Best Investment books to read…
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Here is a complete and full list of books that I like my students to read. Extremely long, and randomly written i hope to write reviews on all these books and it should be available soon. Some of these book reviews have already appeared in the In house magazine of BSE called Sensex. Some of the reviews may also be available online – in the personal finance section of myiris.com. The ones in Bold can be for starters…
Books have been listed completely at random – and I have intended it to look like an index. Keep coming back to this page – will add short summaries or comments on each book from time to time as well as full reviews. One of the links on the blogroll is a quaint friendly neighborhood book shop – twistntales. The other place where I have bought most of these books is Bookzone based in Mumbai. This is a random list, not alphabetically arranged, not logically arranged, not arranged that is all.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel.
Jeremy Siegel’s Stocks for the Long Run
Finance Sense – Dr. Prasanna Chandra – get the basics of finance and accounts from here so that you understand concepts like P&L, B/ Sheet, write offs, taxation, etc.
Analysis for Financial Management by Robert Higgins.
Accounting Shenanigans – do not remember the author’s name.
Why Smart People Make Dumb Money Mistakes by Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich.
Parag Parikhs’ book on Behaviourial finance has brought some Indianness to this science! The book is called Stock to Riches.
Roger Lowenstein’s Making of an American Capitalist.
Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor is a must-read. But it can be kind of painful for today’s kids who do not like to read such big books or those who do not understand bond valuation. However, if you realize that bond valuation is the basis from which equity valuation evolves, you will appreciate this book better!
Phil Fisher – Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
Speaking of Phil Fisher leads us to Ken Fisher – and his latest book “The Only 3 questions you need to know” is also an excellent book to read, and as useful as his father’s book. It clears a lot of cobwebs – turning the PE ratio is a useful example! Updating – he has written a book on “Smelling a rat” – and it is kind of a warning about what to look for in an investment proposal.
Peter Lynch’s Beating the Street is the journal of a successful money manager, who is also a good communicator. CIOs should do their job well and also be able to communicate their skills and strategies. The Indian examples of course are Mr. Nilesh Shah of Icici Prudential and Mr. Nagnath of DSP blackrock.
You Can Be a Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt –it’s relatively short, full of case studies, and engagingly written.
John Train’s Money Masters of Our Time and The New Money Masters. The ‘The New Money Masters’ is not easily available, so you will have to search.
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator – Edwin Lefevre. Reads like a pot boiler!
Seth Klarman’s Margin of Safety.
Marty Whitman’s The Aggressive Conservative Investor- I personally found this a difficult and not engaging enough to read!
David Dreman’s Contrarian Investment Strategies.
Munger’s biography–Damn Right! by Janet Lowe.
John Kenneth Galbraith’s A Short History of Financial Euphoria.
Devil Take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor is a fantastic and in-depth history of manias through the ages.
Ron Chernow’s The House of Morgan
Peter Bernstein’s 2 books – Capital Ideas & Against the Gods
The Money Game – Adam Smith
Michael Lewis’s 2 books: Liar’s Poker and Moneyball. His note on the financial markets which appeared in WSJ is also a good read – runs to about 9 pages and is well written.
Roger Lowenstein’s When Genius Failed, which chronicles the rise and fall of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund in the late 1990s.
Bethany McLean’s The Smartest Guys in the Room,
Kurt Eichenwald’s Conspiracy of Fools
Robert Cialdini’s ‘Influence’ and ‘Fooled by Randomness’, by Nassim Taleb, is more directly about finance, and is thought-provoking. Taleb explores how easily we confuse luck with skill, and the importance of knowing which is which. He has followed this with Black Swan. Frankly if you are planning to read, or have read Black Swan, his earlier book Fooled by Randomness becomes unnecessary.
Bruce Greenwald’s Value Investing
Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy.
The Intelligent Asset Allocator: How to Build Your Portfolio to Maximize Returns and Minimize Risk – by William J Bernstein
Asset Allocation: Balancing Financial Risk by Roger C Gibson
Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyasaki
Market Wizards and its sequel – Jack D Schwager is a brilliantly written book on the top traders in the world.
A similar book is ‘Investment strategies ’ by Mercer. This is a well written book and not easily available or recommended.
The Warren Buffet Portfolio – Robert Hagstorm
Future for Investors – Jeremy Siegel
Common Sense on Mutual Funds – John Bogle
New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor – John Bogle
Enough – John Bogle, but I did not like this book as much as I liked his earlier 2 books which I have re-read many times.
The Art of Short Selling – Kathryn F Staley
Barbarians at the Gate – Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
Beating the Dow – Michael O’Higgins and John Downes
Buffet – the Making of an American Capitalist – Roger Lowenstein
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds – Charles Mackay
45 years in Wall street – WD Gann
Great crash of 1929 – J K Galbraith
How to lie with statistics – Darrell Huff (not available anywhere)
John Maynard Keynes (Volumes 1 and 2): Robert Skidelsky
Soros on Soros – George Soros with Byron Wien and Krisztina Koenen
Technical Analysis of Stock Trends – Robert D Edwards and John Magee
Think like a Tycoon – W G Hill (difficult to find)
Where are the Customer’s Yachts – Fred Schwed Jr.
‘Freakonomics’ and ‘Superfreakonomics’ – especially for the way they have approached the dismal science.
‘Your Brain and your Money’ – do not remember the author. Recently re read the book.
this post is actually available in my older blog also…but just re-posting an updated version of the same thing..plus a few additions!
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