Another great book on this is Narrative and Numbers: The Value of Stories in Business - by Aswath Damodaran

Also agree love the Harari books.

If you like a good economic history and future dystopian economic perspective: Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis was very good. A self described “libertarian socialist” an odd mix but a good back story. With an amazing mum and dad from the sounds of his writing. I wish I had a dad who melted metals around the fireplace at night, when I was a kid, to teach me how humanity learnt new technologies and evolved.

He postulated that since 2008 and the failure of the capitalist markets- capital has become extremely concentrated into the the hands of a few technocrats who rent seek and control cloud capital. He has an interesting argument about international relations and the feudal wars between the US and China who are battling it out to be the dominant techno feudal overlords. Yikes! seriously for us all!

I applaud his final chapter and his attempts to offer an improvement to the very broken capitalist system. We all become share holders in the companies we work for doing away with stock markets etc……We get a universal wage to live and bonus based on the percentage votes of other shareholders in our companies based on our perceived value to said company. But there is no way in hell the people who currently have privilege are ever, ever, ever going to give it up, in the current system. Four stars.

My other favorite book this year in this space was:

Truly an entertaining book. It’s hilarious if billionaires really think this way. YOU CAN NOT buy loyalty (not for long - as TRUMP is discovering) and all the best laid plans of these guys to survive impending apocalypses are so deranged. There is no escape to MARS and what miserable people to share underground bunkers with. Your body guards will get you every time (you’ll get it if you read / listen to it). Five stars.

Sapiens (Yuval Harari) is a great read if you really want a deep dive into the origin, history, and development of money.

When I am retired and off my rocker, I just might try and buy something at my local mall with a sack of barley (if I can get my hands on one) to pass the time :-)

https://www.ynharari.com/topic/money-and-politics/

Excerpt from Chapter 10 – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Initially, when the first versions of money were created, people didn’t have this sort of trust, so it was necessary to define as “money” things that had real intrinsic value. History’s first known money— Sumerian barley money—is a good example. It appeared in Sumer around 3000 BC, at the same time and place, and under the same circumstances, in which writing appeared.

Just as writing developed to answer the needs of intensifying administrative activities, so barley money developed to answer the needs of intensifying economic activities.

Barley money was simply barley—fixed amounts of barley grains used as a universal measure for evaluating and exchanging all other goods and services. The most common measurement was the sila, equivalent to roughly one liter. Standardized bowls, each capable of containing one sila, were mass-produced so that whenever people needed to buy or sell anything, it was easy to measure the necessary amounts of barley. Salaries, too, were set and paid in silas of barley. A male laborer earned 60 silas a month, a female laborer 30 silas. A foreman could earn between 1200 and 5000 silas. Not even the most ravenous foreman could eat 5000 liters of barley a month, but he could use the silas he didn’t eat to buy all sorts of other commodities—oil, goats, slaves, and something else to eat besides barley.

Even though barley has intrinsic value, it was not easy to convince people to use it as money rather than as just another commodity. In order to understand why, just think what would happen if you took a sack full of barley to your local mall, and tried to buy a shirt or a pizza. The vendors would probably call security. Still, it was somewhat easier to build trust in barley as the first type of money, because barley has an inherent biological value. Humans can eat it. On the other hand, it was difficult to store and transport barley. The real breakthrough in monetary history occurred when people gained trust in money that lacked inherent value, but was easier to store and transport. Such money appeared in ancient Mesopotamia in the middle of the third millennium BC. This was the silver shekel.

The silver shekel was not a coin, but rather 8.33 grams of silver. When Hammurabi’s Code declared that a superior man who killed a slave woman must pay her owner 20 silver shekels, it meant that he had to pay 166 grams of silver, not 20 coins. Most monetary terms in the Old Testament are given in terms of silver rather than coins. Joseph’s brothers sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty silver shekels, or rather 166 grams of silver (the same price as a slave woman—he was a youth, after all).

Unlike the barley sila, the silver shekel had no inherent value. You cannot eat, drink, or clothe yourself in silver, and it’s too soft for making useful tools—plowshares or swords of silver would crumple almost as fast as ones made out of aluminum foil. When they are used for anything, silver and gold are made into jewelry, crowns, and other status symbols—luxury goods that members of a particular culture identify with high social status. Their value is purely cultural.

Today, most money is just electronic data. The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion. More than 90 percent of all money—more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts—exists only on computer servers. Most business transactions are executed by moving electronic data from one computer file to another, without any exchange of physical cash. Only a criminal buys a house, for example, by handing over a suitcase full of banknotes. As long as people are willing to trade goods and services in exchange for electronic data, it’s even better than shiny coins and crisp banknotes—lighter, less bulky, and easier to keep track of.

For thousands of years, philosophers, thinkers, and prophets have besmirched money and called it the root of all evil. Be that as it may, money is also the apogee of human tolerance. Money is more open-minded than language, state laws, cultural codes, religious beliefs, and social habits. Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age, or sexual orientation. Thanks to money, even people who don’t know each other and don’t trust each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively.

This is a great article and think it just as well applies to humans in general - Are you not entertained? - by Joachim Klement (substack.com)

You always heard retail investors prefer stories - I don't think its retail investors I think its humans and how we learn best. There's a reason why most religious books follow a story like the Bible or even Dream Stories with Aboriginals.

The hard thing is not to get stuck with group think of the market 'story' of a stock.