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Books on Investment

Investment discussion for beginners. Why you should invest your money, get help getting started
shetland
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Books on Investment

#199569

Postby shetland » February 7th, 2019, 12:42 pm

Can people recommend some good books on investment, I think it would be useful to have a stock list of good books to refer new investors too.

Moderator Message:
This post has been made "sticky" to stay at the top of the board with some useful reading suggestions. I will edit out some posts to keep it relevant.

AleisterCrowley
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Re: Books on Investment

#199570

Postby AleisterCrowley » February 7th, 2019, 12:43 pm

Question is a bit broad - investing in equities? Investing in general ?

shetland
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Re: Books on Investment

#199575

Postby shetland » February 7th, 2019, 12:49 pm

Apologies, I meant on stock market investing.

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Re: Books on Investment

#199583

Postby AleisterCrowley » February 7th, 2019, 1:15 pm

These are relatively well known;

Tim Hale - Smarter Investing
Lars Kroijer - Investing Demystified

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Re: Books on Investment

#199600

Postby OLTB » February 7th, 2019, 2:26 pm

AleisterCrowley wrote:These are relatively well known;

Tim Hale - Smarter Investing
Lars Kroijer - Investing Demystified


The above and Lee Freeman-Shor's 'The Art of Execution'.

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Re: Books on Investment

#199605

Postby monabri » February 7th, 2019, 2:35 pm

Hiriskpaul posted a link to a free download for Hale's book.

viewtopic.php?f=88&t=9972&p=117421&hilit=Hale+download#p117421


I downloaded it...just need to get round to reading it !

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Re: Books on Investment

#199623

Postby OhNoNotimAgain » February 7th, 2019, 3:35 pm


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Re: Books on Investment

#199655

Postby FoolishRix » February 7th, 2019, 5:33 pm

I think this book (by Andy Bell of ...er...AJ Bell) is good for newbies.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/DIY-Investor-c ... =andy+bell

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Re: Books on Investment

#199733

Postby AleisterCrowley » February 7th, 2019, 9:56 pm

I enjoyed this one - not just for teachers !
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1119356296/ ... _lig_dp_it
Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School (Hallam)

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Re: Books on Investment

#199753

Postby Backache » February 7th, 2019, 10:54 pm

I would certainly second Tim Hale' Smarter Investing' and 'A random walk down wall street'
The latter is very American focused particularly in regards to the tax treatment of investments which is pretty important
John Kay 'The long and the short of it' is more UK focused and covers general financial management as well as just stock market investing.

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Re: Books on Investment

#199901

Postby SalvorHardin » February 8th, 2019, 1:07 pm

I’d second “A Random walk down Wall Street”.

1) The Motley Fool Investment Guide (UK edition) is worth a look. Of all the books that are likely to be mentioned in this thread this is the most introductory. Okay, it’s a bit out of date (latest edition is 2002) but I’d still recommend it. There’s nothing in it that many of us on here would find new, but for a beginner it’s got a lot of useful stuff in one place.

2) Phil Fisher’s “Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits”. Written in 1958, Fisher’s 15 point checklist is still a masterpiece when it comes to deciding whether a company’s shares are worth considering.

https://www.businessinsider.com/philip- ... ?r=US&IR=T

3) Peter Lynch’s “One Up on Wall Street”. It’s Lynch’s investment philosophy distilled into one book, in particular “invest in what you know” – how individuals can gain an edge over the professionals by spotting market trends (that’s the market for goods and services, not the stockmarket). Lynch came across some of his best investments after talking with his wife and daughters about what they were buying (they saw what was popular in the shops, often well before the analysts).

4) Warren Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders. You can get them from the Berkshire Hathaway website. Superb advice on business analysis, “circle of competence” and “moats” (I’d argue that “moat” is the most important concept for new investors to understand, when I came across it in the late 1980s it was a revelation). Buffett's letters are considered by many to provide a better business and investment education than the CFA qualification or an MBA degree. If you prefer a book then Prof. Lawrence Cunningham produces a digest of the letters in “The Essays of Warren Buffett”

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html

5) A much more advanced book is Terry Smith “Accounting for Growth”, which requires its readers to be reasonably familiar with company accounts. Published in 1992 to me it remains the textbook on the tricks that companies pull to legally fiddle their accounts. An example, one which is often seen today, is where companies redefine “earnings” to exclude certain costs – the pharmaceutical companies are big users of this with their “core earnings”. Terry Smith nowadays manages investments through his Fundsmith funds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Smith_(businessman)

Finally anything by Nassim Taleb is worth considering, if only because his ideas may force you to reassess some of your ideas. Taleb is best known for the idea of "The Black Swan", his most famous book. As an alternative to books' you can find Taleb on Russ Roberts' EconTalk podcast where he has appeared several times (Roberts' economic philosphy is a mixture of Chicago and Austrian schools).

http://www.econtalk.org/nassim-nicholas ... -the-game/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb

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Re: Books on Investment

#199982

Postby monabri » February 8th, 2019, 5:11 pm

Not books but short (15 min) videos by Ramin Nakaisa of PensionCraft. Very clear, succint and definitely worth a watch. Calm and collected.

https://pensioncraft.com/

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Re: Books on Investment

#200368

Postby Howard » February 10th, 2019, 5:43 pm

Dear Shetland

This is a contrarian recommendation which you are free to ignore. A lot of people buy books on investing because they don't really want to take risks.

Don't bother with books on investing. At least not when you start. Just make, say, 10 investments in a few companies and investment trusts with money you can afford to risk going down by 50%.

Make sure your investments are a bit diversified by world region (using ITs) and by activity. And in some large and small companies.

Read about the companies you have invested in as you wait to see how things develop (As well as the Lemon Fool, Stockopedia is a good place to start). After a year or two you will have a good idea of what sort of investor you are and how you might wish to invest more.

If you follow this advice I doubt if you will lose a fortune (unless the market plunges) but you might be quite successful.

And good luck, whatever you do.

regards

Howard

PS I did this and it worked for me but, of course, there is no guarantee it will work for everyone. But you will save the cost of a few books :D .

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Re: Books on Investment

#200380

Postby EssDeeAitch » February 10th, 2019, 6:24 pm

Howard wrote:Dear Shetland

This is a contrarian recommendation which you are free to ignore. A lot of people buy books on investing because they don't really want to take risks.

Don't bother with books on investing. At least not when you start. Just make, say, 10 investments in a few companies and investment trusts with money you can afford to risk going down by 50%.

Make sure your investments are a bit diversified by world region (using ITs) and by activity. And in some large and small companies.

Read about the companies you have invested in as you wait to see how things develop (As well as the Lemon Fool, Stockopedia is a good place to start). After a year or two you will have a good idea of what sort of investor you are and how you might wish to invest more.

If you follow this advice I doubt if you will lose a fortune (unless the market plunges) but you might be quite successful.

And good luck, whatever you do.

regards

Howard

PS I did this and it worked for me but, of course, there is no guarantee it will work for everyone. But you will save the cost of a few books :D .


I think that you are largely correct. In my case (as a new self investor) there was a rush to be if not fully, then significantly invested and I ended up swapping out/selling to realign my portfolio over the following months.

I would suggest do as you say PLUS read a few books, including (and perhaps firstly) Jack Bogle "Little Book of Common Sense Investing" which lauds the benefits of investing in trackers. Even if that is not the route one wished to follow, it will imbue a sense of caution to stock picking and healthy skepticism in fund managers

shetland
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Re: Books on Investment

#200540

Postby shetland » February 11th, 2019, 1:11 pm

Thanks to everyone for all their suggestions.

I have been investing or over 40 years and currently manage SIPP and ISA for Mrs S and myself with a total value of seven figures. What I was looking for, and apologies for not making this clear, was books on investing strategies rather than beginners guides, although those do definitely have a place on this forum.

There were some very useful publications mentioned and I was wondering perhaps the moderators of this forum might consider listing them on a pinned post to everyone who has a similar query.

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Re: Books on Investment

#200620

Postby Howard » February 11th, 2019, 5:33 pm

shetland wrote:Thanks to everyone for all their suggestions.

I have been investing or over 40 years and currently manage SIPP and ISA for Mrs S and myself with a total value of seven figures. What I was looking for, and apologies for not making this clear, was books on investing strategies rather than beginners guides, although those do definitely have a place on this forum.

There were some very useful publications mentioned and I was wondering perhaps the moderators of this forum might consider listing them on a pinned post to everyone who has a similar query.



Now you tell us!!

Why don't you write your own book. :lol:

Howard

PS Only seven figures after more than 40 years :roll:

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Re: Books on Investment

#207599

Postby dspp » March 14th, 2019, 9:15 am

From hariseldon58

Bernstein, William. Rational Expectations: Asset Allocation for Investing Adults

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/224 ... pectations
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rational-Expec ... 0988780321

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Re: Books on Investment

#210039

Postby dspp » March 25th, 2019, 10:09 am

Another from hs58

Strongly recommend taking a look at McClungs book, “Living Off Your Money”

Whilst it’s US based he looks at UK and Japanese data. He has devoted an enormous amount of effort to studying the data, well worth £28.
Spoiler alert, It will tend to provide confirmation bias, except the gold :D the advice re drawdown and portfolio mixes are very interesting.

https://monevator.com/review-living-off ... l-mcclung/

- dspp

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Re: Books on Investment

#222020

Postby Tzvikmister » May 16th, 2019, 10:05 am

I actually liked these ones:

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing - John C. Bogle.
Irrational Exuberance - Robert Shiller.

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Re: Books on Investment

#229459

Postby gbjbaanb » June 14th, 2019, 12:04 pm

Monkey with a Pin - Pete Comley. Available free from various websites, or from Amazon.


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