MP
Manias, Panics, and Crashes
A sweeping economic history of financial bubbles and their collapses, showing how the same psychological and credit-driven patterns repeat from the Dutch tulip mania to modern crashes.
Buy on Amazon →
A FundRover side project
A jar of good ideas — books, courses & documentaries worth your time.
Hand-picked by Namit Thakkar for anyone who wants to understand money, markets and the people who move them a little better. Start with the books below, or reach for a course or a documentary instead.
23Books
16Courses
50Documentaries
Why “Jellybeans”?
Every jar of jellybeans has a dozen different flavours in it — some familiar, some you’d never have picked on your own, and every one worth trying at least once. That’s exactly how I think about learning.
As a Mutual Fund Distributor, I’ve read, watched and sat through a lot of books, courses and documentaries about money, markets and the people who move them. Some were dense and technical, some were pure drama, and a few completely changed how I think about risk. I kept a private list for myself — it eventually grew into this jar.
Jellybeans is that list, cleaned up and shared: no ratings, no rankings — just a handful of picks from every “flavour”: investing, behavioural psychology, financial history, business, and a few honest documentaries about how markets (and people) actually behave. Reach in, grab one, and see where it takes you.
This site is a personal, non-commercial reading list — not investment advice. For that, and to know more about who’s behind it: About Namit on FundRover →
Books23
Markets, money, behavioural psychology and a few of the best business stories ever written — with a one-line summary and a link to buy each one.
TN
The New Market Wizards
Candid interviews with elite traders revealing how they think about risk, discipline and edge — a masterclass in the psychology behind consistently profitable trading.
Buy on Amazon →KA
Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations
A readable history of growth economics, tracing how economists came to see ideas and knowledge — not just capital and labour — as the real engine of long-run prosperity.
Buy on Amazon →SA
Stabilizing an Unstable Economy
The book behind the “Minsky Moment” — explains why capitalist financial systems are inherently prone to instability, and why calm periods quietly set up the next crisis.
Buy on Amazon →FB
Flash Boys
A fast-paced look inside high-frequency trading, showing how speed, technology and market structure quietly reshaped who really profits on Wall Street.
Buy on Amazon →TB
The Black Swan
An argument for taking rare, high-impact, unpredictable events seriously — and building portfolios and decisions that can survive them rather than pretend they won’t happen.
Buy on Amazon →TF
Thinking, Fast and Slow
The Nobel laureate’s landmark map of the two systems driving human judgment, and the predictable biases that quietly distort investing, planning and everyday decisions.
Buy on Amazon →BA
Barbarians at the Gate
The definitive account of the RJR Nabisco leveraged buyout — a real-life drama of ego, greed and dealmaking that defined the 1980s LBO boom.
Buy on Amazon →TO
The Origin of Financial Crises
A concise, contrarian critique of the efficient-market view, arguing that credit cycles — not random shocks — are the real source of boom and bust.
Buy on Amazon →ML
My Life as a Quant
A physicist-turned-Wall-Street-quant’s memoir on building the models behind modern derivatives, and a sober reflection on the limits of applying physics to markets.
Buy on Amazon →LP
Liar's Poker
Lewis’s classic, wickedly funny insider account of 1980s Salomon Brothers and the birth of the modern bond-trading culture.
Buy on Amazon →BE
Black Edge
The inside story of the SEC’s pursuit of SAC Capital and Steve Cohen — a gripping look at where “edge” ends and insider trading begins.
Buy on Amazon →DO
Den of Thieves
The Pulitzer-winning account of the 1980s insider-trading scandals that took down Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky and reshaped Wall Street regulation.
Buy on Amazon →TG
The Greatest Trade Ever
How hedge fund manager John Paulson quietly built and executed the biggest, most contrarian trade in Wall Street history — betting against the housing bubble.
Buy on Amazon →PB
Pit Bull
A champion trader’s memoir on the discipline, losses and mindset shift it took to go from a struggling stock picker to one of the great short-term traders.
Buy on Amazon →TC
The Chastening
A detailed account of the 1990s emerging-market crises and the IMF’s role in them — essential reading on how fast global capital can turn on a country.
Buy on Amazon →TG
Traders, Guns & Money
A sharp, often funny insider’s guide to derivatives — demystifying the products and incentives that quietly drive enormous risk through the financial system.
Buy on Amazon →LO
Lords of Finance
The Pulitzer-winning story of the four central bankers whose decisions in the 1920s helped set the stage for the Great Depression — a masterclass in monetary policy gone wrong.
Buy on Amazon →TB
Too Big to Fail
A blow-by-blow, insider narrative of the 2008 financial crisis, weekend by weekend, as regulators and bank CEOs scrambled to prevent a total collapse.
Buy on Amazon →WG
When Genius Failed
The story of Long-Term Capital Management — a fund of Nobel laureates and star traders whose brilliant models still couldn’t save it from collapse.
Buy on Amazon →GT
Good to Great
A research-driven look at what separates merely good companies from truly great, enduring ones — leadership, discipline and rigorous decisions over hype.
Buy on Amazon →CO
Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst
A former star telecom analyst’s honest account of the conflicts of interest between research and investment banking in the late-1990s bull market.
Buy on Amazon →II
Investing in REITs
A practical, approachable guide to understanding and evaluating real estate investment trusts as a portfolio building block.
Buy on Amazon →Prefer to watch or study instead?
The same list, in two other flavours — free courses from MIT, Wharton and Yale, and 50 documentaries on markets, fraud and billionaires.