New York:  Free Press. [1992]. 
This is a nice non-technical book which focuses on the academic minds and personalities of 
those responsible for creating tools and technique that prevail on Wall Street. 

Copeland, Thomas, J. Fred Weston and Kuldeep Shastri. Financial Theory and Corporate Policy, 4th ed. Addison- 
Wesley, [2005]. 
An excellent advanced general finance and investments text. 

Cottle, Sydney, Roger F. Murray and Frank E. Block. Graham and Dodd’s Securities
Analysis.  New York: McGraw Hill. [1988]
Still the Wall Street standard after 40 years of updating. Rumored to be Warren Buffet’s guide to 
investing 

Cox, John C. and Mark Rubinstein. Options Markets. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice 
Hall. [1985] 
Used to be the Wall Street standard options primer before Hull. 

Elton, Edwin, Martin Gruber, Stephen Brown and William Goetzman. Modern Portfolio
Theory and Investment Analysis, 7th ed. John Wiley, [2006].
An excellent quantitatively-oriented portfolio analysis text with an academic focus. 
There may be newer editions of this book and the older editions are useful as well.

Foster, George. Financial Statement Analysis, 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice 
Hall. [1986]. 
An excellent text on the analysis of financial statements with an emphasis on how capital 
markets reacts to information. A little less emphasis on accounting issues and more on market 
issues than other financial statement analysis texts. 

Ghosh, Sukesh K. Econometrics: Theory and Applications. Prentice Hall [1991] 
A readable basic econometrics text. 

Harris, Larry. Trading & Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners.
Oxford University Press, 2003.
A nice, somewhat elementary general purpose text in trading and market microstructure.

Holden, Craig W. Spreadsheet Modeling in the Fundamentals of Investments. Upper Saddle 
River, N.J.: Prentice Hall. [2002]. 
Discusses the process of spreadsheet modeling for finance 

Hull, John C. Futures, Options and Other Derivatives, 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey:  Prentice Hall. [2000]. 
This text is currently the favorite on both the Street and in academia. 

Jarrow, Robert and Andrew Rudd. Option Pricing. Irwin, [1983]. Used to be the standard option 
valuation book in both academia and on the street. Still an excellent options primer, though is 
now old. And may be out of print. It is best for plain vanilla options. 

Judd, Kenneth L. Numerical Methods in Economics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 
[1998] 
Decent numerical methods text written for economists. It does have some financial problems. 
You should have a decent background in Calculus before attempting this text. 

Malkiel, Burton G. A Random Walk Down Wall Street. New York: W.W. Norton and
Company.  [1973]. 
This may be the single best book for those ready to start investing and those who think they are 
good at investing. It has been updated several times, but remains an outstanding and highly- 
readable book. 

MacKay, Charles (1841): Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
New York: Crown Publishers.
An all-time classic concerning bubbles and crashes.

Neftci, Salih N. An Introduction to the Mathematics of Financial Derivatives, 2nd ed.
New York:  Academic Press. [2001]. 
This book is now the Wall Street standard for mathematics for derivatives and fixed income 
analytics.  It is well-written and accessible to readers with a background in probability and 
calculus.

Nofsinger, John (2004): The Psychology of Investing, 2^nd ed., Prentice Hall. 
An easy to read, short and useful book concerning behavioral finance.

Pickford, James. Financial Tiimes Mastering Investment. Prentice Hall [2002].
A collection of eclectic and highly readable articles and columns in finance from the Financial Times.

Shefrin, Herh. Beyond Greed and Fear: Undertanding Behavioral Finance and the Pychology of
Investing. Oxford, U.K., Oxford Univerity Press. [2002].
This book is standard reading for behavioral finance.

Shiller, Robert J. Irrational Exuberance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. [2000] 
A somewhat technical scholarly review of the evidence concerning market efficiency. 

Siegal, Jeremy J. Stocks for the Long Run, 2nd. ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998. 
Easy to read discussion of stock market investing 

Taggart, Robert.Quantitative Analysis for Investment Management. Englewood Cliffs, New 
Jersey: Prentice Hall,1996. 
A rather general and elementary text. A bit like a condensed investments text with a focus on 
mathematical formulas. 

Teall, John L. Financial Market Analytics. Westport, Connecticut: Quorum Press, 1999. 
General financial math. Obviously a great book. 

Tobias, Andrew G. The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need: Expanded and Updated. 
Harvest Books. [1999]. 
An excellent, fairly comprehensive and highly readable primer on investing. An excellent book 
to start with. 

Wilmott, Paul. Derivatives. John Wiley [1998]. 
Thorough, including discussion and valuations of many exotic options. Quite readable for a 
rigorous text. 

For Doctoral Students in Finance  
General Texts for Doctoral Students 
Alexander, Gordon J. and Jack Clark Francis. Portfolio Analysis, 3rd ed., Englewood Cliffs, New  
Jersey: Prentice Hall. [1986].  
A nicely written investments and portfolio analysis text with academic citations. 

Campbell, John, Andrew Lo and A. Craig MacKinlay. The Econometrics of
Financial Markets. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. [1997].    
Excellent text for applications of econometrics to finance.  

Copeland, Thomas, J. Fred Weston and Kuldeep Shastri. Financial Theory and Corporate
Policy, 4th ed. Addison-Wesley, [2004].  
Excellent standard general finance text. The older editions are equally good.

Elton, Edwin, Martin Gruber, Stephan Brown and WIlliam Goetzmann. Modern Portfolio
Theory and Investment Analysis, 7th ed. John Wiley, [2006].  
An excellent quantitatively-oriented investments and portfolio analysis text with an academic focus.  
There may be newer editions of this book and the older editions are useful as well.

Huang, Chi-fu and Robert Litzenberger. Foundations for Financial Economics. Prentice
Hall,  1989.  
Standard introductory Ph.D. finance text  

Ingersoll, Jonathan E., Jr. Theory of Financial Decision Making. Savage, Maryland:
Roman and Littlefield Publishers, [1987].  
An excellent quantitatively-oriented Ph.D. level finance text. The emphasis in this text is on  
theory and model development rather than empirical work.  

Martin, John D., Samuel H. Cox and Richard D. MacMinn. The Theory of Finance: Evidence  
and Applications. Dryden Press, [1988].  
Reasonably good (but old) competitor for Copeland and Weston  

Megginson, William. Corporate Finance Theory. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley,  
[1996].  
General corporate finance text geared towards Ph.D. students. Weak on analysis, strong on  
literature reviews. A little more readable than some of the other doctoral-level texts. This text  
should be accessible to many MBA and undergraduate students as well.  

Neftci, Salih N. An Introduction to the Mathematics of Financial Derivatives, 2nd ed.
New York: Academic Press. [2001].  
This book is now the Wall Street standard for mathematics for derivatives and fixed income  
analytics.  It is well-written and accessible to readers with a background in probability and  
calculus.  

Pennacchi, George. Theory of Asset Pricing. Addison-Wesley [2008].
Excellent coverage of asset pricing, including consumption/investment models, CAPM,
continuous time consumption models, theories of behavioral finance, interest rate models, etc.

Shefrin, Hersh. Beyond Greed and Fear: Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Pyschology of
Investing. Oxford, U.K., Oxford Univerity Press. [2002].
This book is standard reading for behavioral finance.

Shiller, Robert J. Irrational Exuberance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. [2000]  
A readable scholarly review of the evidence concerning market efficiency.  

Smith, Clifford W., Jr. The Modern Theory of Corporate Finance. New York:
McGraw-Hill.  [1990].  
A collection of academic corporate finance articles mostly from the Journal of Financial  
Economics.    

Financial Mathematics and Econometrics    

Baxter, Martin and Andrew Rennie. Financial Calculus: An introduction to Derivative Pricing.  
Cambridge University Press [1996].  
Has an informal and intuitive writing style, though a little sloppy in its presentation. Its focus is  
on derivatives valuation and analysis. Quite useful.  

Campbell, John, Andrew Lo and A. Craig MacKinlay. The Econometrics of
Financial Markets. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. [1997].    
Excellent text for applications of econometrics to finance.  

Elliott, Robert J. and P. Ekkehard Kopp. Mathematics of Financial Markets. New York: Springer  
Finance. [1999].  
More formal and technical than many of the other texts. An excellent choice for one with strong  
quantitative preparation. More advanced than Neftci's book. 

Feller, William . An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications, Vol. I, 3rd ed., Vol.  
II, 2nd ed., New York: John Wiley. [1968].  
The classic text for mathematical probability. The reader should have strong quantitative skills  
before attempting this text.  

Greene, William H. Econometric Analysis, 5th ed. Prentice Hall: 2003.  
This is a decent econometrics text for the finance student. It is thorough and readable for a  
fairly rigorous text  

Judd, Kenneth L. Numerical Methods in Economics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.  
[1998]  
Decent numerical methods text written for economists. It does have some financial problems  
and exercises  

Mendenhall, William, Richard L. Scheaffer and Dennis D. Wackerly. Mathematical Statistics  
with Applications, 2nd ed. Boston: Duxbury Press. [1981].  
A very readable mathematical statistics text. More rigorous and useful for advanced finance  
students than a basic business statistics text.  

Merton, Robert. Continuous Time Finance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [1990].  
A slightly edited version of Merton’s essays on the applications of continuous-time mathematics  
to a variety of topics including the CAPM and FDIC insurance pricing.  

Neftci, Salih N. An Introduction to the Mathematics of Financial Derivatives, 2nd ed.
New York:  Academic Press. [2001].  
This book is the Wall Street standard for mathematics for derivatives and fixed income  
analytics.  It is well-written and accessible to readers with a background in probability and  
calculus.  

Pliska, Stanley R. Introduction to Mathematical Finance: Discrete Time Models. Oxford, U.K.:  
Blackwell Publishers [1997].  
Good introduction to financial mathematics for those with strong quantitative skills.

Shreve, Steven E. Stochastic Calculus for Finance II: Continuous-Time Models. Springer
Finance [2004]. 

Teall, John L. Financial Market Analytics. Westport, Connecticut: Quorum Press, 1999.  
General financial math. Obviously a great book.  

Options, Futures and Derivatives   
Cox, John C. and Mark Rubinstein. Options Markets. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice  
Hall. [1985]  
Used to be the Wall Street standard before Hull.  

Hull, John C. Futures, Options and Other Derivatives, 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey:  Prentice Hall. [2000].  
This book is currently the favorite derivatives text on both the Street and in academia.  

Jarrow, Robert and Andrew Rudd. Option Pricing. Irwin, [1983]. Used to be the standard option  
valuation book in both academia and on the street. Still an excellent options primer, though is  
now old. And may be out of print. It is best for plain vanilla options.  

Neftci, Salih N. An Introduction to the Mathematics of Financial Derivatives, 2nd ed.
New York:  Academic Press. [2001].  
This book is  the Wall Street standard for mathematics for derivatives and fixed income  
analytics.  It is well-written and accessible to readers with a background in probability and  
calculus.  

Wilmott, Paul. Derivatives. John Wiley [1998].  
Thorough, including discussion and valuations of many exotic options. Quite readable for a  
rigorous text.  

Wilmott, Paul. Paul Wilmott Introduces Quantitative Finance. Wiley [2007].

Wilmott, Paul, Jeff Dewynne and Sam Howison. Option Pricing: Mathematical Models and  
Computation, Oxford, England: Oxford Financial Press. [1993].  
Not as comprehensive as Wilmott [1998].  
  
Other Books for Doctoral Students    
Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, New York: John Wiley.  
[1996].  
A very readable non-technical book describing the history of risk, risk management and  
gambling.  

Bernstein, Peter L. Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street.
New York:  Free Press. [1992].  
This is a nice non-technical book which focuses on the academic minds and personalities of  
those responsible for creating tools and technique that prevail on Wall Street. 

Harris, Larry. Trading & Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners.
Oxford University Press, 2003.
A nice, somewhat elementary general purpose text in trading and market microstructure.

O'Hara, Maureen. Market Microstructure Theory. Blackwell Business, 1995.
An excellent text on the theory of market microstructure.

Rubinstein, Mark. Theory of Investments: My Annotated Bibliography. New York: John
Wiley and Sons, 2006.
An excellent and very readable overview of research in finance, beginning with "ancient"
research (before 1950) , extending into the classic era (1950-1980) and a bit beyond. An
excellent starting point for doctoral students.

Shiller, Robert J. Irrational Exuberance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. [2000]  
A readable scholarly review of the evidence concerning market efficiency.