I've said before that recently, changes in supply/demand for money and risk are the biggest risks to my investments. I've intentionally not focused on these areas in the past; there are plenty of smarter, better connected, well capitalized people out there who can and will beat me at currencies. So I actually never took economics in college (met requirements with AP Economics), and economics was less than 10% of the CFA tests.
Also, the stuff I did learn just didn't seem right. Purchasing power parity seemed to show little of the real world, if I recall correctly the carry trade should have been impossible in theory, and GDP and CPI are considered far more - accurate, or precise - than makes sense... I got the impression it was over influenced by Keynes and started reading Mises' Human Action. I didn't think that was going to help me invest much, so I quit a hundred or two pages in.
This winter break I want to figure things out. My reading/skimming list:
-A Monetary History of the United States (Friedman)
-The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (Keynes)
-Speeches from fed governers
-chapter 3 of Alchemy of Finance (Soros)
-The Theory of Money and Credit (Mises)
-then move on to this reading list (but no access to academic articles)
Wish I had more from practitioners...
