Last week I shared that I read a biography of Joe Ricketts, founder of Ameritrade (see here). One of his main competitors—and the company that acquired Ameritrade in 2020, over a decade after Ricketts sold it—was Charles Schwab Corporation. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about the discount brokerage model and the era that birthed the model, so I read the autobiography of Charles Schwab.

Invested describes sixty or so years of Schwab’s journey in his own words. Interestingly, what eventually became Charles Schwab Corporation started in 1962 as a biweekly investing newsletter called Investment Indicators. Annual subscriptions were $60, and at its peak it had about 3,000 subscribers. No money management, just overviews of the economy, insights on select growth stocks, and hypothetical portfolios.

This newsletter catered to independent investors who were smart and capable of making their own decisions. The understanding gained from serving this demographic formed the foundation for what Schwab built over the next sixty years: a place for individual investors to manage their own investing.

Schwab’s journey to build his namesake firm and amass a personal fortune worth over $10 billion had its share of ups and downs. He does a great job of describing each segment of his journey and how he navigated its specific challenges in detail. He also describes what it’s like to navigate multiple stock market crashes when you run a brokerage that makes money from stock trades (spoiler: volume dries up, the brokerage business gets hit hard).

The most interesting aspect of his journey to me was his position in the early 1970s, when he was in his mid-30s. He described himself as “floundering.” He had zero assets and lots of debt. He was recently divorced, had young kids, and was living in a one-bedroom apartment while still trying to build his then floundering firm. Close to giving up, he began attending evening law school classes. But he pushed through and, with some lucky breaks in 1975, had a vision for a new model for individual investors, the discount brokerage.

I’m super interested in understanding the 1968–1982 era, and this book provided another great entrepreneurial perspective of the era and how to navigate challenging macro times.

If you’re interested in learning about Charles Schwab, Charles Schwab Corporation, the asset management industry, or how a nontechnical founder built what I consider a tech company, consider reading Invested.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 79 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued by challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my fifteenth weekend, and I added two more books:

• Billion Dollar Whale by Bradley Hope and Tom Wright
• Molly’s Game by Molly Bloom

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will be of value.

Last week, I read about John Bogle’s journey to build Vanguard into an index-investing powerhouse (see here). That biography mentioned discount brokerages having been launched in the 1970s. Ameritrade was one of them, and I wanted to learn more about it, so I read the memoir of Joe Ricketts, founder of Ameritrade.

The Harder You Work, the Luckier You Get is a candid recount of Ricketts’s life in his own words. It details how he went from college dropout to struggling stockbroker with a growing family to founding his own discount brokerage firm in Omaha. Ricketts’s story was interesting because he didn’t found his firm (which ended up being a technology firm) near the financial capital, Wall Street, or the tech capital, San Francisco. He founded and scaled his firm in Omaha, Nebraska. Another thing that stood out to me was how regulation played a huge role in his success. In 1975, the government eliminated fixed commissions on stock trades, which opened the door to negotiated commissions and a new business model that Wall Street had never seen (and wasn’t ready for): discount brokerage. Ricketts and three partners launched First Omaha Securities, the predecessor to Ameritrade, that same year.

Ricketts’s early years were also interesting to me because they align with my interest in understanding the 1968–1982 era. Ricketts provides lots of perspective on this era and on how his firm navigated raging inflation and a bear stock market. A point Ricketts emphasized, and that I’ve read elsewhere, is that between 1968 and 1982, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 75% of its value, adjusted for inflation (inflation peaked around 12%).

Anyone interested in learning more about Ricketts, Ameritrade, the stock brokerage business, or how a nontechnical founder built a tech company should consider reading The Harder You Work, the Luckier You Get.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 78 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued by challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was a holiday weekend and my fourteenth weekend. I challenged myself a bit and added four more books instead of two:

• BLOW by Bruce Porter
• Bitcoin Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
• Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
• American Kingpin by Nick Bilton

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will be of value.

A few months ago, I learned about a biography of John Bogle that describes how he created the index-investing revolution in America by building Vanguard. I didn’t read the book then, but when I heard that he started Vanguard in 1975, I got very interested because that’s in the 1968–1982 Nixon era I’m researching. Eric Balchunas, a senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg who wrote the book, also covers the topics of how Vanguard got into the ETF business and how the mechanics of ETFs work because he was curious about them.

The Bogle Effect is part biography and part history lesson on index investing. It details Bogle founding Vanguard as a way to save his job but then realizing the power of index investing and its potential impact on investors. Fees to buy or sell stock were high in those days, and Bogle’s decision to structure Vanguard as a company owned by the investors in its funds, not Bogle, was a game changer. It led to Vanguard disrupting the Wall Street fee structure, offering the cheapest index investing funds, amassing over $10.1 trillion in assets under management as of April 2025 (source), and employing 20,000 people. I was also interested to learn that even though Vanguard is the leader in index ETFs, Bogle wasn’t a fan of them.

This book gives a great overview of Bogle’s life and personality. It’s also an interesting education on the history of index investing and how it became such a big force in today’s stock market. Anyone interested in either of these should consider giving The Bogle Effect a read.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 77 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued by challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my thirteenth weekend, and I added two more books:

• Unique Ability by Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller
• Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will be of value.

A few months ago, I was listening to The Slow Hunch podcast, on which the founders of the venture capital firm Union Square Ventures (USV) were interviewed. Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham are the founding partners; they shared stories of founding the firm and notable investments such as Twitter, Etsy, Cloudflare, and Coinbase.

Burnham mentioned a framework they used to develop their initial investment strategy. Where he and Wilson thought they were in the period’s technology cycle played a big role in their strategy. It led them to focus on investing in the application layer of the internet because, they realized, the infrastructure phase was behind them. They got this framework from a book Burnham had read. It had a profound impact on him and positioned USV to become one of the top investment firms by identifying the right founders and companies given their understanding of the technology cycle. You can listen to the sections of the interview where Brad talks about the book and how they used it here and here.

This piqued my interest and led to my booking that book, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, by the Venezuelan economist Carlota Perez. The book is a blend of a history and a framework. It describes a way of thinking about cycles created by new technology and financial capital and analyzes the five major technology revolutions over the last 250 years and their implications for society: the industrial revolution; steam and railways; steel, electricity, and heavy engineering; oil, cars, and mass production; and information technology and telecommunications.

The core premise of this book is that the combination of new technology and financial capital applied to it creates a technology revolution that leads to speculative bubbles.

According to Perez, each technology cycle lasts roughly 50 years and follows a consistent evolution through three phases:

• Installation. New technology is created, and infrastructure is created to support it.
• Turning point. Speculators’ unrealistic expectations related to the new technology cause a recession or financial crisis.
• Deployment. New technology is distributed widely across society and is accepted, with new rules and regulations being implemented to avoid future crashes.

The book dives deep into the economic and societal impact of each phase, which I found very useful.

Anyone interested in understanding how long technology cycles work, how capital and new technology complement each other, or how speculative technology bubbles work should consider giving Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital a read. It’s dense and full of lots of material that will make you stop and think, so it isn’t a casual read. But Perez’s framing is especially helpful to me as I think about the current AI wave and where we likely are in the long AI cycle.

Books are connected to other books, but it’s not easy to see the connections unless you read an entire book. That makes how books are networked, or connected, invisible. The primary way I discover books is seeing them mentioned in another book. I’m constantly making mental connections of ideas, periods, events, or people mentioned in several books. This blog shows the connections between books, but it hasn’t been easy to understand how many connections a book has . . . until now.

Starting today, when you view the Library page, you’ll notice that next to each book is the number of other books in my library with a connection to it. It’s an easy way to quantify a book’s network. If the quantity of connected books is interesting, you can easily see each connection by clicking “Learn more” to see the book’s profile.

I’m excited about this. I haven’t seen anything like it on other blogs. It’s helped me think more deeply about book connections. I hope that understanding how networked a book in my library is will help people find books they find useful.

If you want to see for yourself, check it out:

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 76 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued by challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my twelfth weekend, and I added two more books:

• Angel by Jason Calacanis
• American Pain by John Temple

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will be of value.

Last week I shared a framework book, Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules, which details the principles Buffett used to run his partnership, Buffett Partnership Ltd, in his pre–Berkshire Hathaway days. When I read that book, it reminded me that few investors who are active today were also actively investing in the 1960s and 1970s, like Buffett.

Another person who meets those criteria is Howard Marks, cofounder of Oaktree Capital. Marks has written two books, one of which I read twice. So, I decided to read his other book, The Most Important Thing.

This book is a framework book that details the investing principles that Marks has learned over his many decades of investing, many of which led to the outsize success of Oaktree Capital. Each chapter is dedicated to one of the 19 principles and explains it thoroughly. My favorite was the chapter on understanding risk.

This book is a good tool for anyone interested in investing or understanding how public markets work. I enjoy Marks’s writing, and this book didn’t disappoint. I’ll definitely read it periodically as a refresher.