Skousen is one of today's most respected investment advisors, the editor of Forecasts & Strategies. He's a Forbes columnist, a prolific author and popular lecturer at investment conferences.

He has compiled quite a record. Back in 1981, he predicted that Reagan's policies of curbing the money supply, cutting taxes and in other ways encouraging enterprise would bring a great boom, and they did. On September 8, 1987, he sent his subscribers a special bulletin recommending the sale of all stocks and mutual fund shares, and six weeks later the stock market crashed. Although, as late as 1989, mainstream pundits like Paul Samuelson and Lester Thurow were praising the apparently wondrous economic growth of the Soviet Union, Skousen predicted the Soviet Union would collapse, and of course it did. Then he predicted that the 1990s would bring a tremendous boom, and that happened, too. Equally important, he recommended prudent ways investors could take advantage of these opportunities.

Skousen has produced popular books about investing and scholarly books about economics from an Austrian point of view. His books include Playing the Price Controls Game (1977), Complete Guide to Financial Privacy (1980), New Profits from Your Insurance Policy (1980), High Finance on a Low Budget (1981), Never Say Budget (1983), The Economics of a Pure Gold Standard (1988), What Every Investor Should Know About Austrian Economics (1988), The Structure of Production (1990), Economics on Trial (1991), Dissent on Keynes (1992), Scrooge Investing (1992), Austrian Economics for Investors (1995), Mark Skousen's 30-Day Plan to Financial Independence (1995), Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Franklin (1996), Puzzles and Paradoxes of Economics (1997), New Scrooge Investing (2000), Economic Logic (2000) and The Making of Modern Economics (2001). Some of these books have been through a number of editions.

Skousen has done whatever he could to promote individual liberty, speaking at functions sponsored by the Cato Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, the Libertarian Party and the Mt. Pelerin Society, among many others.

So what does one of America's leading investment advisors read? Here are Mark's picks for "Top Ten Financial Books."

The Richest Man in Babylon
by George S. Clason
You're never too old to read this #1 classic.

How To Be Rich
by J. Paul Getty
The best "how to" advice ever on business and investing. The chapter on Wall Street has never been equalled.

The Art of Contrary Thinking
by Humphrey B. Neill
Nuggets on every page.

The Plungers and the Peacocks
by Dana L. Thomas
Best history of Wall Street. Absolutely fascinating. (out of print)

One Up on Wall Street
by Peter Lynch
Best explanation ever of Lynch's winning strategy of buying stocks of companies whose products your family loves.

How I Turned $1,000 into $3 million in Real Estate--in My Spare Time
by William Nickerson
The way to make money in real estate. Almost guaranteed. (out of print)

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
by Philip A. Fisher
Pick the brains of the man who made a mint on Wall Street.

Where Are the Customers' Yachts?
by Fred Schwed, Jr.
A cynical guide to Wall Street--brokers hate it.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
by Edwin Lefevre
The secret life of Jesse Livermore, speculator extraordinaire during the 1920s and 1930s.

The Battle for Investment Survival
by Gerald M. Loeb
I underlined this book throughout.

His website is at http://www.mskousen.com.

(Reprinted with permission from Laissez Faire Books)

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