Stocks for the long run, Jeremy Siegel, 1994 - Author makes a very strong case for equities using long-term stats and history of over 100 years.There are a lot of books that are good at one thing or two - say valuation, or stock-picking or behavioral finance but this one I thought was a well-rounded book as it covers everything you will ever want - from history of crashes and causes, how economy and markets interact (makes a strong case from history why they are decoupled with a lag of 6 months on avg.), how bond markets work and how they compare with equities, concept of risk and ways in which to objectively quantify and measure it, portfolio construction, how stock indexes and ETFs came about and so on.
The different kinds of indexes from value-weighted, market cap weighted, free-float weighted and the most interesting of all that I found here - fundamentally weighted (earnings weighted), sector rotation, impact of various taxes, what creates shareholder value and the numerous ways in which to measure them and various strategies that outperformed the market historically (spoiler: Everything reverts to mean).
There is also a detailed discussion on how macro-environment affects stocks - from gold, inflation, currencies, devaluation, fed policies etc. - everything argued with stats and history. There’s a detailed discussion on volatility, even technical analysis from Dow Theory, using moving averages, trends and momentum investing. This book really is the complete package as it dispassionately observes and covers a phenomenal amount of content - all of which matter. There is a short section on behavioral and psychological aspects, which borrows a lot from Kahneman’s work understandably. It is thoroughly enjoyable and provides a great map to navigate current crisis. 10/10