Attributions and sources

Everyone this programme learns from, named.

This programme teaches methods developed by working analysts, academics and investors over eighty years. The explanations, worked examples, exercises, case labs and data assembly are ours. The ideas belong to the people below. Where we quote them we say so and keep it short; where we teach their framework we name them, in the text, at the point a learner meets it.

None of the people or publishers named here has endorsed this programme, reviewed it, or is connected with it in any way. This page exists because naming your sources is what a teacher does.

Books and frameworks

Grouped as the curriculum groups them, and ordered by the phase where the programme first leans on each one. "What we take" is the honest answer: in almost every case a method or a framework, taught in our own words with our own examples, not the author's prose.

A1. Accounting & Financial Statement Analysis · Phases 1–2

• Mike Piper, Accounting Made Simple Free/Paid · P0–P1The fastest honest on-ramp to debits/credits and the three statements; a weekend read that removes the fear
• Kieso, Weygandt & Warfield, Intermediate Accounting Paid · P1The reference textbook for the hard topics (leases, deferred tax, revenue, consolidation); read assigned chapters, don't cover-to-cover. [I–A]
• Thomas Ittelson, Financial Statements Paid · P1A plain-language, transaction-by-transaction build of how the statements move together; excellent linkage intuition
• EY, US GAAP vs IFRS: The Basics Free · P1The free side-by-side standards reference; pair with Deloitte's iasplus.com for Ind AS/IFRS detail
• Howard Schilit, Jeremy Perler & Yoni Engelhart, Financial Shenanigans (4e) Paid · P2The forensic-accounting bible; the earnings/cash-flow/metric shenanigan taxonomy and the detection test for each. The Phase 2 spine
• Pat Dorsey, The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing Paid · P2The best bridge from statements to analysis: ratios, ROIC, moats, and valuation in one accessible package
• Charles Mulford & Eugene Comiskey, The Financial Numbers Game Paid · P2The forensic companion to Schilit, organised by the accounting mechanism rather than by the story: revenue recognition, expense capitalisation, reserve releases and the cash-flow classification games, each with the disclosure that gives it away
• Krishna Palepu & Paul Healy, Business Analysis and Valuation Paid · P2The framework text linking strategy → accounting analysis → financial analysis → valuation; the analyst's mental model in book form
• Stephen Penman, Financial Statement Analysis and Security Valuation Paid · P2–P3The rigorous accounting-based valuation treatment (residual income, quality of earnings); advanced but foundational
• White, Sondhi & Fried, The Analysis and Use of Financial Statements Paid · P2A deep reference on adjusting and comparing statements across policies; the normalization discipline
• K.R. Subramanyam, Financial Statement Analysis Paid · P2A thorough FSA text widely used in India; good on ratio interpretation and cash-flow analysis
• CFA Program Curriculum, Level I & II, Financial Reporting & Analysis Paid · P1–P2The single most efficient structured coverage of FSA and quality-of-earnings; readings are excerpted widely. [I–A]

A2. Valuation & Corporate Finance · Phase 3 (with P8)

• Aswath Damodaran, The Little Book of Valuation Paid · P3The entry point: DCF, relative valuation, and the value drivers, in ~200 readable pages. Start here
• Aswath Damodaran, Investment Valuation (3e) Paid · P3The complete valuation reference; read assigned chapters (cost of capital, FCFF/FCFE, terminal value, relative valuation). The workhorse. [I–A]
• Aswath Damodaran, The Dark Side of Valuation Paid · P3, P5Valuing the hard cases: young, high-growth, money-losing, and cyclical/commodity firms
• Aswath Damodaran, Narrative and Numbers Paid · P8The discipline of turning a business story into a valuation and every claim into a number; the deep-dive backbone
• McKinsey (Koller, Goedhart & Wessels), Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies (8e, 2025) Paid · P3The corporate-finance authority on ROIC, growth, and value creation; the Value = NOPAT·(1 − g/ROIC)/(WACC − g) logic
• Alfred Rappaport & Michael Mauboussin, Expectations Investing (rev. ed.) Paid · P8Reverse-DCF / expectations investing: read what the price implies, then judge it. The Phase 8 reverse-DCF spine
• Joshua Rosenbaum & Joshua Pearl, Investment Banking Paid · P3The modeling mechanics: comps, precedent transactions, DCF, and LBO, done the practitioner's way
• William Thorndike, The Outsiders Paid · P3, P6Eight CEOs who allocated capital brilliantly; the capital-allocation casebook behind C7
• Michael Mauboussin, Capital Allocation (Counterpoint report) Free · P3The free deep dive on the five uses of capital and buybacks-only-below-value
• Zerodha Varsity, Financial Modelling module Free · P3A free, India-based, hands-on modeling walkthrough; complements Rosenbaum & Pearl. [B–I]

A3. Business Models, Strategy & Moats · Phase 4 (with P8)

• Pat Dorsey, The Little Book That Builds Wealth Paid · P4The cleanest introduction to the five moat sources and what is not a moat. The Phase 4 on-ramp
• Bruce Greenwald & Judd Kahn, Competition Demystified Paid · P4Collapses Porter's forces to barriers to entry, tested by market-share stability and incumbent returns; the sharpest moat lens
• Hamilton Helmer, 7 Powers Paid · P4The seven durable advantages, each as Benefit + Barrier; the rigorous "why does the advantage persist?" framework. [I–A]
• Michael Mauboussin, Measuring the Moat (Counterpoint report) Free · P4, P8The free masterwork tying moats to persistent ROIC > WACC, the Competitive Advantage Period, and mean reversion
• Michael Porter, Competitive Strategy Paid · P4The source text for the Five Forces, generic strategies, and the value chain
• Edward Chancellor (ed.), Capital Returns Paid · P4, P5The capital-cycle lens: watch supply, not just demand; where cyclical value is made and destroyed
• Clayton Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma Paid · P4Disruption theory: sustaining vs low-end vs new-market; how good companies lose
• Michael Mauboussin, The Base Rate Book (Counterpoint report) Free · P4, P8Free; the outside-view discipline (how often does the growth a price implies actually happen?)

A4. Sector-Specific & Special Situations · Phase 5 (with P3)

• Aswath Damodaran, data library & sector primers (stern.nyu.edu) Free · P5Free industry betas, margins, ROIC, and multiples by sector for India and the US; the Phase 5 quantitative backbone
• Aswath Damodaran, Valuing Financial Service Firms (free paper) + The Dark Side of Valuation (financials, cyclicals) Free/Paid · P5The method for the sectors where accounting differs: P/B–ROE and excess-return for banks/NBFCs, and mid-cycle normalization for commodities
• CFA Program Curriculum, industry & company analysis, and the financial-institutions readings Paid · P5The structured coverage of sector KPIs and the P/EV/VNB toolkit for life insurers; read the relevant readings by sector. [I–A]
• Joel Greenblatt, You Can Be a Stock Market Genius Paid · P3, P5Spin-offs, restructurings, and special situations; the under-covered corners where inefficiency lives
• The program's own sector KPI cheat-sheets Free · P5, P8All 22 sub-sectors: model, KPIs with thresholds, valuation lens, red flags. Keep it beside every sector teardown

A5. Investing Philosophy, Mental Models & Behavioral · Phase 6 (with P8–P10)

• Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor (Jason Zweig ed.) Paid · P6Mr. Market, margin of safety, and the temperament of the defensive investor; ch. 8 and 20 reward annual re-reading. The foundation
• Benjamin Graham & David Dodd, Security Analysis Paid · P6The deep-value source text; read selectively for the analytical spirit
• Lawrence Cunningham (ed.), The Essays of Warren Buffett Paid · P6Buffett's letters organized by theme; owner earnings, the four filters, pricing power, capital allocation. [B–I]
• Charlie Munger, Poor Charlie's Almanack Paid · P6The latticework of mental models and "The Psychology of Human Misjudgment" (the 25 tendencies, the Lollapalooza effect)
• Peter Lynch, One Up on Wall Street Paid · P6GARP, "invest in what you know," PEG, the six category types, and the ten-bagger
• Howard Marks, The Most Important Thing Paid · P6Second-level thinking, risk, cycles, and market sentiment; the temperament classic
• Philip Fisher, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits Paid · P8Scuttlebutt and the fifteen points; the qualitative-research spine of the deep dive
• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow Paid · P6System 1/2, prospect theory, loss aversion (~2×); the source of the bias catalog. [I–A]
• Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein, Nudge Paid · P6Choice architecture: the arrangement of a decision's context is never neutral, and the default (whatever happens when a person does nothing) is the part that moves behaviour. The book behind the temperament capstone's automated plan, dated rebalance and uninstalled app. [B–I]
• Seth Klarman, Margin of Safety P6Absolute-value, risk-first investing; out of print but circulated. [Paid/Free-scanned]
• Joel Greenblatt, The Little Book That Beats the Market Paid · P6The Magic Formula (earnings yield + return on capital) and its logic
• Mohnish Pabrai, The Dhandho Investor Paid · P6Asymmetry: "heads I win, tails I don't lose much."
• Guy Spier, The Education of a Value Investor Paid · P6, P9Environment design and temperament; how to build the conditions for good decisions
• Terry Smith, Investing for Growth Paid · P6"buy good companies, don't overpay, do nothing"; quality-compounding in practice via annual letters
• Nassim Taleb, Fooled by Randomness / Antifragile Paid · P6, P9Luck, ruin-avoidance, and robustness over prediction; the survival-first mindset. [I–A]
• Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets Paid · P6, P9, P10and Philip Tetlock, Superforecasting. Process over outcome, calibration, and the trainable science of good judgment. [B–I]
• Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto Paid · P6Why a boring, always-run checklist beats expert memory under pressure
• Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money Paid · P6Behaviour as the binding constraint rather than analysis: why a mediocre plan held through a decade beats a superior one abandoned in year three. Short, and the one on this list most worth rereading annually
• John Bogle, Enough Paid · P6The question no checklist asks and no calibration score measures, which is how much is enough, argued from Joseph Heller's answer at a billionaire's party; read it beside the temperament capstone rather than beside the index arithmetic
• Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes Paid · P0, Alland Tiago Forte, Building a Second Brain. The durable atomic-notes knowledge system installed in the orientation week

A6. Macroeconomics & the World Economy · Phase 7

• Ray Dalio, How the Economic Machine Works (video + essay) Free · P7The free 30-minute animation and essay; spending = money + credit, and the two debt cycles. Watch first
• Ray Dalio, Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises Free · P7The anatomy of debt crises and deleveragings, with dozens of case studies; free PDF from Bridgewater
• Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order P7The long-term/reserve-currency "Big Cycle." [Paid/Free-summary]
• N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Economics Paid · P7(or Krugman & Wells). The standard first course in micro and macro; use as a reference
• Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money Paid · P7The narrative history of finance: money, bonds, stocks, insurance, and bubbles
• Charles Kindleberger & Robert Aliber, Manias, Panics, and Crashes Paid · P7The anatomy of bubbles and the Minsky sequence
• Robert Shiller, Irrational Exuberance P7, P11Market-level valuation as its own discipline: the cyclically adjusted earnings ratio, what a decade-scale signal can and cannot tell you, and the freely downloadable data series behind it, which is the one to rebuild rather than quote. [Paid book, free data]
• Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance Paid · P7Central bankers and the road to the Depression; monetary history made vivid
• Carmen Reinhart & Kenneth Rogoff, This Time Is Different Paid · P7Eight centuries of financial folly; the base rates of sovereign and banking crises
• Barry Eichengreen, Exorbitant Privilege Paid · P7The dollar's global role, reserve status, and the Triffin dilemma
• Adam Tooze, Crashed Paid · P7How the 2008 crisis and its aftermath reshaped the world; the eurodollar and global-flows lens. [I–A]
• Ben Bernanke, 21st Century Monetary Policy Paid · P7Central-bank tools and transmission from the inside

A7. Portfolio Construction, Risk & Process · Phase 9

• Howard Marks, Mastering the Market Cycle Paid · P9Where we are in the cycle and how to position for it; pairs with his memos
• Lee Freeman-Shor, The Art of Execution Paid · P9The evidence on selling: winners, losers, and the classic error of selling compounders early
• Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods Paid · P9The history and meaning of risk; probability as the analyst's native language
• Edward Thorp, A Man for All Markets Paid · P9Kelly sizing, edge, and ruin-avoidance from the man who quantified them. [B–I]
• Charles Ellis, Winning the Loser's Game Paid · P9The case for humility, costs, and the active-vs-passive debate, argued fairly
• John Bogle, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing Paid · P9, P11The costs-and-arithmetic case for the index default, stated by the person who built the first one; the position Phase 9 makes you argue against before you may hold anything else
• Burton Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street Paid · P9, P11The efficiency argument in its most readable form, and the book that names the specific claims an active analyst has to defeat rather than ignore. [B–I]
• David Swensen, Pioneering Portfolio Management Paid · P9Institutional allocation from the endowment side: policy portfolio first, illiquidity premia earned rather than assumed, manager selection as a distinct skill
• Antti Ilmanen, Expected Returns Paid · P9, P11The most complete single treatment of where returns actually come from, across asset classes and factors, with the evidence and its limits stated together
• Andrew Ang, Asset Management: A Systematic Approach to Factor Investing Paid · P9Factors as the underlying exposures that asset classes merely package; the reference behind any serious factor-allocation conversation
• CFA Program Curriculum, Level III, Portfolio Management Paid · P9Structured coverage of construction, risk, and IPS discipline

A8. Communication & the Consultant's Toolkit · Phase 10 (thread in all)

• Barbara Minto, The Pyramid Principle Paid · P10, AllConclusion-first, MECE grouping, and structured argument; the memo and deck backbone
• Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data Paid · P10Clean chart and exhibit design; how to make a model and its output trusted
• William Zinsser, On Writing Well Paid · P10, AllClarity, concision, and cutting the clutter from a research memo

A9. India-Specific · threaded through, anchored P0, P5–P6, P10

• Zerodha Varsity, Fundamental Analysis module Free · P0The free India-first on-ramp to statements, ratios, and valuation; start P0 here
• Saurabh Mukherjea et al., Coffee Can Investing / The Unusual Billionaires / Diamonds in the Dust Paid · P5–P6Indian quality-compounder screens (clean accounting, high ROCE, pricing power) applied to real Indian companies. [B–I]
• Gautam Baid, The Joys of Compounding Paid · P10The Indian synthesis of philosophy, temperament, and the personal knowledge system; the Phase 10 companion
• Parag Parikh, Value Investing and Behavioral Finance Paid · P6Value investing and biases through an explicitly Indian lens. [B–I]
• Sanjay Bakshi, Behavioural Finance & Business Valuation (BFBV) lecture notes + Fundoo Professor blog Free · P6, P10Free; the best India-specific teaching on valuation, temperament, and the promoter/governance lens
• Zerodha Varsity, Markets and Taxation, Currency & Commodity, and Macroeconomics modules Free · P0, P7Free India coverage of market structure, F&O, currency, and the RBI/macro machine

Primary sources and public data

These have a different status and it is worth explaining. Company filings, exchange disclosures, regulatory orders and government statistics are public records. They are freely usable, and this programme is built on them deliberately: nearly everything it teaches you to do is done to a document anyone can download for nothing. That choice is pedagogically right, and it is also why the corpus owes so little to anybody's copyrighted expression.

• SEC EDGAR (sec.gov/edgar)10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, DEF 14A (proxy), 20-F; full-text search across filings. The US ground truth. [B–A]
• FRED (St. Louis Fed)The free macro-time-series library: rates, inflation, the yield curve, employment; the dashboard's US data source
• BEA, BLS, US Treasury & Federal ReserveGDP, CPI/jobs, Treasury yields, and FOMC statements/projections, all free at source
• BSE & NSE company pagesAnnual reports, quarterly results, shareholding patterns (promoter holding + pledge), and disclosures
• MCA21 (mca.gov.in)The Ministry of Corporate Affairs registry for company filings, including unlisted entities and RPT trails
• SEBI (sebi.gov.in)Regulations (LODR, RIA, PMS, AIF), orders, and investor materials; the governance and adviser-rules source
• RBI, DBIE (Database on Indian Economy) & the RBI siteThe repo rate, monetary data, the MPC statements, and financial-stability reports
• MOSPI / NSOGDP, IIP, and CPI (India's official statistics)
• Ministry of Finance, Economic Survey & Union BudgetThe annual macro read on the Indian economy, free each year
• PRS Legislative Research & CMIEPolicy/legislation tracking (PRS, free) and economic/company data (CMIE, paid); context and time series
• J.P. Morgan Guide to the Markets (India & global editions)A free, quarterly, chart-dense market and macro reference

How we quote

No quotation in this programme runs past twenty-five words without written permission from the rights holder, and every quotation is set in quotation marks and attributed in the sentence that carries it: a person, a document, a year. Where a passage reads like somebody's words but carries no quotation marks, it is our own compression and says so.

Free to read is not free to reproduce. A chairman's letter published at no charge, a professor's working paper, a research note circulated openly, all remain copyrighted works. We link to them, cite them, teach from them, and quote them briefly.

Corrections and rights

If you hold rights in anything named here and believe we have overstepped, a quotation too long, a framework reproduced too closely, an attribution missing or wrong, please write to us and we will reply within seven days. We would far rather hear from you directly than through anyone else, and a fair complaint gets fixed the same week.

The same address takes corrections of fact. If something on this page is wrong, tell us.

Contact us

Last reviewed 2026-09-22. This page is regenerated whenever the curriculum's source list changes.