Best Of Book Bits 2025: Part II

Here’s part II of our year-end review of Book Bits columns published in 2025, the counterpart to last week’s prelude. Happy reading!

● Rethinking Investing: A Very Short Guide to Very Long-Term Investing
Charles D. Ellis
Summary via publisher (Wiley)
In just 10 short, accessible, and inviting chapters, Rethinking Investing: A Very Short Book on Very Long-Term Investing presents straightforward steps that ordinary people can take to better invest their money. This book dispels myths about the value of investment managers, highlights emotional tendencies that can cloud our financial judgment, explains why index funds are a savvy choice, and reveals secrets like why it’s better to wait until age 70 to receive Social Security benefits—along with the calculations that make this decision crystal-clear. Written by renowned investor and popular author Charley Ellis, this must-read resource shows you how to set yourself up for investment success.

● Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead
Kenneth Rogoff
Essay by author via The Economist
To paraphrase a common saying: it ain’t what you don’t know that kills you. It’s what you think you know that ain’t so. Nothing could better describe the numb-skulled thinking behind the havoc that President Donald Trump and his trade Rasputin, Peter Navarro, have wrought on the global economy. Among the likely casualties will be the supreme status of the dollar. Although the greenback will almost certainly remain the world’s dominant currency for at least a couple more decades, it will probably fall several notches. Expect the yuan and the euro to encroach on the dollar in the legal economy. Cryptocurrencies will do the same in the underground economy, which is roughly a fifth of global GDP. Reduced market share will mean higher interest rates on long-term dollar debt, and a weakening of the effectiveness of American financial sanctions, among other problems.

● The Behavioral Portfolio: Managing Portfolios and Investor Behavior in a Complex Economy
Phillip Toews
Summary via publisher (Harriman House)
The investment advisory industry is beset by two largely unacknowledged problems. First, the history and risks of both stock and bond portfolios far exceed what most investors and advisory practices can endure. Second, the approach that most advisors take to communicate about portfolios does virtually nothing to prevent investors from known biases and bad decision making. In The Behavioral Portfolio, Felipe Toews guides advisors build all season’s portfolios designed to both invest optimistically and address the real-world contingencies of investing in a high debt world. He begins by re-defining foundational portfolio objectives such such as gains with the market, low risk of extreme losses, and protection against high inflation. He then walks us through the process of quantifying and building these portfolios, illustrating that in so doing, advisors can improve probabilities of success.

● How Not To Invest: The ideas, numbers, and behaviors that destroy wealth – and how to avoid them
Barry Ritholtz
Interview with author via Prof G podcast
Barry Ritholtz, the co-founder, chairman, and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management and the host of the Masters in Business podcast, joins Scott to discuss his new book, How Not to Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviors that Destroy Wealth and How to Avoid Them. They unpack why diversification is both boring and sexy, whether the U.S. market is overvalued, and if the alternative investment industry is one of the biggest grifts in economic history.

● Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI
John Cassidy
Review via The New York Times
Trump makes a few cameo appearances in John Cassidy’s new book, “Capitalism and Its Critics,” for his demonstrated ability to brag about his riches while tapping into growing discontent with the global capitalist system. Some of the critics Cassidy features in this book wanted to replace capitalism entirely; others, like Trump, have sought to preserve a core of self-interest while remaking capitalism’s rules. Rejecting a world financial order fueled by free trade and a bedrock American dollar, the president has been promoting a grab bag that includes both tariffs and crypto — a Trumpian hybrid of the very old and the very new.

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