Smart investors do their homework to understand the context behind the macro trends and how that can impact their financial future. We regularly interview experts who have expanded their thoughts to book length. On this page, we share some of our editor’s favorites. Please share your must-read list in the comment section below.

Cheers,

Karen Roche
President
Streetwise Reports

Streetwise Reports Essential Bookshelf for the Informed Investor

James Surowiecki
James Surowiecki Staff writer at The New Yorker.
X The Wisdom of Crowds
James Surowiecki
In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant–better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. Learn More
The Wisdom of Crowds
David S. Abraham
David S. Abraham Director of the Technology, Rare and Electronic Materials Center
X The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age
Director of the Technology, Rare and Electronic Materials Center
As technology evolves and spreads globally, advanced weapons proliferate, and we reduce our use of fossil fuel, we are hitching our future to a set of specialty metals each with their own geopolitical, economic and environmental ramifications. Abraham spent five years traveling through a dozen countries from mine to recycler to reveal the secreted path of these metals. He offers compelling insight into the market dynamics of specialty metals unlocking secrets and factors to consider for investment success. Learn More
The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age
David Morgan
David Morgan Publisher of The Morgan Report
X The Silver Manifesto
David Morgan
This may be the most important "hard money" book to be published in quite some time. Fortunes have been made by those who bought silver around the $5 level and paid attention to the call of the top at over $48 by David Morgan. Yet the big money lies ahead, according to the authors, as perhaps as much as 90 percent of the move occurs within the last 10 percent of the time. Learn More
The Silver Manifesto
Frank Holmes
Frank Holmes CEO and chief investment officer at U.S. Global Investors Inc.
X The Goldwatcher: Demystifying Gold Investing
Frank Holmes
"The Goldwatcher," a book co-authored by U.S. Global Investors CEO Frank Holmes, discusses gold as a 21st century investment. The book offers a rare glimpse into the intricate workings of U.S. Global's investment team and perspectives on key factors affecting gold investors. Learn More
The Goldwatcher: Demystifying Gold Investing
Nick Hodge
Nick Hodge Founder and president of the Outsider Club
X Energy Investing for Dummies
Founder and president of the Outsider Club
The fast and easy way to grasp energy sectors and their place in the global economy With timely, substantial information about energy stocks, Energy Investing For Dummies teaches the ins and outs of energy sectors and how to incorporate them into business and investment plans. As a savvy investor and business manager you will find the important information and advice you need to incorporate these growth areas into your investment portfolio. Learn More
Energy Investing for Dummies
Adrian Day
Adrian Day Founder, Adrian Day Asset Management
X Investing in Resources: How to Profit from the Outsized Potential and Avoid the Risks
Adrian Day, Founder, Adrian Day Asset Management
Investing in resource markets is quite different from other sectors–extreme cyclicality, very long cycles, huge corrections, continual mergers and acquisitions, and huge capital needs. Written by industry pioneer Adrian Day, "Investing in Resources: How to Profit from the Outsized Potential and Avoid the Outsized Risks" details the factors that affect investing in resource markets, and how, if an investor understands those factors, the resource market can be a great place to realize very strong gains. Learn More
Investing in Resources: How to Profit from the Outsized Potential and Avoid the Risks
Gianni Kovacevic
Gianni Kovacevic Executive Chairman, Copperbank Resources Corp.
X My Electrician Drives a Porsche? (2014)
Gianni Kovacevic, Executive Chairman, Copperbank Resources Corp.
Few people appreciate that their lives depend on copper and other natural resources. From the moment you wake up in your climate-controlled home to when you got to bed at night and set your alarm on your mobile phone, you are consuming natural resources that make life as you know it possible on Earth. The roof over your head, your car, your computer, your plumbing, your heating and cooling systems and telecommunications, chances are they all contain copper. And as our global population surges past 7 billion and millions of people in China and India continue the inevitable human pursuit of progress and migrate from farms to cities, demand for copper and other resources will only grow. I’ve been talking to investors about these themes of emerging markets growth and urbanization for many years. Now, Gianni Kovacevic’s artful storytelling takes curious investors on an exciting journey around the world to explore and discover these trends and their unexpected impact on the resource market. My Electrician Drives a Porsche? is an interesting allegory of human progress and opportunity. Learn More
My Electrician Drives a Porsche? (2014)
Harry Dent
Harry Dent Founder of Dent Research and editor, Survive and Prosper newsletter
X The Demographic Cliff: How to Survive and Prosper During the Great Deflation of 2014-2019 (2014)
Harry Dent, founder of Dent Research and editor, Survive and Prosper newsletter
Throughout his long career as an economic forecaster, Harry Dent has relied on demographics—the ultimate tool for predicting both big and small trends, decades in advance. Now he explains what’s going to happen to our economy with the accelerating retirements of the Baby Boomers. Inflation rises when a larger than usual block of younger people enter the workforce, and it wanes when large numbers of older people retire, downsize their homes, and cut their spending. The mass retirement of the Boomers won’t just hold back inflation, it will actually cause deflation—with a downturn and periodic crises from 2014 until about 2023. Dent explores the implications of his controversial predictions for retirement planning, healthcare, real estate, education, investing, and business strategies. His advice will help readers survive and prosper during the challenging years ahead. Learn More
The Demographic Cliff: How to Survive and Prosper During the Great Deflation of 2014-2019 (2014)
X Spending Waves: The Scientific Key to Predicting Market Behavior for the Next 20 Years
Harry Dent
While tens of millions of investors, business owners, and self-employed professionals will be losing their nest eggs, going out of business, and struggling financially for years to come… those who possess one of the limited copies of this scientifically-proven and highly sought-after financial research guide will be able to GROW their retirement funds, EXPAND their businesses, and PROSPER like never before… Learn More
Spending Waves: The Scientific Key to Predicting Market Behavior for the Next 20 Years
Marin Katusa
Marin Katusa Founder of Katusa Research
X The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped from America’s Grasp
Marin Katusa, Casey Research Senior Energy Analyst
There is a new cold war underway, driven by a massive geopolitical power shift to Russia that went almost unnoticed across the globe. Energy expert Marin Katusa takes a look at the ways the western world is losing control of the energy market, and what can be done about it. Russia is in the midst of a rapid economic and geopolitical renaissance under the rule of Vladimir Putin, a tenacious KGB officer turned modern-day tsar. Understanding his rise to power provides the keys to understanding the shift in the energy trade from Saudi Arabia to Russia. This powerful new position threatens to unravel the political dominance of the United States once and for all.
  • Discover how political coups, hostile takeovers, and assassinations have brought Russia to the center of the world's energy market
  • Follow Putin's rise to power and how it has led to an upsetting of the global balance of trade
  • Learn how Russia toppled a generation of robber barons and positioned itself as the most powerful force in the energy market
  • Study Putin's long-range plans and their potential impact on the United States and the U.S. dollar
Learn More
The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped from America’s Grasp
T. Boone Pickens
T. Boone Pickens Founder, BP Capital Management
X The First Billion is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America’s Energy Future
T. Boone Pickens, founder, BP Capital Management
Both a riveting account of a life spent pulling off improbable triumphs and a report back from the front of the global-energy and natural-resource wars, The First Billion Is the Hardest tells the story of the remarkable late-life comeback that brought the famed oilman and maverick back from bankruptcy and clinical depression. Along the way, the man often called the “Oracle of Oil” shares the insights that have made him a legend–and describes the billion-dollar bets he is now making in hopes of securing America’s energy independence. Learn More
The First Billion is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America’s Energy Future
David Stockman
David Stockman Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan
X The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America (2013)
David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan

The Great Deformation is a searing look at Washington’s craven response to the recent myriad of financial crises and fiscal cliffs. It counters conventional wisdom with an eighty-year revisionist history of how the American state—especially the Federal Reserve—has fallen prey to the politics of crony capitalism and the ideologies of fiscal stimulus, monetary central planning, and financial bailouts. These forces have left the public sector teetering on the edge of political dysfunction and fiscal collapse and have caused America’s private enterprise foundation to morph into a speculative casino that swindles the masses and enriches the few.

Stockman’s analysis skewers Keynesian spenders and GOP tax-cutters alike, showing how they converged to bloat the welfare state, perpetuate the military-industrial complex, and deplete the revenue base—even as the Fed’s massive money printing allowed politicians to enjoy “deficits without tears.” But these policies have also fueled new financial bubbles and favored Wall Street with cheap money and rigged stock and bond markets, while crushing Main Street savers and punishing family budgets with soaring food and energy costs. The Great Deformation explains how we got here and why these warped, crony capitalist policies are an epochal threat to free market prosperity and American political democracy.

Learn More
The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America (2013)
James Turk
James Turk Founder, GoldMoney and John Rubino
X The Money Bubble: What to do Before it Pops (2014)
James Turk, founder, GoldMoney and John Rubino
In their 2004 book The Coming Collapse of the Dollar, James Turk and John Rubino advised readers to bet against the housing bubble before it popped and to buy gold before it soared. Those were literally the two best investment ideas of the decade. Now Turk and Rubino are back to say that history is about to repeat. Instead of addressing the causes of the 2008 financial crisis, the world's governments have continued along the same path, accumulating even more debt and inflating even bigger financial bubbles. So another -- even bigger -- crisis is coming. Whether it ends up being called a "crack-up boom" or "the End of Paper Money" or "the Second Great Depression," it will change everything, from the kinds of investments that create new fortunes to the kinds of money that most of us save and spend. Among many other things, the authors explain: • How governments are hiding the scope of the problems they face. • Why the world's paper currencies will soon stop functioning as money. • How you can protect your savings from the threats posed by this transition from "unsound" paper currencies to "sound" money like gold and silver. • How you can actually make money -- perhaps a lot of it -- during this transition. "Because the Money Bubble involves the world's major currencies rather than just a discrete asset class like houses or tech stocks, its bursting will be both far more devastating for the unprepared and far more profitable for those able to understand it and act accordingly. Our goal is to usher you into this small but happy second group." Learn More
The Money Bubble: What to do Before it Pops (2014)
Doug Casey
Doug Casey Founder, Casey Research
X Right on the Money: Doug Casey on Economics, Investing and the Ways of the Real World (2013)
Doug Casey (with Louis James)
Investment guru Doug Casey made headlines with the financial approach he advocated in Totally Incorrect. Casey believes that the best returns come from going against the grain, and taking a closer look at what everyone else is leaving behind. This rational approach to speculation struck a chord with the investing public, inspiring the follow-up book Right on the Money: Doug Casey on Economics, Investing, and the Ways of the Real World with Louis James. In Right on the Money, Casey expands upon the basic ideas presented in Totally Incorrect, and translates them into actionable steps to take today to ensure a secure financial future. In a series of forty interviews, Casey presents his views on various topics, including investments, assets, real estate, and ethics. With his usual candor, he advocates for immediate action and lays down the path from idea to investment. Regardless of your position on each topic, you'll be forced to consider a perspective you've never before considered on topics such as: • Protecting your assets with educated speculation • The pros and cons of gold, cattle, and real estate • Ethics of investing and the morality of money • The impact of the EU, Africa, Egypt, and North Korea No matter what topic he focuses on, Casey's primary message is always clear: act now. Stop paralysis by analysis and take the leap. You only get one financial future, and it's up to you to make it as secure and comfortable as possible. In Right on the Money: Doug Casey on Economics, Investing, and the Ways of the Real World with Louis James, Casey presents the case for investing against the grain, and reaping the rewards others have passed over. Learn More
Right on the Money: Doug Casey on Economics, Investing and the Ways of the Real World (2013)
X Totally Incorrect
Doug Casey, Founder, Casey Research
This, says libertarian philosopher, famous speculator, and free-market advocate Doug Casey, is not the time to cower like a pack of whipped dogs. It's a time to speak out against ever-increasing government meddling in US citizens' lives... the treacherous lure of the nanny state... the global-warming hoax... the dangers of Obamacare... the domestic terrorist organization called TSA... the futility of voting... and much more. Read the views of a contrarian who is not afraid to speak his mind – on everything under the sun. Learn More
Totally Incorrect
James Dines
James Dines Author, The Dines Letter
X How Investors Can Make Money Using Mass Psychology: A Guide to Your Relationship with Money (1996)
James Dines, author, The Dines Letter
Our Classic Pick: Called a "classic" by Forbes Magazine, this revolutionary study of Mass Psychology of the financial markets shows how investors can make money using it. Understand the spontaneous "group electricity" bordering on mass telepathy, of Wall Street. Studies Mass Psychology in the investing arenas, and shows how to protect against being caught up by it and how to control it. Investigates neurotic relationships to money and gambling. The only modern book to address the Mass Psychology phenomenon in financial markets, updating the 1841 classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Learn More
How Investors Can Make Money Using Mass Psychology: A Guide to Your Relationship with Money (1996)
Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan Former Chairman, Federal Reserve Board
X The Map and the Territory 2.0: Risk, Human Nature, and the Future of Forecasting
Alan Greenspan, Former Federal Reserve Chairman
Alan Greenspan embarked on a rigorous and far-reaching multiyear examination of how Homo economicus predicts the economic future, and how it can predict it better. Economic risk is a fact of life in every realm, from home to business to government at all levels. Whether we're conscious of it or not, we make wagers on the future virtually every day, one way or another. Very often, however, we're steering by out-of-date maps, when we're not driven by factors entirely beyond our conscious control. "The Map and the Territory" is an effort to update our forecasting conceptual grid. It integrates the history of economic prediction, the new work of behavioral economists, and the fruits of the author's own remarkable career to offer a thrillingly lucid and empirically based grounding in what we can know about economic forecasting and what we can't. The book explores how culture is and isn't destiny and probes what we can predict about the world's biggest looming challenges, from debt and the reform of the welfare state to natural disasters in an age of global warming. It also includes an updated section on the role of gold in a modern world. Learn More
The Map and the Territory 2.0: Risk, Human Nature, and the Future of Forecasting
X The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
Alan Greenspan, Former Chairman, Federal Reserve Board
"The Age Of Turbulence" is Alan Greenspan’s incomparable reckoning with the contemporary financial world, channeled through his own experiences working in the command room of the global economy longer and with greater effect than any other single living figure. Following the arc of his remarkable life's journey through his more than eighteen-year tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board to the present, in the second half of The Age of Turbulence Dr. Greenspan embarks on a magnificent tour d’horizon of the global economy. The distillation of a life’s worth of wisdom and insight into an elegant expression of a coherent worldview, The Age of Turbulence will stand as Alan Greenspan’s personal and intellectual legacy. Learn More
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
Willem  Middelkoop
Willem Middelkoop Founder, Commodity Discovery Fund
X The Big Reset: War on Gold and the Financial Endgame (2014)
Willem Middelkoop, founder, Commodity Discovery Fund
A system reset is imminent. Probably even before 2020, the world’s financial system will need to find a different anchor. The dollar has been at the center of the monetary system since the Second World War, but decades of money printing have caused a gradual but relentless dollar devaluation. In a desperate attempt to maintain this dollar system, the United States has waged a secret war on gold since the 1960s. China and Russia have pierced through the American smokescreen around gold and the dollar and are no longer willing to continue lending to the United States. Both countries have been accumulating enormous amounts of gold, positioning themselves for the next phase of the global financial system. There are only two options: a financial reset planned well in advance, or a hastily implemented one on the back of a dollar crisis. The United States, realizing the dollar will lose its prominent role, seems to be planning a monetary reset that will surprise many. It will be designed to keep the United States in the driving seat, but will include strong roles for the Euro and China’s Renminbi. And it is likely gold will be reintroduced as one of the pillars of this next phase of the global financial system. Insiders claim gold could be revalued up to $7,000 per troy ounce during this process. Learn More
The Big Reset: War on Gold and the Financial Endgame (2014)