ERE Investment Curriculum

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Jin+Guice
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ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by Jin+Guice »

I'm going to go through the ERE investment curriculum starting sometime between November and the end of the year. Is anyone interested in doing it with me and discussing it on the forum?

Is it possible to get the texts for free in pdf form? Does anyone have copies they'd be willing to send me if I paid shipping? I currently have the Bodie investment book, but none of the others.
Last edited by Jin+Guice on Sun Sep 15, 2019 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Like an ERE book club? I'm in as long as I can get the titles from my library.

Jin+Guice
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by Jin+Guice »

@2b1s: I've heard rumors of an ERE book club from days of yore, but it was before my time. It seems like it might have been a grand failure?

I'm skeptical that the books will be available at the library because they're all textbooks.

jacob
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by jacob »

I don't think [the book club] was a grand failure. Several books were processed. It just kinda faded a couple of years ago.

The books are pretty cheap on amazon. No need to get the newest edition. The whole series should be available for <$50 including shipping. That's << regular vanguard fees :-P

Fish
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by Fish »

@J+G: There is a multi-page discussion of the curriculum in The Simple Path to Wealth thread, starting at this post by P_K which gives Jacob’s suggested reading order as (3, 2, 7, 4, 1, 6, 5). (Add: I think a dedicated thread for the book club is a good idea, just wanted to share the old discussion in case you haven’t seen it yet.)

The books were also offered to the ERE community in the forum swap thread a while back.

Quadalupe
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by Quadalupe »

I'm in, or at least willing to try to keep up. :-) I think if we're going to form some kind of study club, it might work better if we also have some kind of accountability mechanism. See also the earlier discussion on learning tribes.

@Jacob, what did you end op doing re: learning tribes in the end?

jacob
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by jacob »

@Q - No volunteers, so I'm a tribe of one.

cheese
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by cheese »

I purchased all of the books (used) in 2011 when I was first getting interested in personal finance/investing and after I had just finished reading the ERE book for the first time. It's hard to believe it has been 8+ years since then! I started reading/studying the curriculum several times throughout the years but despite the best of my intentions I have yet to make it much further than the first economics textbook. Would love to give it another shot! Figuring out the investment aspect of ERE has started to take on a sense of increasing urgency now that I've managed to accumulate a fairly substantial amount of savings to invest...
Last edited by cheese on Thu Sep 19, 2019 10:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

jacob
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by jacob »

A grad school style seminar class(*) might work. In short, pick one book, Assign one chapter to each person who then does a write-up/presentation. The others then comment.

This would function like a book club.

(*) TBH, I generally hated those/didn't find it particularly useful cf. an actual class. But they're certainly "cheaper" to run.

Perhaps a better strat would be to decide on a handful of textbook exercises for each chapter and assign the presentation of one of them to each person in the club. Then the others can comment on the solution. This would also cut down on the freeloading.

7Wannabe5
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I kind of want to join because investment reading is one of my current micro-masteries, but I greatly prefer original works to textbooks. For instance, I am currently reading Louis Bachelier's "Theory of Speculation", Mandelbrot's "The Misbehavior of Markets", Knight's "Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit", Coates' "The Hour Between Dog and Wolf", Pilkington's "The Reformation of Economics", and Passarelli's "Trading Option Greeks." So, I have almost no clue what I am doing, but it is very interesting reading and fun to experiment with a little bit of money.

iopsi
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by iopsi »

No exactly the economics books of that blog post, but i've got The Dhando Investor, The Intelligent Investor, Investment Science and Battle for Investment Survival. I also have Investment Valuation from Damodaran (which deals directly with doing valuations and pricing).

if anyone wants them let me know.

I remember seeing these books (except the last one) suggested by Jacob in one of his blog posts (not the one referenced in the OP tho).

If anyone wants to start a reading/learning challenge i'm down for it btw.

Jin+Guice
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by Jin+Guice »

@jacob: O.K, my bad, I don't know why I thought the book club was a failure.

@Fish: Thanks for the links.

If y'all aren't opposed, I think we should read them in suggested order.

Everyone else: When is the best start date? For me closer to the end of the year is probably best.

I think deciding what we're going to read and picking some exercises and then discussing the reading and exercises in the forum is the best way to do it. That way if someone doesn't do the work, no one gets screwed. Also, if someone falls behind they have a chance to catch up without dropping out. If they fall too far behind they can read the old discussions as they proceed. I'm open to suggestions if someone has a different idea. What do y'all think?

Quadalupe
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by Quadalupe »

Yeah dude, I'm down to clown! How about we start december 1st, with Christmas week off?

Also, I think it'd be great if we could somehow make this part of the ERE wiki at some point. What we did in a seminar class like jacob mentioned was the following. All the students had to write a summary of the material treated that week and formulate two questions about the course material. One/two students would then give a more in depth presentation on the material. I think if we skip the presentation part, but try to keep the summary + formulating questions part (on a volunteer basis?), we'll learn a ton *and* future ERE adepts might benefit from our toil.

If this sounds like too much work, we can just stick to discussing the material and questions found in the book on the forums. Maybe jacob or some other people who already grok the material will sometimes chime in in those threads. :)

<edit> I just ordered all 7 books on amazon.de. Total cost: ~65 euro's, 25 for the books and 40 for shipping :lol:

cheese
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by cheese »

Happy to begin whenever everyone is ready though I may get a head start in the interim. Do we have a sense of how quickly we'd like to tackle the curriculum? Obviously people will have varying levels of availability/commitment but I feel like some kind of benchmark would be helpful. I wouldn't expect everyone to be able to devote 20 hours a week but a more leisurely pace like a chapter a week would take years...

Quadalupe
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by Quadalupe »

I'd say around 2 months per book, so a little more than a year for all of it. The feasibility of this heuristic will depend on the book in question. What would be a good pace for you?

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jennypenny
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by jennypenny »

When the book club was active, we kept a page on the wiki where people could add their name and the book they planned on reviewing. That let people read ahead if they wanted. Once a discussion thread was started on a particular book, a link was added to the entry.

Let me know if you want me to set up something similar for this group.

Fish
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by Fish »

As a data point, it took me 6 months to self-study the McConnell/Brue econ textbook (~800 pages), but I was not particularly focused. Skipped the written exercises, but did the in-chapter knowledge checks.

For that book, 50-100 pages/week seems like a reasonable pace (noting that those without a good math foundation or English proficiency may struggle to keep up).

If freeloading becomes a problem, discussions could be conducted via PMs if needed. Maybe a “learning tribe” group/private forum could be established as a reward for active participants?

Something else to consider, is that it would be preferable to standardize on the book editions, so that page references, chapters, content, etc. will be consistent. The editions linked in Jacob’s blog post seem like a good starting point.

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Bankai
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by Bankai »

Out of curiosity, why would freeloading be a problem in this context? Considering the tremendous amount of very valuable information being exchanged on these boards on a daily basis? Why would anyone mind others reading their discussion?

jacob
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by jacob »

I can set up a subforum and you could start threads for e.g. "Bodie Chapter 1", "Bodie Chapter 2", and post answers/questions/discussion there as you go along. Realistically, I agree with 50-100 pages/week. This would match the speed of one single freshman course. Maybe 1-3 exercises per chapter depending on how easy they are.

There's no reason everybody has to remain synchronized or rather wait for the laggards.

Jin+Guice
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Re: ERE Investment Curriculum

Post by Jin+Guice »

December 1st works for me. If anyone is seriously interested but would benefit by waiting a week or a month longer, speak now or forever hold your peace.

My gut reaction is that 100 pages is a little ambitious so maybe closer to 50? Probably we should do a few chapters a week, so we might want to play it by ear based on how long the chapters are and how tough we anticipate the material to be.

A sub-forum or wiki page sounds like a good idea. Sub-forum is more appealing to me as I'm less familiar with how to use wiki pages, but I'm sure either will be fine.

I don't think free loading will be a problem since there's no grade or certificate at the end of this. The point is to get the knowledge however you can so inevitably you're going to have to do the work. If someone figures out a shortcut to knowledge, just let us all know!

A bigger problem will likely be setting a pace for the group that everyone is happy with. It'd be nice if a few of us could all stay together, because it'll make studying more interesting/ informative, but it's not strictly necessary. Having the sub-forum/ wiki will help with this.

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