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The Fundamental Investor

Value, quality, and business analysis

A path through the economic foundations, investing philosophy, and valuation frameworks that define fundamental equity analysis. Start with Menger and Stigler, absorb the wisdom of Buffett, Fisher, and Marks, then apply Damodaran's valuation toolkit.

L1
Principles of Economics
Carl Menger (1871)
The founding text of the Austrian School. Menger builds economic theory from first principles: subjective value, marginal utility, and the origin of money.
L1
The Theory of Price
George Stigler
A rigorous treatment of price theory — supply, demand, costs, and market structure — from one of the Chicago School's finest minds.
L1
A Business History of Finance
Randall Morck
How financial institutions evolved to serve (and sometimes exploit) the real economy. Essential context for understanding modern markets.
L2
Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letters
Warren Buffett
Decades of accumulated wisdom on capital allocation, business quality, and long-term thinking from the greatest investor of the modern era.
L2
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
Philip Fisher
Fisher's scuttlebutt method and his 15 points for evaluating growth companies. The other half of Buffett's intellectual DNA.
L2
Oaktree Capital Memos
Howard Marks
Howard Marks on risk, cycles, and second-level thinking. Essential reading for understanding market psychology and contrarian investing.
L2
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
Edwin Lefevre
The thinly veiled biography of Jesse Livermore. Timeless lessons on speculation, crowd psychology, and the art of tape reading.
L2
Security Analysis & The Intelligent Investor
Benjamin Graham
The father of value investing. Graham's framework for margin of safety, intrinsic value, Mr. Market, and the distinction between investment and speculation.
L2
Engines That Move Markets
Alasdair Nairn
The recurring pattern of technology-driven investment booms and busts: railroads, radio, automobiles, electronics, and the internet. How transformative industries create and destroy fortunes through predictable cycles.
L2
One Up on Wall Street
Peter Lynch
The greatest mutual fund manager explains growth at a reasonable price, stock categorization (fast growers, stalwarts, turnarounds, cyclicals), tenbaggers, and why amateur investors can beat professionals.
L2
Market Wizards
Jack Schwager
Jack Schwager's interviews with the greatest traders of the 20th century. Discretionary and systematic, fundamental and technical — the common threads of risk management, discipline, and edge that separate survivors from blowups.
L2
Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, Black Swan, Antifragile
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb's philosophical and mathematical framework for navigating uncertainty, fat tails, and the limits of prediction. Why most risk models are wrong and what to do about it.
L3
Behavioral Finance: Kahneman, Tversky & Beyond
Kahneman, Tversky, Thaler
The psychological foundations of market behavior. Prospect theory, loss aversion, anchoring, overconfidence, and the systematic biases that create mispricings.
L4
The Little Book of Valuation
Aswath Damodaran
Damodaran distills valuation into its essentials: intrinsic value, relative value, and the stories that connect numbers to narratives.
L4
Growth Investing: Principles & Frameworks
Various (Fisher, Lynch, Nairn, Christensen)
A synthesis of growth investing frameworks: TAM analysis, unit economics, S-curves, disruption theory, PEG ratios, Rule of 40, and the art of identifying compounders before the market prices them in.
L4
Technical Analysis: Price Action, Patterns & Indicators
Edwards & Magee, Nison, Murphy, Chaikin
The complete technical toolkit: Dow Theory, chart patterns, candlesticks, moving averages, RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, Chaikin Money Flow, volume analysis, and the honest debate about when technicals work and when they don't.
L6
Portfolio Construction
Markowitz, Black-Litterman, Various
From Markowitz's efficient frontier through Black-Litterman, risk parity, and Kelly criterion at the portfolio level. How to turn signals and convictions into actual allocations.