In this animated video, as part of the release of his book "Principles", hedge fund manager Ray Dalio shares his principles for success in eight segments.

The documentary "Becoming Warren Buffett" (2017) produced by HBO is full of good lifestyle and investment principles from one of the greatest investors of our time, principles that have the capacity to enrich your life.

The description above may sound cliché, but when I watched this documentary upon its release, I was happily surprised that it gave me, not only great financial advice, but advice for a happy life as well.

Here is the synopsis from the HBO site:

With a net worth of over $60,000,000,000, Warren Buffett is truly a one-of-a-kind billionaire. The legendary investor still lives in a modest home in Omaha, and drives himself to the office every morning to manage Berkshire Hathaway. This documentary chronicles Buffett's evolution into one of the wealthiest and most respected men in the world.

Watch the full documentary:

The PBS Frontline documentary "The Madoff Affair" (2009) tells the story about investor Bernard "Bernie" Madoff and the gigantic Ponzi Scheme he constructed and operated during many years until it all unravelled in 2008.

In the mid-1960s, Bernard Madoff tapped money from Jewish businessmen at exclusive country clubs with the promise of steady guaranteed returns on their investments. He then set his sights on Europe and Latin America, brokering deals with powerful hedge fund managers and feeder funds from Buenos Aires to Geneva. Billions of dollars were channeled to Madoff's investment firm, and his feeders became fabulously wealthy. The competition wondered how the man could produce such steady returns in good times and bad. There were allegations that Madoff was "front-running" or operating a Ponzi scheme, which the SEC investigated several times over the last two decades. But Madoff remained untouched until Dec. 11, 2008, when he admitted it was all "one big lie." FRONTLINE unravels the story behind the world's first truly global Ponzi scheme — a deception that lasted longer, reached wider and cut deeper than any other business scandal in history.

Watch the full documentary at the PBS Frontline site.

Read More: Bernard 'Bernie' Madoff's Personal Secretary Speaks Out in the Documentary 'In God We Trust' (2013)

"Becoming Warren Buffett" is a new documentary directed by Peter Kunhardt about one of the best investors of all time. Produced by HBO and Kunhardt Films, the documentary airs on Monday, January 30.

With a net worth of more than $60 billion, Warren Buffett is truly a one-of-a-kind billionaire. Now 86, the legendary investor still lives in a modest home in Omaha, and continues to drive himself to the office every morning to manage Berkshire Hathaway, the fourth-largest public company in the world. But more surprising than his humble lifestyle and self-effacing personality are Buffett’s moral integrity and unique mind, which drove him not only to become the most successful businessman in the world, but also an unparalleled philanthropist.

I have seen a couple of documentaries about Buffett before that have been great, many of them still available on YouTube, but I won't miss out on this.

The exciting financial documentary "The Forecaster" (2014) has now gotten itself a nice interactive companion and extension in the style of a newspaper.

The Euro crisis, out of control government debt, popping real estate bubble, military conflicts – and one man who predicted it all. The documentary The Forecaster tells the story of Martin Armstrong, whose predictions in the 1980s shook entire economies. When he refused to manipulate the markets, Armstrong became the subject of an unprecedented miscarriage of justice.

The Forecaster Interactive is the online companion to the movie. With exclusive videos, interviews, original documents, and curated news articles, you can dive into the world of Martin Armstrong. Is he a con man or a genius? Using the evidence and source materials in the timeline, you can check Armstrong’s statements and decide for yourself. Are his forecasts right? Use the menu to jump to key moments in the film and the filters to search for specific information and explanations.

During a talk at the Milken Institute's "Global Conference 2016", hedge fund manager Ray Dalio from Bridgewater Associates, said to moderator Robert Kegan, psychologist and professor at Harvard university, that his best gift to anybody was the gift of Transcendental Meditation, a practice Dalio has been doing since '69.

I've just seen "The Big Short" (2015) about the 2008 financial crisis, and both me and my wife gave it our highest rating – five out of five.

The film is beautifully shot with great photography, edited in a rather unique way, acting is great and the story is beyond important. Don't miss out on this film!

The story gets somewhat technical at times, but the filmmakers have done a great job in blending explanations of complex financial instruments with more simpler ones.

Below is a video that deals with the film's financial terminology:

Trying to keep up with and understand the mechanics behind the Panama Papers?! Thanks to Vox and the work of redditor DanGliesack, we can get a thorough explanation by watching an animated video that clarifies all of it with the help of piggy banks.

It's easy to get confused by all the headlines about the Panama Papers, a massive 2.6-terabyte leak of documents that reveals a global web of corruption and tax avoidance. But Vox's German Lopez uncovered a great explanation of what's happening, and it's courtesy of brilliant redditor DanGliesack.

He uses piggy banks to help explain the main (and complicated-sounding) thing that was happening in Panama: foreigners setting up Panamanian shell companies to hold financial assets that obscure the identities of their real owners. We thought this analogy was quite fitting for a comic, so we created these illustrations to explain the key issue at the heart of the Panama Papers scandal.

Vice met up with former City banker Geraint Anderson who began writing the anonymous "Cityboy" column in 2006 for The London Paper, in which he revealed misconducts that happened in the banking sector. You can read Anderson's archived column on his website.

The column later became the best selling book "Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile" (2009) that got translated into 5 languages, and later this year a featured film based on the memoir is to be released.

If you were a Londoner and you used public transport in the mid-00s, there's a strong chance you remember Geraint's column, and are aware that he subsequently wrote a book called "Cityboy". Since he outed himself, a lot's changed – Geraint's been shunned by the people he used to know in the banking game and the world's markets have been rocked by the global financial crisis. Now that people have realised the one-way bonus system might have had something to do with everyone losing their jobs and going broke, city boys tend to occupy a rung on the popularity ladder somewhere between animal cruelty convicts and Joey Barton.

[…]

But banks always argue that investment bankers get shit-loads of money because they do such an important job.

I thought that what I was doing was completely pointless. The bonus system is a perfect way to get rich quickly, and investment bankers are never responsible. Before the big bang in 1986, if there were losses, you had to pay for them. But that quickly changed to the American way of doing things: the one-way bet.

[…]

There are a lot of studies that investigate investment bankers being psychopathic.

What are the key features of psychopaths? They're manipulative, deceiving, charming, have no empathy, no remorse and are guilt-free. I worked with loads of people who were like that and they were the best bankers. You're a better banker if you don't care about other human beings. If you organise take-overs and know that thousands of people will lose their job because of it, you best not give a shit.

A documentary has also been made called "Cityboy – The Life Of Investment Banker Geraint Anderson". The following footage is a shortened version of the original running time of 45 minutes:

Image credit: Daily Mail

The feature film "Too Big to Fail" (2011) based on Andrew Ross Sorkin's non-fiction book "Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System–and Themselves" (2010), chronicles the financial meltdown of 2008 and the work of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson played by actor William Hurt.

Watch part one:

Watch part two:

The Corporate Culture has compiled a list of the top 21 Wall Street films to watch.

Not available in stores, this nearly 50-hour program includes 25 required viewing classes, and it's free. This guide to the top 20 Wall Street films is not just entertaining, it is educational. From 1981's Rollover to its younger brother Wall Street The Movie, and even the late 90's Pi, these movies explore the complex world of finance. From Danny DeVito in Other People's Money to Eddie Murphy in Trading Places, Wall Street has always relied on its sense of humor to get through the tough times. Some of my favorite picks are Barbarians at the Gate, Working Girl, and the timeless American Psycho. Forget the MBA and watch these 25 films.

Featured image: From the official trailer of "Pi" (1998).

Watching Channel 4's interesting documentary "The Mad World of Donald Trump" (2016) yesterday, I found out that when Donald Trump got interviewed by television presenter Selina Scott for an ITV documentary back in '95, he wasn't too happy with some of the facts Scott revealed and began to send her intimidating letters.

[…] My 60-minute documentary exposed how through bluff, bombast and braggadocio, he had convinced the American business community he was far richer than he was, and that while the rest of his rivals were 'losers', he knew how to make the US great.

This ability to blag people into believing he was a commercial genius was most vividly illustrated in a helicopter ride we took over New York. Pointing to the Empire State Building, he told me he owned it.

'What all of it?' I asked.

'Yes, 100 per cent,' he replied.

Later, forgetting he had told me he wholly owned the building, he said he only owned 50 per cent of it which he then considerably reduced. It was the same story with the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City.

'It's wholly owned by me,' he said. 'Are you sure?' I asked. 'Well maybe 80 per cent,' he demurred. 'Are you quite sure?' I pressed. He replied: 'Well it's actually 50 per cent…'

I showed both assertions in my film with many other inconsistencies with the telling soundtrack It Ain't Necessarily So.

Trump went ballistic. Over many years he sent me a series of intimidating letters branding me 'sleazy, unattractive, obnoxious and boring.' He said I was 'totally uptight', and that I had begged him for a date. In his dreams!

This vicious tirade was often accompanied by fanzine newspaper cuttings which purported to show how much money he was making.

Watch "The Mad World of Donald Trump":

And another great Trump documentary I also watched yesterday is called "Trump: What's the Deal?" (1991), a documentary that Trump managed to never get broadcast, until now. It's writer, journalist Jesse Kornbluth, wrote the following in The Huffington Post:

Our story starts in 1988, in the decade of greed.

Leonard Stern, a New York pet food mogul and real estate developer, decided to finance a series of documentaries about celebrity businessmen. He did a smart thing -- for the first documentary, he chose Donald Trump, who was then riding his bestselling book "The Art of the Deal" and beloved by the media.

I was called in to write the piece after the filmmakers shot the footage. It was easy work, because they had remarkable stuff: Donald working with the mob in Atlantic City, intimidating tenants, hiring illegal immigrant labor, verbally assaulting his family and underlings, trying to move a Florida airport because jets flew directly over his home… the list goes on and on.

Perhaps most interesting from a political point of view, the filmmakers revealed Trump to be the opposite of a small-government conservative. He got his start with his father's money and political connections, and he made money the same way his father did: on the backs of taxpayers.

But most upsetting to Trump was the film's revelation that he hadn't made as much money as he said he had. The producers were among the first to show that his financial empire was built on braggadocio... as recent reports show it to be to this day.

[…]

"Trump: What's the Deal?" was never shown on television. Donald Trump went after Leonard Stern --- in a big way. Lawyer's letters. Threats of lawsuits. Personal attacks.

Stern decided he didn't need the trouble and canceled the series. The producers finished the film. But no broadcaster would touch it. Trump had done his work.

Watch the trailer:

Watch the full documentary:

Featured image: Donald Trump on the cover of New York Magazine taken from "Trump: What's the Deal?".

During a period of six months, entrepreneur Kathleen O'Grady worked as hedge fund manager Ray Dalio's assistent at Bridgewater Associates. Working for Dalio, O'Grady learned 5 key lessons that she shares in a longer blog post that was written back in 2011.

I would not be an entrepreneur specializing in Authentic Leadership if it were not for my experience working for Ray Dalio at Bridgewater Associates. For approximately six months, I supported Ray Dalio (Founder), Bob Prince (Co-CIO), and Ray’s brilliant, philanthropic son Matt Dalio (Founder of The China Care Foundation) as their Executuve & Personal Assistant. Despite its brevity, this previous position has proven time and time again to be a major contributing factor to the person I am and the work I do in the world.

I learned more about self leadership in that six months than most people learn in a lifetime. Seeing the recent article on Ray in The New Yorker, titled Mastering the Machine, I was compelled to write this blog.

Featured image: Ray Dalio for Hedge Magazine by photographer Matt Furman.

Via DealBook.

With Malin Akerman and Paul Giamatti in the lead, not to mention the great actor Damian Lewis, I must start following the TV series "Billions" that apparently is the first one that gets Wall Street completely right according to trader James Altucher, who knows this place inside out.

Wall Street starts at Broadway and continues down to Water Street. Along the way, it gets crooked. Right around Broad Street it starts to curve. If you are standing at one end of Wall Street and try to look at the other end, you won’t see it. Because it's crooked

I lived on the street. And I worked on the street.

People walk back and forth daydreaming about getting rich. Others are crying because they couldn't make it. And if you can't make it there, as the song sort of goes, you can't make it anywhere.

Which is really true. Because "there" is where the money is. And people get desperate around money. So desperate they will do anything to get it.

At one point I invested in a dozen hedge funds. Eleven of them ended up being caught doing illegal activity. A few people are in jail.

Every night I was scared because I started to see what was going on until eventually I shut the whole thing down.

[…]

Billions, the new show on Showtime is the first show that accurately describes what is going on on this tiny street.

In this three-part documentary "Million Dollar Traders", hedge fund manager Lex van Dam lets twelve people, who haven't had any experience of trading, to trade for 2 months with $1 million of his own money. Working alongside Lex, the group is supervised by former City trader Anton Kreil. The work is based on successful investor Richard Dennis' Turtle experiment from '83 and '84, who thought that trading could be taught. When the experiment ended five years later, the group of people he'd trained had earned a profit of a staggering $175 million.

Watch the playlist:

The documentary "Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?" (2011) deals with the subject how government deregulation has led to increasing economic inequality with 400 of the wealthiest Americans owing more wealth than the bottom 150 million.

HEIST: Who Stole the American Dream? is stunning audiences across the globe as it traces the worldwide economic collapse to a 1971 secret memo entitled Attack on American Free Enterprise System. Written over 40 years ago by the future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, at the behest of the US Chamber of Commerce, the 6-page memo, a free-market utopian treatise, called for a money fueled big business makeover of government through corporate control of the media, academia, the pulpit, arts and sciences and destruction of organized labor and consumer protection groups.

But Powell's real "end game” was business control of law and politics. HEIST's step by step detail exposes the systemic implementation of Powell's memo by BOTH U.S. political parties culminating in the deregulation of industry, outsourcing of jobs and regressive taxation. All of which led us to the global financial crisis of 2008 and the continued dismantling of the American middle class. Today, politics is the playground of the rich and powerful, with no thought given to the hopes and dreams of ordinary Americans. No other film goes as deeply as HEIST in explaining the greatest wealth transfer of our time. Moving beyond the white noise of today's polarizing media, HEIST provides viewers with a clear, concise and fact- based explanation of how we got into this mess, and what we need to do to restore our representative democracy.

Watch trailer:

You can rent and buy the documentary over at the official documentary site or watch it below.

Image credit: From the official trailer.

The well-produced documentary "SOLD!: The Lewis Borsellino Story" (2015) by Tastytrade, tells the story about former Chicago Mercantile Exchange S&P floor trader Lewis Borsellino, who alongside his brother got mentored by lawyer and successful gold trader Maury Kravitz, and rose to become one of the nation's top traders.

The documentary "Inside Job" (2010), directed by Charles H. Ferguson and narrated by actor Matt Damon, examines in five parts what caused the housing and banking financial crisis of 2008.

Watch the trailer:

You can watch the full documentary for free over at Vimeo.

Featured image: Taken from the trailer.

In the documentary "Sweatshop: Deadly Fashion" (2014), three Norwegian fashion bloggers travel to Phnom Penh, Cambodia to work in a sweatshop for a month.

It started off as a web-series, charting the experiences of three young fashion bloggers, who spent a month living the life of Cambodian garment workers in Phnom Penh. But following headlines and articles all over the world, more than a million hits and lots of inquires, the webseries has been re-versioned into an hour long documentary.

Frida, Anniken and Ludwig live, breath and dream fashion. They spend hundreds of euros every month on clothes and make a living promoting the latest catwalk trends. Except for speculated that factory workers must be ‘used to’ their hard lives, they have never given much thought to the people who make their clothes.

Now, they're trading their comfortable lives for those of Cambodian garment workers. As well as working in the factories, they have to survive on $3 a day. But this is no exploitative doc, relying on shock value. It poignantly shows the consequences of cheap fashion.

Watch trailer:

The web series is still available to watch for free.

Featured image: From the trailer.

The two-part BBC documentary "Traders: Millions by the Minute" is a fascinating look into the world of trading. In the documentary, you'll meet both industry veterans and beginners.

You'll meet hedge fund manager Karen Finerman, traders working at the trading floor or by computers in Chicago, New York and London, and the large number of retail day traders working from home. The documentary discusses the industry's transition from doing less floor trading to today's computerized trading, with big changes occuring in the latter area.

Watch part one:

And part two:

For more, visit my ongoing list of videos related to finance and trading