Skin in the Game by Nicholas Taleb is not finance book per se but some of its ideas are interesting enough to challenge some of my ideas of leverage. I think Taleb's ideas are worth grappling with because they can potentially change your approach towards personal finance.
One particular idea is that ensemble probability is very different from time probability. If the model reflects the ruin of a few participants out of many, it is conceptually very different from the reality where there's only one participant who has to stop permanently the moment he is ruined by the markets.
One of the better things I did last year was to open a margin account. I wanted to continue to obtain high yields from REITS but I also wanted to buy higher quality REITs with a good story and stable management. The only way to resolve this paradox is to borrow ......