Andrew W Lo's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Andrew W Lo recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Andrew W Lo's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

The Worldly Philosophers

Robert L. Heilbroner

4.4

The Worldly Philosophers not only enables us to see more deeply into our history but helps us better understand our own times. In this seventh edition, Robert L. Heilbroner provides a new theme that connects thinkers as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The theme is the common focus of their highly varied ideas—namely, the search to understand how a capitalist society works. It is a focus never

Recommended by Andrew W Lo, Daniel Hamermesh, Erik Brynjolfsson, and 1 others.

Andrew W Lo

This book really opened my eyes to the fact that there’s some very deep and beautiful logic underlying the economy, and financial markets and institutions especially. [source]

Daniel Hamermesh

This is the oldest book I’ve chosen by far. The first edition came out in 1953 – I read it in my senior year in high school. That’s one of the reasons I love this book. We had what was called the Honours Social Studies class. The teacher was quite sophisticated, a very unusual guy. He had an MA from Harvard. [source]

Erik Brynjolfsson

@AndrewWLo @DianeCoyle1859 Great book. I read it in high school and it kind of turned into an economist [source]

A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing

Burton G. Malkiel

4.4

Preview Summary

Today’s stock market is not for the faint of heart. At a time of frightening volatility, what is the average investor to do?

The answer: turn to Burton G. Malkiel’s advice in his reassuring, authoritative, gimmick-free, and perennially best-selling guide to investing. Long established as the first book to purchase before starting a portfolio or 401(k), A Random Walk Down Wall Street now features ne

Recommended by Andrew W Lo, John Kay, and Michael Hebenstreit.

Andrew W Lo

It’s a wonderful read because it doesn’t presuppose any background knowledge of economics or finance…It’s had so much staying power. It was written in the 1970s, a bestseller when it came out, and it’s still a bestseller now. I recommend it to my MBA students today because it’s just a wonderful introduction to the field of finance. At the same time, it provides some very sensible advice for investors about how to manage their own money. [source]

John Kay

Essentially, the theme of Malkiel’s book was that you could, in effect, do investing yourself. [source]

Michael Hebenstreit

If you want to get into stock trading or in case you want to become an investor, then I definitely would recommend to read the book I already mentioned and in addition: A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel. [source]

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Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street

Peter L. Bernstein

4.1

Capital Ideas traces the origins of modern Wall Street, from the pioneering work of early scholars and the development of new theories in risk, valuation, and investment returns, to the actual implementation of these theories in the real world of investment management. Bernstein brings to life a variety of brilliant academics who have contributed to modern investment theory over the years: Louis B

Recommended by Andrew W Lo.

Andrew W Lo

You read about financial legends like Paul Samuelson, Fischer Black, Myron Scholes and Robert Merton—all the architects of modern finance—and you really feel like you’ve met them after reading Bernstein’s beautiful exposition. [source]

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Continuous-Time Finance

Robert C. Merton

4.3

Robert C. Merton's widely-used text provides an overview and synthesis of finance theory from the perspective of continuous-time analysis. It covers individual finance choice, corporate finance, financial intermediation, capital markets, and selected topics on the interface between private and public finance.

Recommended by Andrew W Lo.

Andrew W Lo

The title highlights the new approach that Bob introduced to modeling financial markets. He used the kind of mathematics known as ‘stochastic calculus.’ [source]

This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

Carmen Reinhart

4.0

Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading econo

Recommended by Bill Gates, Andrew W Lo, Charles Morris, and 2 others.

Andrew W Lo

They…took an enormous amount of time to put together datasets that allow us to look back eight centuries and ask, quantitatively, whether there are any common denominators to financial crises. And the not-surprising answer is, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ [source]

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

On Bill Gates's reading list in 2012. [source]

Charles Morris

The great thing that Rogoff and Reinhart have done is they’ve assembled this huge database. They’ve gone back 800 years and you can see roughly what’s been going on with government borrowing and lending over that time. [source]