IV

The Macro Thinker

Economics, monetary theory, and cycles

Keynes vs. Hayek, monetary theory, business cycles, and the economic foundations that shape every asset class. Understand the macro forces that move markets before you trade them.

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
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
Oaktree Capital Memos
Howard Marks
Howard Marks on risk, cycles, and second-level thinking. Essential reading for understanding market psychology and contrarian investing.
L2
Druckenmiller: Principles from Practice
Stanley Druckenmiller (via Schwager, interviews)
The greatest macro trader of his generation never wrote a book. Synthesized from three decades of interviews, conference talks, and Schwager's New Market Wizards: concentration, liquidity, fat pitches, and radical flexibility.
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
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.
L3
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
John Maynard Keynes
The book that reshaped economics. Keynes on aggregate demand, liquidity preference, the multiplier, and why markets don't always self-correct.
L3
Prices and Production
Friedrich Hayek
Hayek's counter to Keynes: how credit expansion distorts the structure of production and inevitably leads to bust. The Austrian business cycle theory.
L3
The Alchemy of Finance & Reflexivity
George Soros
Soros' theory of reflexivity: feedback loops between market prices and fundamentals that create boom-bust cycles. The philosophical foundation behind the Quantum Fund.
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.
L5
Econometrics & FX
Various
Applied econometrics with a focus on foreign exchange markets. Regression, time series, and the empirical tools for macro-financial research.
L7
Physical & Financial Commodities
Various
The intersection of physical commodity markets and financial derivatives. Supply chains, storage, term structure, and the financialization of commodities.
L7
Fixed Income Fundamentals
Various
Bonds, yield curves, duration, convexity, and rate trading. The largest asset class in the world, and the one most finance curricula cover worst.