The library
Curated, not exhaustive. Everything here earned its place.
Book · Peter Lynch
The gentle classic. Lynch’s thesis: you spot winning products in real life — in boutiques, pharmacies, your own checkout — long before Wall Street’s spreadsheets do. Your shopping is research; he just teaches you to file it.
Book · Morgan Housel
Nineteen short essays on why smart people do ruinous things with money. Zero formulas, entirely about behavior — which is where returns are actually won and lost. Read it before any technical book.
Film · Martin Scorsese, 2013
Watch it through the psychology lens, not the yacht lens. It’s a documentary about what commissions and testosterone do to judgment — study the selling scenes and notice who’s actually paying for the party. (Spoiler: the clients.)
Film · HBO, 2017
The best investor alive has lived in the same house since 1958 and drives to McDonald’s with coupons. The film is about focus and temperament, not money — which is exactly why he has the money.
Explaining a joke usually kills it. These survive, because the joke is the lesson.
“I’m something of an investor myself.” — everyone, at the exact top of a bull market
Why it’s funny: Funny because confidence peaks precisely when danger does — bull markets manufacture geniuses, and bear markets audit them.
Buy high, sell low: the strategy nobody chooses and everybody executes.
Why it’s funny: Funny because FOMO makes you buy at the top and panic makes you sell at the bottom — the plan reverses itself while you sleep.
“Diamond hands 💎” — portfolio down 80%
Why it’s funny: Funny because refusing to sell isn’t a strategy once the value is gone. Conviction and stubbornness wear the same outfit.
Day 1 of trading: “I’m basically a hedge fund now.” Day 4: googling “can a stock go below zero”.
Why it’s funny: Funny because leverage compresses the entire Wolf of Wall Street arc into one week, minus the yacht.
Personal opinion — not advice
For most busy, wealthy women, a boring diversified ETF habit will quietly beat any exciting stock-picking hobby. Boring is not a compromise — boring is the luxury.
Personal opinion — not advice
The finance industry profits from making this feel complicated. The core of it fits in two Theia lessons; the rest is vocabulary and nerve.
The spiciest item here
We wrote it, then dressed it politely and made it Lesson 2. Same spice, better tailoring.
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