Top Selling Stock Market Books

Are you looking for some springtime reading? Or maybe you're just looking for a great gift. Have you considered one of the new (or old) top selling books on investing in the stock market?

Here are the current top selling books at Amazon (AMZN) in the category of Investing - Stocks. Interestingly, two of the books are about penny stocks.

Global Value: How to Spot Bubbles, Avoid Market Crashes, and Earn Big Returns in the Stock Market by Mebane Faber

The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing: Fifth Edition by Jason Kelly

One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market by Peter Lynch

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Penny Stocks For Beginners: How to Get Rich Investing In Penny Stocks (Penny Stock Investing, Penny Stock Trading) by Devon Wilcox

Penny Stocks For Dummies by Peter Leeds


Also, don't forget about the 30 day free trial of Amazon Prime which allows you to instantly watch over 40,000 movies and TV episodes, plus get FREE shipping, no matter how small your order.

What Black Swan's Nassim Taleb Hates: Antifragile Review Part 2

When I did my book review last month on Antifragile, by Nassim Taleb, I did the book a disservice since I had read only partway through it. I have just completed the book, and I can say that (with the possible exception of Finnegans Wake), this is the most unusual book I have ever read.

For those of you who don't know, Taleb was the one who predicted the financial collapse a few years ago, and has the money to prove it. He was the author who caused the phrase The Black Swan to become popular due to his book of the same name.

After making his fortune, he has now become more of a philosopher and researcher. As a matter of fact, Antifragile is more about philosophy from a practical standpoint.

First let me tell you what Taleb detests:
economists (he even names names)
doctors
pharmaceutical companies
politicians
large corporations (with the exception of Apple)
executives of large corporations (with the exception of Steve Jobs)
Harvard professors
Coke and Pepsi (both the drinks and the corporations)
marketing and marketers
bankers!
the cavier left
rating agencies
postdictors
non-risk takers
over-technologizing
excessive use of specific products
government research spending
lobbyists
and the list goes on and on...

And he doesn't just say he dislikes these things (or people); he spends whole sections on them. But this is only a small portion of the book. In essence, the book is about how anything or anyone that benefits from stress or change, will survive, and if not, then it or they won't survive.

Here is a tip about reading the book. It you come to the sections that say that you can skip them because they go into a lot of technical detail, you should read them because those sections are actually easier to read than other parts of the book and they contain very important concepts. (I wonder if Taleb did this as a trick?)

If you want to read a book that isn't anything like any other book, I recommend Antifragile.

Antifragile

If you don't know who Nassim Nicholas Taleb is, you most likely are familiar with his book, The Black Swan and the Black Swan term that become popular during the banking crisis in 2008. He actually predicted the banking crises, and received a lot of hate mail from bankers. Taleb even had to hire bodyguards for a while.

His latest book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder is a fascinating discussion of a concept of what he calls Antifragile, which is the opposite of Fragile, and completely different from Robustness.

People, businesses, and economies that are fragile are adversely affected by changes, chaos, and disruption, whereas the antifragile benefit from stress, volatility, and turmoil. From a business and economics standpoint, the economy in general actually benefits from banks being allowed to go bankrupt. When the government bails out banks, the bankers have all the upside and no downside, so if the bank performs poorly, the US Government (actually, the American taxpayer) will bail them out.

The book, which I highly recommend, is what I call a brain-stretcher; it really forces you to think. I also recommend that you watch his recent New York Public Library interview below. It is long, about 80 minutes, but worth watching. Antifragile is available through Amazon and most other book sellers.

The Bed of Procrustes

Those of you have enjoyed reading Nassim Taleb's books, The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, should enjoy reading his latest book, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms.

The book is a collection of sayings, aphorism, and thoughts that will help stretch your brain. It is an easy read with only 128 pages, great for reading on a train or plane. In case you are wondering who Procrustes is, I'd rather not tell you to avoid ruining the concept of the book for you.

Taleb fans should find The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms an interesting read.