Read CAPITAL IDEAS by Peter Bernstein

Last week I felt the need for a organized, comprehensive, textbook-ish explanation of Modern Portfolio Theory and other related modern financial concepts. I found several in Amazon that looked, but are expensive so I delayed ordering them.

But Sunday I checked out the book CAPITAL IDEAS by Peter Bernstein, thinking it was a history of Wall Street, and from reading the first 50 or so pages last night, it's obviously the comprehensive look at Modern Portfolio Theory I've been looking for, though written in a more interesting way than most textbooks, and organized in a way that makes sense to me, as a history or chronology of the events. Plus, he goes into what he knows of the personal lives of the people involved, helping to humanize the events.

I remember seeing glowing reviews of his book on risk, but didn't realize before the value in his earlier books. This is the first one of his I've read, and now I know I'll be reading the rest.

Burton Malkiel's A RANDOM WALK DOWN WALL STREET is good but doesn't explain these things in the step by step order of their historical development. So if you've read that book but you're still fuzzy on how the pieces fit together, CAPITAL IDEAS seems to be the solution.


Capital Ideas
Capital Ideas