Books like The Misbehavior of Markets

01

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · Science

The Black Swan is Nassim Nicholas Taleb's argument that the most consequential events in history — financial crashes, technological breakthroughs, wars, pandemics — are not predictable outliers but structurally unpredictable ones.

Shares risk and probability with The Misbehavior of Markets.

02

Fooled by Randomness

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · Psychology

Fooled by Randomness is Nassim Nicholas Taleb's argument that humans are wired to misread luck as skill, noise as signal, and random outcomes as the product of ability or effort.

Shares risk and probability with The Misbehavior of Markets.

03

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

Peter L. Bernstein · History

Against the Gods is Peter Bernstein's intellectual history of how humanity learned to measure, quantify, and manage risk — a story he traces from ancient gambling in the Mediterranean through the development of modern probability theory, statistics, and financial derivatives.

Shares risk and probability with The Misbehavior of Markets.

04

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler · Psychology

Richard Thaler is one of the founders of behavioral economics, the field that took the anomalies in standard economic theory seriously rather than dismissing them as noise.

A kindred economics read.

05

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.

A kindred economics read.

06

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Annie Duke · Psychology

Thinking in Bets is Annie Duke's argument that most decisions in life share a fundamental feature with poker hands: you're choosing under uncertainty, with incomplete information, and luck will affect the outcome regardless of how well you reasoned.

Shares risk and probability with The Misbehavior of Markets.

07

More Money Than God

Sebastian Mallaby · Economics

Sebastian Mallaby's history of hedge funds begins with Alfred Winslow Jones, who in 1949 invented the basic structure that still defines the industry: borrow money to buy what you think will go up, sell short what you think will go down, take a 20 percent cut of the profits.

Both dig into risk.

08

Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity

ed. Michael Lewis · Economics

Panic is an anthology edited by Michael Lewis, collecting journalism, essays, and firsthand accounts about five major financial crises from 1987 to 2007: the Black Monday crash, the emerging markets panics of the 1990s, the Long-Term Capital Management collapse, the dot-com bust, and the early signals of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Both dig into risk.

09

The Alchemy of Finance

George Soros · Economics

The Alchemy of Finance is George Soros's attempt to explain both the theory behind his investment decisions and the practice of applying it during the years he ran the Quantum Fund.

Both dig into financial markets.

10

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

Niall Ferguson · Economics

Niall Ferguson published The Ascent of Money in 2008, with timing that turned out to be acute: the book appeared just as the global financial crisis was unfolding, making its subject matter suddenly urgent for readers who had barely thought about the mechanics of credit default swaps or mortgage securitization.

Both dig into risk.

11

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

Michael Lewis · Economics

The Big Short is Michael Lewis's account of the 2008 financial crisis as seen through the eyes of a handful of contrarians who saw the collapse coming, bet against the American housing market, and were right.

Both dig into risk.

12

The End of Wall Street

Roger Lowenstein · Economics

The End of Wall Street is Roger Lowenstein's account of the 2008 financial crisis, from the early signs of trouble in the mortgage market through the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the government interventions, and the immediate aftermath.

Both dig into risk.