Bill Ackman’s Reading List

Bill Ackmans' Reading List
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Wondering what Bill Ackman’s Reading List looks like? Most successful people are good readers.

They improve themselves constantly by learning from books on different topics.

Read on to find out more.

William Albert “Bill” Ackman is an American investor and a hedge fund manager.

Also, he is the founder of Pershing Square Capital Management.

Bill is popular among politicians and businessmen because of his approach to investment.

Bill claims to have studied investing on his own and he did this by reading books.

In an attempt to help fellow investors, Bill shares his five-reading list.

Bill Ackman’s Reading List

Confidence Game: How A Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street’s Bluff by Christine Richard

Confidence Game tells a story about truth, bravery, and persistence.

It details how Bill Ackman won his six-year battle against MBIA.

Suspicious of its management, he investigated MBIA.

As a result, he soon found out how MBIA was using companies on the brink of bankruptcy to their advantage.

Furthermore, he believed that MBIA would fail if its managers would not change how they manage funds.

Acting upon his analysis, Bill shorten the stocks.

Hence, this, later on, earned him a large sum of money.

The management of MBIA and its allies laughed at him for going against the company.

In spite of this, Bill was persistent in his campaign for truth.

The author did an impressive work in presenting the technical parts of Bill’s research.

The book has great lessons about the biases of the business media and the wrong moves of capital markets.

Similarly, it shows how he thinks and applies himself to the financial world.

As a result, this is why this book is on Bill Ackman’s Reading List

Click on the image of the book above to get a copy of this book from Amazon.

The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

The Intelligent Investor has been a staple for stock market investors.

This is because the book tells about safe and sound strategies to use in stocks and bonds investment.

It talks about the following:

  • Investment versus speculation
  • Inflation
  • General portfolio policy for the enterprising investor
  • Market fluctuations
  • New speculation in common stocks
  • Margin safety
  • Security analysis for the investor
  • Basics of investment taxation.
  • Case studies about different companies.

This book on Bill Ackman’s Reading List holds Benjamin Graham’s wisdom on value investing.

However, it becomes more relevant to the current times with Jason Zweig’s commentary.

Jason is a financial journalist in The Wall Street Journal.

Jason presents his commentary at the end of every chapter.

He also helps readers understand Benjamin’s investment principles.

Furthermore, he gives tips on how to apply these principles.

Known as Benjamin’s mentee, Warren Buffett also recommends this book.

Click on the image link above to buy this book from Amazon.

Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long, Short Story by David Einhorn  

Fooling Some of the People All of the Time is a story about politics, investing and freedom afforded in the US.

David Einhorn narrates how he exposed huge amounts of misappropriated taxpayers’ money.

The first few chapters of the book talk about the following aspects of David’s life:

  • early years in business
  •  introduction to the world of finance
  •  humble beginnings as the founder of Greenlight Capital
  • His long-running battle with Allied Capital and his investigations into the fraud

Furthermore, David shows the weaknesses of those involved in the investment business.

These include banks, journalists, government regulators, and analysts.

He also tells about the doubtful business supported by Wall Street.

Even more, David talks about how big downfalls, failures, and frauds get caught early in this book.

In this book on Bill Ackman’s Reading List, he also suggests efficient government rule, equity, and freedom of speech.

Click on the image of the book above to get a copy of this book from Amazon.

You Can Be A Good Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt

You Can Be A Good Stock Market Genius gives an inclusive and applied guide on how the stock market operates.

The author of this book, Joel Greenblatt, is a successful fund manager.

He gives specifics about the approaches of special situation stock market investing.

The introductory part of the book gives an inspiring message about small investments.

Joel acknowledges the advantages of small investors against veteran investors.

Joel mentions the problem with big investors.

He says that big investors have huge amounts in capital.

However, these big investors also have difficulties in focusing on a handful of small positions.

Furthermore, Big investors take the risk of failing their target.

In addition to this, they do not waste their time and resources to investigate tiny questionable situations.

Joel speaks about what he calls advanced level investment strategies:

  • bankruptcies
  • spin-offs
  • merger securities
  • risk arbitrage
  • rights offerings
  • stub stocks
  • warrants
  • call options
  • LEAPS

In addition, Joel uses concise and simple discussions to explain each strategy.

Click on the image of the book above to get a copy of this book on Bill Ackman’s Reading List from Amazon. The Warren Buffett Way by Robert G. Hagstrom

The Third Edition of The Warren Buffett Way is about Buffett’s investment principles.

These principles made him one of today’s most sought-after investors in the world.

Robert G. Hagstrom manages the Investment Management Committee for Stifel Asset Management.

The author talks about how Buffett was able to build his business empire from a mere investment of $100.

The book starts with an inspiring vibe.

The author names big names in the investment industry.

He mentions Buffett’s business partner, Charlie Munger, Benjamin Graham, and Philip Fisher.

These successful people taught Buffett how to think about investments.

In this book on Bill Ackman’s Reading List, Robert summaries the twelve undisputable tenets for purchasing a business.

Furthermore, this book has a list of the types of businesses Buffett finds most attractive and the ones that he avoids.

Hence, he discusses four proven principles of investment.

The first principle tells us to ignore the stock market.

The only time to check it is if there are offerings sold at cheaper prices.

The second principle suggests to only buy businesses that give high revenues.

The third principle recommends buying a business, not a stock.

Buffett states that if one has an interest in investments, he should run his own business.

The fourth principle advises on keeping a portfolio of businesses.

Only work with trustworthy business managers.

Click on the image of the book above to get a copy of this book from Amazon.

Final Thoughts on Bill Ackman’s Reading List

These books recommended by Bill Ackman give noteworthy investing advice.

They hold the wisdom of some of the greatest investors of all time.

Also, they show Bill’s inclination to hedge fund managers who became successful.

In addition to this, his fascination with shorting stocks and exposing frauds is also evident.

These books suggest the following:

– Use of sound and proven investment approaches

–  Fair government regulations governing overall businesses

– Involvement of trustworthy business managers

– Use of bold actions in fighting for the truth

Learn all you can from these books about investing.

I encourage you to get one or more of these books to better equip yourself for the business world.