Five Books on Money, Markets and Decision-Making

Why a law firm writes about investing

Wealth is not protected only with contracts and holding companies. It is also protected with sound decisions about where, how and in which currency it is invested — and with the understanding that markets, crises and cycles are part of the life of any family or business.

This special edition brings together five books that, taken together, form a small library on money: the history of the financial system, the logic of cycles, a decision-making method, the psychology of the speculator and the quantitative revolution. For each one, we ask whom it serves — the long-term investor, the would-be trader, the reader who wants to understand economics, or simply the curious. And we close with the point where finance and law meet: diversifying and internationalizing wealth in the face of Brazilian instability.

This text is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice, which in Brazil is an activity regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) and depends on an individual analysis of each investor's profile, goals and circumstances.

The five books

1. The Ascent of Money — Niall Ferguson (2008)

The Scottish historian tells the financial history of the world in six chapters: credit and banking, from the Medici onward; government bonds, which financed wars and States; stock markets and their bubbles, such as John Law's Mississippi Company; insurance and social protection; real estate; and financial globalization, which he summed up in the symbiotic relationship between China and the United States — "Chimerica". Published at the height of the 2008 crisis, the book shows that financial crises are not accidents but recurring episodes in a system that alternates between confidence and panic.

The lesson: money is a relationship of trust, and the financial system is a human, institutional and legal creation — contracts, collateral and courts are as much a part of its history as banks and stock exchanges.

2. Mastering the Market Cycle — Howard Marks (2018)

The founder of Oaktree Capital is known for his memos to investors. In this book he describes the overlapping cycles — of the economy, corporate profits, investor psychology, attitudes toward risk, credit and real estate — and the image of the pendulum, which swings between euphoria and despair and rarely rests at the point of balance. His central thesis is that one cannot predict the future, but one can know where we stand in the cycle and adjust accordingly: more defensive when everyone is optimistic, more aggressive when fear prevails.

The lesson: risk is greatest when it seems smallest. The best opportunities arise when credit dries up and pessimism is widespread.

3. Principles — Ray Dalio (2017)

The founder of Bridgewater, one of the world's largest funds, codified into principles the way he makes decisions in life and work: radical truth and transparency, learning from mistakes — pain plus reflection equals progress — believability-weighted decision-making and systematic recording of criteria. In later works, such as Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order (2021), Dalio applied the method to long-term cycles of debt, currencies and empires. In investing, he became known for advocating diversification across low-correlation assets — the All Weather portfolio, designed to withstand different economic scenarios.

The lesson: better decisions come from explicit processes, not intuition. And no investor knows which scenario will come — that is why we diversify.

4. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator — Edwin Lefèvre (1923)

Published in 1923, the book tells in the first person the story of Larry Livingston, a character based on the speculator Jesse Livermore. From the young man betting in bucket shops to the operator who made fortunes on market declines, the narrative lays bare the trader's emotions — hope, fear, greed, stubbornness — and lessons that have lasted a century: do not fight the trend, cut losses early, let profits run and, above all, be patient. Livermore himself, however, lost his fortune more than once, and his life ended tragically in 1940 — a sobering reminder that not even the greatest speculator of his day escaped risk.

The lesson: in trading, the main enemy is one's own psychology. Discipline is worth more than intelligence.

5. The Man Who Solved the Market — Gregory Zuckerman (2019)

The Wall Street Journal reporter tells the story of Jim Simons, a mathematician and former codebreaker who founded Renaissance Technologies and created the Medallion Fund, the best-performing fund in history. Instead of economists and analysts, Simons hired mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists, who used data and statistical models to identify imperceptible patterns. The fund is closed to outside investors.

The lesson: quantitative investing is done by teams of scientists with data and technology that individual investors do not have — which is exactly why trying to imitate it with intuition is an illusion. It is also a window into the future: artificial intelligence is extending this logic to every market.

Who each book is for

The long-term investor. The combination of Marks and Dalio teaches three habits: recognizing which phase of the cycle we are in, distrusting euphoria and diversifying across assets that do not rise and fall together. To round it out, two classics: Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor (1949), the foundation of value investing and of the margin-of-safety idea; and Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money (2020), which shows how behavior and patience matter more than intelligence.

The would-be trader. Lefèvre is required reading — and Zuckerman, an antidote to overconfidence. The data are harsh: a study by Brazilian researchers published in 2019, using data on day traders of mini index futures on B3 (the Brazilian stock exchange), showed that the vast majority of those who persisted in the activity lost money, and only a tiny fraction earned more than the equivalent of a daily minimum wage. Anyone who decides to trade should do so with capital they can afford to lose, strict risk rules and the awareness that they are competing with algorithms and professionals.

The reader who wants to understand economics. Ferguson offers the historical narrative; Dalio, the models of debt cycles and transitions between monetary orders — useful for understanding inflation, interest rates, exchange rates and debates about the role of the dollar.

For a Brazilian perspective. Fora da Curva (2016), a book of interviews with leading Brazilian fund managers (not published in English), shows how these principles apply to a market with high interest rates, volatile exchange rates and intense political cycles.

Real-world Brazil: a laboratory of cycles

If Howard Marks needed a country to illustrate his pendulum, Brazil would serve well. In little more than three decades, Brazilian investors have lived through hyperinflation and successive economic plans up to the Real Plan (1994), the freezing of financial assets under the Collor Plan (1990), the 1999 currency crisis, the shocks of 2008, the 2015–2016 recession, the pandemic and recurring cycles of high real interest rates. In 2026, the war in the Middle East and the oil shock led the World Bank to lower its growth forecast for the country.

The Collor episode deserves a special place in the memory of anyone planning their wealth: it showed that Brazilian risk is not only market risk, but also legal and institutional risk — the risk that rules change abruptly. It was a lesson no foreign book teaches, and it explains why Brazilian families and business owners seek to diversify not only assets but jurisdictions.

Diversifying in three dimensions. Translated to Brazil, the lessons of Dalio and Marks suggest diversification on three levels:

• Asset classes: floating-rate and inflation-linked fixed income, equities, real estate, private pension plans — assets that react differently to interest rates, inflation and growth.
• Currencies: holding part of one's wealth in a hard currency protects against devaluations that, in Brazil, tend to coincide with domestic crises.
• Jurisdictions: holding assets under different legal systems reduces exposure to regulatory and tax changes in any single country.

A fourth dimension belongs to the law: the form of ownership. Assets held directly by an individual, by a family holding company, by a fund or by a structure abroad receive very different treatment for tax, succession and asset-protection purposes. Financial diversification without legal planning can multiply risks rather than reduce them.

Internationalizing wealth with legal certainty

The trend. According to the Brazilian Federal Revenue Service's dashboard of definitive departures, 46,603 Brazilians formally declared their tax departure from the country in 2026 up to August 19 — an increase of 80% over 2021. The United States leads the destinations, and São Paulo the origins. The Revenue Service itself notes that part of the increase comes from people who already lived abroad and regularized their situation, encouraged by the new rules on assets abroad. Even so, the data reveal a trend: business owners, investors and professionals are seeking to reduce economic, legal and tax risks in other jurisdictions.

Internationalizing wealth is legitimate and often prudent. But there are no shortcuts: Brazilian rules have changed profoundly over the last three years.

1. Investments and companies abroad (Law 14,754/2023). Since 2024, individuals resident in Brazil pay 15% on income and gains from financial investments abroad, computed in the annual tax return and charged when the income is received or realized. For controlled entities abroad — offshore companies — that fall within the law's cases (low-tax jurisdictions or predominantly passive income), profits are taxed annually on December 31, whether or not distributed; the deferral that allowed profits to accumulate abroad untaxed has ended. Trusts are now treated as tax-transparent, with the assets attributed to the settlor during their lifetime. The same law introduced periodic advance taxation (come-cotas) on exclusive funds in Brazil. Assets abroad also require an annual report on Brazilian capital abroad to the Central Bank above the regulatory thresholds.

2. Dividends (Law 15,270/2025). Since January 1, 2026, dividends paid to resident individuals above R$ 50,000 per month by the same company are subject to 10% withholding, and annual income above R$ 600,000 is subject to a minimum tax. For nonresidents — including Brazilians who have made their tax departure — any dividend remitted abroad is subject to 10% withholding, with no exemption threshold, and a credit mechanism when the combined taxation of the company and the shareholder exceeds the legal limit. A tax departure, therefore, does not eliminate taxation of profits generated in Brazil.

3. Definitive departure. It requires filing the Communication and the Declaration of Definitive Departure from the Country. The taxpayer becomes a nonresident from the date of permanent departure or after twelve consecutive months abroad, and is no longer taxed in Brazil on foreign-source income. The risk lies in a departure "on paper" only: if life — family, business, homes in use — continues in Brazil, the Revenue Service may disregard the move and assess tax as if the person had never left.

4. The American trap: estate tax. The United States, the main destination, taxes inheritances of assets located there — real estate, shares of U.S. companies — even when the deceased was neither a resident nor a citizen. For nonresidents, the exemption is only US$ 60,000, and rates reach 40%. Since there is no estate tax treaty between Brazil and the United States, a Miami apartment or a portfolio of U.S. stocks held directly can generate a heavy succession bill. The ownership structure, defined before the purchase, makes all the difference.

5. Succession and holding companies. Constitutional Amendment 132/2023 made progressive rates mandatory for the state inheritance and gift tax (ITCMD) and reorganized jurisdiction over inheritances and gifts involving assets abroad. Family holding companies in Brazil, combined with shareholder agreements, restrictions on transfer and governance rules, remain central instruments — and must be designed together with any international structure, so that the two ends do not contradict each other.

A critical reading: what the five books have in common

The five authors come from different worlds — a historian, a credit manager, a macro manager, a 1920s journalist and a biographer of the algorithm age — but they converge on three ideas.

The first is humility before the future. No one predicts crises precisely; the best prepare for several scenarios. The second is the primacy of process over intuition: Dalio writes principles, Simons builds models, Marks watches cycles, and Lefèvre's Livingston loses money whenever he abandons his own rules. The third is that risk lives where there seems to be none — in euphoria, in concentration, in certainty.

For Brazilian business owners, there is an additional lesson none of them wrote, because they did not have to live here: legal and institutional risk is part of financial risk. Diversifying assets without diversifying structures, or internationalizing wealth without tax and succession planning, is trading a known risk for an unknown one. Sound wealth decisions come from the meeting of the investment manager, the accountant and the lawyer.

Andrade & Cintra Advogados practices wealth and succession planning, holding companies and corporate structuring in Brazil and, through Sintra Legal & Partners, handles matters involving Brazil and the United States. This text is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or individualized tax advice.

References

• FERGUSON, Niall. The Ascent of Money (2008).
• MARKS, Howard. Mastering the Market Cycle (2018).
• DALIO, Ray. Principles (2017); Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order (2021).
• LEFÈVRE, Edwin. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923).
• ZUCKERMAN, Gregory. The Man Who Solved the Market (2019).
• GRAHAM, Benjamin. The Intelligent Investor (1949).
• HOUSEL, Morgan. The Psychology of Money (2020).
• BARTUNEK, Florian; MOREAU, Pierre; NAPOLITANO, Giuliana. Fora da Curva (2016).
• Law 14,754/2023; Law 15,270/2025; Constitutional Amendment 132/2023.

Sources

• Saídas fiscais crescem 80% em 5 anos — Poder360, August 2026 (in Portuguese)
• Mais de 46 mil brasileiros fizeram saída fiscal em 2026 — Forbes Brasil, September 2026 (in Portuguese)
• Offshores e trusts: entenda a nova regra de tributação — Bem Paraná (in Portuguese)
• Publicada a IN que regulamenta a tributação das offshores, trusts e rendimentos no exterior — Federal Revenue Normative Instruction 2,180/2024 (in Portuguese)
• WHT 10% sobre dividendos — Lei 15.270/2025 — TaxUp (in Portuguese)
• Brazilian tax authority issues guidance on new withholding tax on dividends paid to nonresidents — EY, December 2025

Special Edition — Biblioteca Andrade & Cintra. Educational content. It does not constitute investment, tax or legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Matters under U.S. law are handled by attorneys licensed in the relevant jurisdiction.