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What David Is Reading

The Spiritual Art of Business:

CONNECTING THE DAILY WITH THE DIVINE
by Barry L. Rowan

A short, easy read from a truly accomplished man with a truly sincere heart, this read more like a devotional and was useful and inspiring.  The takeaway line for me in one of the final chapters: “Business is the only institution that creates economic value; all other institutions distribute it.”  Wisdom.

The Ownership Dividend:

THE COMING PARADIGM SHIFT IN THE U.S. STOCK MARKET
by Daniel Peris

A historical treatise, really, with a masterful reiteration of the case for cash flow-based investing.  Peris’s chops as an academic historian are on full display as he breaks down the fascinating history of investor psychology around dividends.  He suggests multiple factors that converged over several decades to alter investor sentiment, and how this same factors now suggest a reversion to the mean in investor logic.

Neo-Calvinism:

A THEOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION
by Cory Brock and Gray Sutanto

I haven’t enjoyed reading a theological treatise this much in a long, long time.  It helps that the subjects of the book are two of my all-time favorites, Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck.  The book does as good a job as anything I have read demonstrating how Kuyperian thought was the real inheritance of Calvinism, and that in our understanding of grace restoring nature we not only counter the rationalism embedded in so much Aristotelian and Thomistic thought, but also inherit a framework for understanding the totality of our lives.

Always A Good Idea

THE CASE FOR DIVIDEND GROWTH

INVESTING IN A POST-CRISIS WORLD
David L. Bahnsen

It wouldn’t make sense for me to have a recommended investing book list and not include the book that serves as the core investing philosophy of The Bahnsen Group!

THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR

Benjamin Graham

The grandfather of value investing, Warren Buffett’s mentor, and the best explainer in history of buying a risk asset at a discount to the sum of its future cash flows!  Reading is believing …

FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS

Nassim Taleb

Not just in the investing world but in all of life, human nature causes us to mentally construct reasons and patterns for success, and allows us to be fooled by randomness, often to our own demise.  Chance, therefore, favors preparation.  And the quality of a choice can not be judged by the result – not if you care about the next time.

STOCKS FOR THE LONG RUN

Jeremy Siegel

More historical data than you may have signed up for, but this is a perfectly comprehensible book about the long-term reality of equity returns vs. other asset classes, and why that may be (i.e. the nature of the equity risk premium).  By long term, I mean, over 200 years of research is laid bare to make the case for a long-term equity bias.

ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON

Henry Hazlitt

I can’t tell you how useful this book was to me at a very, very young age, in forming basic economic principles and understandings that would shape the foundation of what I believe about economic law and reality.

THE ESSAYS OF WARREN BUFFETT

LESSONS FOR CORPORATE AMERICA
Warren Buffett

This collection of essays from the oracle of Omaha, written over many decades, has become a vital addition to the libraries of not just investment advisors but corporate managers and business entrepreneurs.  Tremendous insights proven true over the test of time.

EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS

Charles Mackay

If you are not a contrarian investor before you read this book, you will be after you read this book.  A historical instructive through the realities of human psychology and group think, and the disastrous investment results that can come about from those realities.

HUMAN ACTION

Ludwig Von Mises

It may be more philosophical than it is investment-application, but so much of my understanding of capital markets comes from my understanding of basic economics.  And this book many years ago taught me to understand human action as the core to understanding economics.  The calculations that serve at the core of human reasoning ultimately drive prosperity (and the preservation of civilization itself).  A few sentences can’t do justice to the richness of wisdom and profundity in this book.

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