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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Adam Gilchrist" data-source="post: 32340" data-attributes="member: 5820">Mods - please move this to the appropriate subforum if I haven't posted it in the right area. Hi guys! I recently secured a TC at an MC firm, having completed their VS. This was the first assessment center & VS that I did, and I came from a non-law, non-business, non-economics background & degree. Because of all of this, I wanted to do some preparatory reading in advance.Jake Schogger & Christopher Stoakes's books are often mentioned on the forum, and with good reason: they are very useful.However, I felt that I had a lack of initial understanding of the city, commercial law, banking and business as a whole, so also read a couple of extra books that greatly helped me. I've just listed them here in case anyone else feels in a similar position to me. They're all fairly short (200ish pages or less), and can each be read in a day or so, in chunks.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Very Short Introduction to Banking (Goddard & Wilson, 2016)</li> </ul>The VSI series is brilliant anyway, but this book is especially useful. It has one of the clearest explanations of capital markets that I've ever encountered, and also works through the 2008 crash comprehensively. It also covers areas like hedge funds, monetary policy, and securitization in simple but comprehensive form. I did a banking seat on the VS, and the book greatly helped me. My TC interview also covered central bank responses to Covid, and the book helped me to discuss this confidently.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Reading & Understanding Economics (Boakes, 2009)</li> </ul>As I said, I had no proper knowledge of economics prior to getting an assessment center invite. The book is simple, covers areas like competition, monetary policy, fiscal policy, supply & demand, financial markets, and exchange rates. It's a  nice starter guide, and is written engagingly. Each chapter is accompanied by an article or articles from a newspaper that is discussed at greater length. Most people on the forum won't need the book - it's for beginners chiefly, but is in-depth enough for your needs.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Reading & Understanding the Financial Times (Boakes, 2010) [2nd edition, 'Updated for 2010-2011'])</li> </ul>Does what it says on the tin. In each chapter, he takes you through different FT topics (dividend policy, equity/debt financing, capital structure, stock market behavior, etc) and what to make of these areas. Each topic is accompanied by a real FT article on the issue. There's also a guide on specific areas of the FT (benchmark government bonds, official interest rates, etc) and how to interpret them and their changes.Commercial awareness really wasn't an issue for me. You should make sure to read a broadsheet daily - both the main news section, and more importantly the business section, and for the latter, I made notes on anything that interested me. That gave me a solid platform, and I also used the finimize email (3 top commercial stories of the day) and the FT daily briefing podcast (both free) to top this up. Hope this helps!</blockquote>

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