Which 5 investing books have been the most influential to you?

[tede02]

In no particular order:

 

1.  One Up On Wall Street

2.  The Warren Buffett Way

3.  The Little Book That Beats the Market

4.  The Snowball & Buffett: Making of an American Capitalist

5.  The Signal & the Noise

 

Of course all of the Berkshire Letters and Howard Marks memos are priceless as well. 

[tede02]

This may be a controversial statement on this board but I'm a bit surprised that The Intelligent Investor seems to number as the most influential.  I've read the book and it remains on my bookshelf, but I found it kind of boring (I don't know how else to put it).  However, I did not read the book until I had read three books by Peter Lynch and two books about Buffett.  I think in this context, it's understandable.  I also found what Charlie Munger said somewhat recently about Ben Graham kind of interesting:

 

On Benjamin Graham, the great investor who was Warren Buffett’s revered mentor:

 

I don’t love Ben Graham and his ideas the way Warren does. You have to understand, to Warren — who discovered him at such a young age and then went to work for him — Ben Graham’s insights changed his whole life, and he spent much of his early years worshiping the master at close range.  But I have to say, Ben Graham had a lot to learn as an investor.  His ideas of how to value companies were all shaped by how the Great Crash and the Depression almost destroyed him, and he was always a little afraid of what the market can do. It left him with an aftermath of fear for the rest of his life, and all his methods were designed to keep that at bay.

 

I think Ben Graham wasn’t nearly as good an investor as Warren Buffett is or even as good as I am.  Buying those cheap, cigar-butt stocks [companies with limited potential growth selling at a fraction of what they would be worth in a takeover or liquidation] was a snare and a delusion, and it would never work with the kinds of sums of money we have. You can’t do it with billions of dollars or even many millions of dollars.  But he was a very good writer and a very good teacher and a brilliant man, one of the only intellectuals – probably the only intellectual — in the investing business at the time.

 

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/09/12/a-fireside-chat-with-charlie-munger/

[Philip Morris IV]

I suspect for many here TII was probably their first kiss with value investing, maybe after flirting with a few BRK letters.  At least insofar as the concepts of margin of safety and Mr. Market.  For me, those two came at the tail end of a college education filled with CAPM, EMH, Swensen/Yale model etc.  In one fell swoop, they replaced that with a totally new foundation and so imparted a kind of pivotal legacy.

 

You/Munger make good points and many have alluded to them in this thread.  I agree, the influence speaks more to psychology than valuing methods that are better explained in other books.  My favorites have been mentioned but one I'll add is Manual of Ideas (John Mihaljevic) which does a great job dissecting the methods of different types of value investing/investors.

[innerscorecard]

A good friend lent me his copy of The Intelligent Investor in the freshman year of college. I skimmed it and it seemed reasonable but it just didn't stick or seem all that interesting (besides the concept of Mr. Market of course). I didn't really read it thoroughly.

 

I'm now truly reading it (the same edition as before) and I find it amazing and so dense with carefully considered thought. It was years of life experience as well as a bit of time actually practicing investing and learning different things that totally changed my viewpoint of the book.

 

I think that book-wise, the most important book in-between that allowed me to bridge the gap in readiness to read The Intelligent Investor was A Random Walk Down Wall Street (along with much other efficient-markets-hypothesis literature). A familiarity with the efficient markets hypothesis and index fund investing really ironically provided me with the grounding needed to appreciate how difficult and interesting it is to beat the market through value investing.

[KinAlberta]

Just throwing in one here.  The first book on Buffett I read.  One of the first books written about Buffett.  John train had mentioned him too.

 

Anyway, it's interesting that there are no decent reviews of this book. I guess it predates the Buffett writing bonanza.

 

1 cent used. A good value buy.

 

 

Warren Buffett: The Good Guy of Wall Street Hardcover – September 30, 1992

 

https://www.amazon.com/Warren-Buffett-Good-Wall-Street/dp/155611334X

[sarganaga]

(1) Fooled By Randomness - Antifragile - Nassim Taleb (Taleb's series of books as an expanded explanation of a single idea)

(2) Investment Gurus - Peter Tanous

(3) Hedge Hogging - Barton Biggs

(4) Hedge Fund Market Wizards - Jack Schwager

(5) The Intelligent Investors Guide to Profiting from Stock Market Inefficiencies - D. Robert Coulson

[Investor20]

Very Nice Books and many recommendations for me.

 

On value investing I found most useful are of Greenblatt - particularly The little book that beats the market.  Simple and yet to point.

 

The other one I recently read and want to read more is in psychology: Mastermind: How to think like sherlockholmes.

 

May be there are much better books in psychology but it is simple enough for me and the main point is our brains are inherently wired to be lazy and biased and how to train like sherlockholmes (of course fictional character) to get out of this laziness. Not an investing book per se but still applicable in investing as investing is also behavioral.

[cubsfan]

Just to add a couple of recent investing books that I found very useful:

 

--  Bank Investor's Handbook - by one of our members. An excellent, short and sweet book. I've made

    plenty investing in banks, but this book is a gem and will make you a better bank investor.

 

--  Manlobbi's Decent - by Julian Cochran. An under-the-radar investment book. If you are a patient,

    long-term investor (or want to be) - this is a great book. It deals with a methodology to identify long term

    durability (moat) of investments. I found this book tremendously insightful. At the end, there is a detailed

    case study of Brookfield Asset Management analyzed using the Manlobbi Method. The book is written in

    an unusual style, which takes a chapter or two to get used to - but, for me, made it very entertaining.

    I loved this book.

 

--  Invest Like A Guru - by Charlie Tian. Those that use GuruFocus (I do) - know Charlie and his detailed site.

    I was QUITE surprised when he released this book - and I think he hit the ball out of the park - on the

    various Value Investing strategies/methods and implementations. Another great book that helped me

    refine my own methodology.

 

 

 

 

[rukawa]

I do not think Snowball is that great, especially as an investment book. However, the one thing I did get out of it is how many personal relationships Warren has with top CEOs.  It made me rethink how well I can possibly know someone just through internet research and how much of an informational advantage other investors have over management assessments. 

 

It also makes me think I should have swung harder on JPM during the Whale fiasco given Warren's seal of approval on Jamie compounded with the fact he knew him since the 90s.  It was probably a bigger vote of confidence than I realized.

 

I actually don't think Buffett biographies are bad as investment books. From a Buffett  biography you will learn about the following:

1) net-nets

2) Benjamin graham, Security Analysis and the intelligent investor.

3) wide moat investing...even if you don't agree with this method...its pretty important to know about it so you understand when people are making the argument

4) Walter Schloss, Irving Kahn, Tweedy Brown and other things in the value universe

5) merger arbs, activist investing

 

Basically Buffett's biography is a great introduction to value investing....it just tends to push people in a direction that may not work for them...namely trying to be the next Warren Buffett.

 

My picks would be:

 

1) Intelligent Investor

2) Making of an American Capitalist

3) Benjamin Graham on Investing

4) You too can be a stock market genius

[KJP]

1.  McKinsey's valuation treatise

2.  Competition Demystified

3.  You Too Can Be A Stock Market Genius

 

Also useful:

Quality of Earnings

Creative Cash Flow Reporting

 

Here are some other ones that I did not find useful:

 

Margin of Safety

Security Analysis

Intelligent Investor

Dhando Investor

Howard Marks's Memos

Value Investing:  Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment (James Montier)

Contrarian Investment Strategies (David Dreman)

Value Investing:  From Graham to Buffet and Beyond (Greenwald)

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises

 

 

[John Hjorth]

KJP, and other fellow board members,

 

How does one get a legal specimen of Margin of Safety up under ones nails? I have been looking at Ebay for years now.

[KJP]

KJP, and other fellow board members,

 

How does one get a legal specimen of Margin of Safety up under ones nails? I have been looking at Ebay for years now.

 

eBay, but it's vastly overpriced.

[John Hjorth]

Thanks, KJP,

 

*Sigh*

[writser]

Get a digital copy. Google is your friend. Good read but definitely not worth the crazy price.

[John Hjorth]

Personally, I think I'm in serious need of some serious trash talking from fellow board members about Mr. Klarman's book - on twitter, etc. - basically everywhere - the more Biglari, Sears & Valeant-style here on CoBF - the better!, writser! [in short, I'm just such a cheap-skate!]

 

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Back to topic.

[ScottHall]

Personally, I think I'm in serious need of some serious trash talking from fellow board members about Mr. Klarman's book - on twitter, etc. - basically everywhere - the more Biglari, Sears & Valeant-style here on CoBF - the better!, writser! [in short, I'm just such a cheap-skate!]

 

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Back to topic.

 

Margin of Safety is basically just an $800 copy of You Can Be A Stock Market Genius IMO. Both books cover a lot of the same sort of material, but I thought Greenblatt's was better. I enjoyed all the case studies.

 

MoS is not bad necessarily. But there's not a lot of "new" in there to justify the price if you already have had a broad exposure to value philosophy.

[John Hjorth]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this particular topic, Scott! I'll order "You Can Be A Stock Market Genius". [i've never read it - nothing is ever too late.]

[KJP]

Personally, I think I'm in serious need of some serious trash talking from fellow board members about Mr. Klarman's book - on twitter, etc. - basically everywhere - the more Biglari, Sears & Valeant-style here on CoBF - the better!, writser! [in short, I'm just such a cheap-skate!]

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Back to topic.

 

Margin of Safety is basically just an $800 copy of You Can Be A Stock Market Genius IMO. Both books cover a lot of the same sort of material, but I thought Greenblatt's was better. I enjoyed all the case studies.

 

MoS is not bad necessarily. But there's not a lot of "new" in there to justify the price if you already have had a broad exposure to value philosophy.

 

Yes, that's the issue with MoS.  If you know of its existence, then you won't get much (perhaps nothing) out of it.

[Valuebo]

1) What I learned Losing A Million Dollars (great for mindset / psychology)

2) The Halo Effect (also for business in general)

3) The Great Depression (also for history aspect and great read)

4) The Little Book of Behavioral Investing: How Not to Be Your Own Worst Enemy

 

 

And obviously anything from WEB (letters etc)/Graham etc. Leaving plenty out, no need to repeat those already listed before me. I'd have to reevaluate to make an accurate list of the best. I've generally found books strongly linked to psychology far better than most other investing books. We truly are our own worst enemy.

 

[Hielko]

Personally, I think I'm in serious need of some serious trash talking from fellow board members about Mr. Klarman's book - on twitter, etc. - basically everywhere - the more Biglari, Sears & Valeant-style here on CoBF - the better!, writser! [in short, I'm just such a cheap-skate!]

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Back to topic.

 

Margin of Safety is basically just an $800 copy of You Can Be A Stock Market Genius IMO. Both books cover a lot of the same sort of material, but I thought Greenblatt's was better. I enjoyed all the case studies.

 

MoS is not bad necessarily. But there's not a lot of "new" in there to justify the price if you already have had a broad exposure to value philosophy.

To be fair, Margin of Safety was written years earlier than You Can Be A Stock Market Genius, so if you want to call something a copy it should be the latter one... (I do agree though though that it's one of the best investment books ever written).