Investment and Personal Finance Resources
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The Internet's Best Education Resources
, an initiative of maintains a list of the top educational resources on the internet. Scope is way beyond finance and investing.
Online Education Platforms
This is a list of the large online education platforms. They offer pretty much anything to study. Courses that provide you with a certificate often cost money, but you can take many classes for free if you don't care about the certificate.
Also, go to for a large catalogue of resources and additional references to online education resources.听They also have a that may be of interest to you.听
Podcasts / Blogs
- with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
- with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
- with Ted Seides
- Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists鈥攁nd the movements they built.
- by Andreessen Horowitz
- , Master the best of what other people have already figured out.
- with Sam Dogen
- , by Robert Farrington
Stock Screeners & Tools
- (paid)
Websites
Interesting Sites
- A ton of insight on what matters in your professional life:
- Awesome page focused on making you a better student:
- A collection of short courses - highly condensed:
- A good, general and very comprehensive personal finance site:
- A good source for general investor education:
- Tutorials on doing Time Value of Money Calculations with different calculators and Excel:
- Blockchain literature:
News and market information
Investment Management Firms
- - they published a free book introducing and explaining cryptocurrency, which can be found .
Books
The good old textbooks are somewhat a thing of the past. They are not cheap but are very comprehensive. They tend to be very good reference books that belong into the library of a diligent student and with a handful of books, you cover pretty much all the relevant skill areas.
- Brealey, Myers, Allen:
- Koller et al,
- Bodie, Kane, Marcus,
- Fabozzi,
- Cowen, Tabarrok,
There are so many investment books out there, and it seems like everybody has their own favorites. Here is a list of the more classic ones and some I found interesting and practically relevant (in alphabetical order):
- Ammous,
- Berkshire Hathaway,
- Peter Bernstein鈥檚 books. This is a to four of his books, all great reads
- Bogle,
- Greenblatt,
- Housel,
- Kaufman et al,
- Maggiulli,
- Malkiel,
- Malkiel,
- Mallouk,
- Marks,
- Siegel,
- Swensen,
- Pretty much all books of Nassim are great
- Thaler,
- Thorp,
- Zuckerman,
Some really good, more general business books that I think are must reads:
- Christensen,
- Feld and Mendelson,
- Horowitz,
- Trout,
- Thiel,
Noteworthy Instructional Videos
- - an interview series with investment legends and Nobel laureates
- Ray Dalio produced a great 30 minute video on how the economy works:
Professional Accreditations
CFA Institute
The designation is the gold standard for the financial industry. It is governed by the CFA Institute, which continuously updates the curriculum to keep it relevant and applicable. It requires successful passing of three consecutive levels of fairly comprehensive and difficult exams. To carry the designation, one also has to have at least four years of relevant professional experience. As an ambitious Finance undergraduate, one can pursue the Level 1 exam during Senior year.
They also offer the which is an excellent, free, introductory course introducing students to the various aspects of the investment management industry.
The third program they offer is the . This is a fairly specialized, technical, niche program, not recommended for the early years in your career.
All of their programs cost money, and there are third parties who offer study programs to prepare you for the tests (especially the CFA), which also cost money but essentially summarize the large amount of content down to more digestible learning units. Two to consider are:
Note that sometimes they have free resources for you to tap into. For example, Schweser/Kaplan offered free 'MasterClasses' for the Level 1 curriculum which are nine 2-hour videos.
Corporate Finance Institute
The offers a series of online education resources that are practical and tailored to develop skills for a career start in corporate finance or investment management. They offer a series of free courses covering the absolute essentials, such as Excel, analysis of financial statements, intro to corporate finance and economics, and others.
If you are a student at 性爱天堂 in San Antonio, TX, please use this to sign up and get access to the free courses. For anyone else, the free courses can be found .
They also offer certifications that are based on taking numerous courses they have available on their website. The quality of their modules is solid and allows for completely independent and self-paced study. They do cost money but provide you with professionally relevant education and a certificate that has resume value. Currently they offer four certifications, the , the , the , and the .
There are many other accreditation to pursue, such as the CFP for financial planners, the Series X exams administered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Industry (FINRA) that are applicable to specific professions in the financial industry. It's best to take those based on your actual job you will have after you graduate. Some of those will be required and some will be beneficial to earn while being on the job for a couple of years.
Required Skills
The following topics are areas that a solid finance education should cover:
- Basic understanding of micro- and macroeconomic principles
- Time value of money and basic financial mathematics
- Valuation of corporate projects, companies and financial securities (TVM applied)
- Reading and understanding financial statements
- Measuring and managing corporate value creation
- Investment instruments and investment management
- Risk management, derivatives and international finance
- Behavioral economics
- Expert-level proficiency in Excel