library

Over 1500 useful articles on investing, accounting and business. Trying to be the best investment library on the web.

In this “library”, we have assembled resources for investors under a range of headings, which we add to, over time. The articles and papers have all been produced in pdf format, so they should be easy to print off – we believe that it’s easier, quicker and more effective to read on paper than on a screen (but of course, you are welcome to read them on screen).

If you click on each category, there is a sub-page with some of the PDFs highlighted.

We are always interested in useful articles, please feel free to share with us at info@behind thebalancesheet.com. Thanks!

Click on the headings to see some of the picks in each section. Sub folders will take you direct to the folders in Dropbox

Academic Papers

These are filed according to the following categories and include both academic papers and commentary from the likes of AQR who produce academic quality research.

Earnings Quality

Effective Investing

Executive Compensation

Other

Accounting Issues

A dry subject but there are some great articles in here on topics like the worst accounting scandals and even Chain Saw Al Dunlap’s obituary. I may be a geek, but honestly, this can be a fascinating subject.

Fraud

Non-GAAP

Returns

Other

Behavioural Finance

Lots has been written on this bit we think we have some unusual content, notably some blogs from Essential Analytics.

Books

We respect copyright and I don’t like the fact that my book is freely available in PDF so I will not offer books. In fact the only copyrighted content that we have in the library to our knowledge is certain Credit Suisse papers by Michael Mauboussin who thinks they should be freely available and they are available in multiple places on the internet, similarly with Nick Sleep’s letters where we have also made the author aware. So here you will find mainly periodicals and free books.

Business Strategy

A big subject and one we don’t pretend to have cracked in any detail – there could be a whole library here. But note the memos from Bill Gates, Howard Schulz and others plus stories about great entrepreneurs (Diller, Henry Singleton of Teledyne and others) plus much more, including Zack Kanter’s piece on Amazon, commentary from BCG, HBR and others.

Career as an Analyst

The idea here is to help those who would like to get a job as an analyst, hence a quite varied selection, including advice from Bill Gurley and Steve Jobs.

Current Markets and Outlook

By definition this stuff is out of date – you can see at the top-level directory that there are historical quarterly directories. Most relevant as we wrote this webpage was the 2022 outlooks folder.

Economics

Commentary on monetary policy, interests rate forecasts and two specific folders covering debt and the all important topic of inflation.

Inflation

Debt

Great Investors

In the Great Investors Section, we have all the greats represented. We include investor letters, interviews, commentary from other investors and more in an attempt to understand what makes these greats tick, and to see what we can learn from them:

Ben Graham

Berkshire

Peter Bernstein

Howards Marks’ Greatest Hits

Warren Buffett

GMO

Joel Greenblatt

Seth Klarman

Peter Lynch

Michael Mauboussin(OK, technically not an investor but his writings are awesome)

Charlie Munger

Walter Schloss

And many more

Investment Philosophy

A look at the philosophy of some great investors and some great communicators – understanding how others do it helps you frame your own philosophy but in the end you have to design your own technique to suit your own circumstances and more important psychology.

Letters to Investors

Lots of fund letters, arranged by quarter – we shall at some point create some files of the better investors’ letters by investor. It’s in the plan.

2020

2021

2022