Investing Books

• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns by John Bogle
  Owning a diversified portfolio of stocks and holding it for the long term is a winne's game. Trying to beat the stock market is theoretically a zero-sum game (for every winner, there must be a loser), but after the substantial costs of investing are deducted, it becomes a loser's game. Common sense tells us, and history confirms, that the simplest and most efficient investment strategy is to buy and hold all of the nation's publicly held businesses at very low cost. The classic index fund that owns this market portfolio is the only investment that guarantees you with your fair share of stock market returns. Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing will show you how to incorporate this proven investment strategy into your portfolio. It will also change the very way you think about investing. Successful investing is not easy. (It requires discipline and patience.) But it is simple. For it's all about common sense.

• Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor by John Bogle
  

• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings: by Philip A. Fisher
  "I sought out Phil Fisher after reading his Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings. When I met him, I was as impressed by the man as by his ideas. A thorough understanding of the business, obtained by using Phil’s techniques ... enables one to make intelligent investment commitments." –– Warren Buffett An excellent book on fundamental analysis and long term investing.

• The Jubak Picks: 50 Stocks That Will Rebuild Your Wealth & Safeguard Your Future by Jim Jubak
  Jim Jubak’s top-down stock-picking method is based on being in the right asset at the right time, ensuring that your portfolio is composed of stocks with the wind at their back and that are trending upward. He shows how to find the best stocks by first understanding ten macro trends changing the world, including: • The economies—Brazil, Russia, Vietnam, India, China, and the "rest of the gang"—driving global demand • The rising tide of retirement money in an older and wealthier world • The commodities crunch in a world ever more hungry for natural resources • The end of cheap oil

• One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market by Peter Lynch
  

• Learn to Earn: A Beginner's Guide to the Basics of Investing and Business by Peter Lynch
  In Learn to Earn, Lynch and Rothchild explain in a style accessible to anyone who is high-school age or older, how to understand a company annual report, and why everyone should pay attention to the stock market. They explain not only how to invest, but also how to think like an investor. Many investors, including some with substantial portfolios, have only the sketchiest idea of how the stock market works. The reason is that the basics of investing - the fundamentals of our economic system and what they have to do with the stock market - aren't taught in school. At a time when individuals have to make important decisions about saving for college and 401(k) retirement funds, this failure to provide a basic education in investing can have tragic consequences.

• How to Trade In Stocks: by Jesse Livermore
  "Jesse Livermore was a loner, an individualist-and the most successful stock trader who ever lived. Written shortly before his death in 1940, How to Trade Stocks offered traders their first account of that famously tight-lipped operator's trading system. ... In this new edition of that classic, trader and top Livermore expert Richard Smitten sheds new light on Jesse Livermore's philosophy and methods. Drawing on Livermore's private papers and interviews with his family, Smitten provides priceless insights into the Livermore trading formula, along with tips on how to combine it with contemporary charting techniques. Also included is the Livermore Market Key, the first and still one of the most accurate methods of tracking and recording market patterns."

• The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders by Jack D. Schwager
  Another easy to read (follow up to his original Market Wizards) and interesting book for those interested in investing, the stock marketing and speculation. Traders interviewed include: William Eckhardt, Stanley Druckenmiller's and Richard Driehaus.

• Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders by Jack D. Schwager
  17 superstar investors/speculators are interviewed including Richard Dennis, Paul Tudor Jones, William O'Neil, James B. Rogers, Ed Seykota, Marty Schwartz, Tom Baldwin.

• The Interpretation of Financial Statements: by Benjamin Graham
  Benjamin Graham has been called the most important investment thinker of the twentieth century. As a master investor, pioneering stock analyst, and mentor to investment superstars, he has no peer. This book is his timeless guide to interpreting and understanding financial statements. "if you have precise information as to a company's present financial position and its past earnings record, you are better equipped to gauge its future possibilities. And this is the essential function and value of security analysis." Written just three years after his landmark Security Analysis, The Interpretation of Financial Statements gets to the heart of the master's ideas on value investing in astonishingly few pages. Readers will learn to analyze a company's balance sheets and income statements and arrive at a true understanding of its financial position and earnings record. Graham provides simple tests any reader can apply to determine the financial health and well-being of any company. This volume is an exact text replica of the first edition of The Interpretation of Financial Statements, published by Harper & Brothers in 1937. Highly practical and accessible, it is an essential guide for all business people--and makes the perfect companion volume to Graham's investment masterpiece The Intelligent Investor.

• Debunkery: Learn It, Do It, and Profit from It-Seeing Through Wall Street's Money-Killing Myths by Ken Fisher
  Many investors fail to question if what they believe is true—and are therefore blinded by tradition, biases, ideology, or any number of cognitive errors. The problem is, the errors don't seem like mistakes—they seem like smart, intuitive, and/or widely recognized investing "wisdoms." In short, accessible, and highly entertaining chapters, Debunkery details and debunks 50 common Wall Street myths.

• Beating the Street: by Peter Lynch
  

• Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life by John Bogle
  Written by John C. Bogle–the legendary founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund–Enough. offers his unparalleled insights on money, the values we should emulate in our business and professional callings, and what we should consider as the true treasures in our lives. Inspired in large measure by the hundreds of lectures Bogle has delivered to professional groups and college students in recent years, this book will help you discover what it really means to have "enough" and how close you are to really having it.

• Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein
  This illuminating biography reveals a man whose conscientiousness, integrity, and good humor exist alongside an odd emotional isolation. Buffett also masterfully traces his life: his enormously successful partnership; his early, inspired investments in American Express and Geico; his companionship and investment with Katharine Graham of the Washington Post; his role in the Capital Cities purchase of ABC; and his rescue of the scandal-ridden Salomon Brothers.

• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator: by Edwin Lefã¨Vre, Jesse Livermore
  "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is the thinly disguised biography of Jesse Livermore, a remarkable character who first started speculating in New England bucket shops at the turn of the century. Livermore, who was banned from these shady operations because of his winning ways, soon moved to Wall Street where he made and lost his fortune several times over. What makes this book so valuable are the observations that Lefèvre records about investing, speculating, and the nature of the market itself."

• How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad, Fourth Edition by William O'neil
  The founder of Investing Business Daily updates his classic exploration of his CAN SLIM Investing System: a 7-step process for minimizing risk and maximizing gains—has influenced generations of investors.

• The Real Estate Investor's Handbook : The Complete Guide for the Individual Investor by Steven D. Fisher
  

• One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market by Peter Lynch
  

Investing Articles

• Choosing The Highest Safe Withdrawal Rate At Retirement
  The article explores safe withdrawal rates for retirement savings - "As can be seen in Figure 1, there were many occasions in the past when withdrawal rates higher than even 5.5% could have been successfully employed. In fact, the average SAFEMAX for all retirees for the years 1926 to 1990 was 7.0%—much higher than the “worst case” scenario of 4.5%. It seemed to me, therefore, that it would be useful to have a method that prescribed high withdrawal rates when the right conditions existed."

• This is the most difficult time to invest by John Bogle
  "In 2008 we had one of the largest cuts in dividends in the history of the S&P 500. Now the dividends don't seem to be coming back, even though the earnings have. What are the corporations trying to tell us? I don't know. Maybe they're trying to tell you that these earnings are phony, and we don't have money to pay you dividends. Corporations play games with earnings. I just don't believe them. Operating earnings are always higher than reported earnings after write-offs, because corporations are always making investment decisions that are bad. They always have write-offs and tell us they're 'nonrecurring.' Except they recur year after year after year."

• Warren Buffett's Letters To Berkshire Shareholders by Warren Buffett
  Every Investor should read these. Letters going back to 1995 give you insight into Warren Buffett's ideas on investing, the economy and business.

• 5 Keys to Successful Dividend Investing
  "build a diversified portfolio of hand-selected dividend payers with above-average but modest yields, well-covered by plenty of free cash flow. Pair this group with high-quality investment-grade bonds and a smattering of REITs, and you'll have built yourself a well-rounded income-focused portfolio that can help you achieve solid profits without undue risk."

• Beginners' Guide to Asset Allocation, Diversification, and Rebalancing
  by the SEC. By including asset categories with investment returns that move up and down under different market conditions within a portfolio, an investor can protect against significant losses.

• The Great Financial Scandal of 2003 by Charles Munger
  An exploration of an imaginary company. "This price decline, in turn, triggered a careful examination of Quant Tech’s financial reporting practices which, at long last, convinced nearly everyone that a very large majority of Quant Tech’s reported earnings had long been phony earnings and that massive and deliberate misreporting had gone on for a great many years. This triggered even more price decline for Quant Tech stock until in mid-2003 the market capitalization of Quant Tech was only $140 billion, down 90% from its peak only six months earlier."

• New Normal math: How your investing plans must change
  "I don't think the implications of changing stocks' rate of return from 10% to 5% have sunk in. We acknowledge that stock returns will be poor, and yet all of our retirement advice—save 10% of your income... withdraw 4% in retirement—stays the same. ... Option number two: Retire later. You're likely going to live to an age older than your parents anyway, and I'm sure you've had it in the back of your mind that it was never reasonable to work 40 years and then have a 40-year retirement anyway."

• 3 Dividend Growth Stocks selected by Gordon Model
  "In implementing the hypothesis it must be recognized that the stockholder is interested in the entire sequence of dividend payments that he may expect and not merely the current value. ... The yield is 4%. The 5-yr dividend growth rate is 6.4%. Thus the Gordon yield would be 10.4%. The fair p/e would be 1/ Gordon yield=9.61. The higher the dividend growth rate, the more the stock is improperly modeled—due to its deviation from bond status. In practice, I simply add the yield + dividend growth rate to get a fair p/e of 10.4."

• How to save $1 million by 65
  "Save $250 a month until you're 65, for example, and you would need a 10% annualized return to hit that $1 million target. I still consider that overly optimistic even for an all-stock portfolio, given the prices stocks are selling at today and the uncertainly surrounding the growth prospects here and abroad. Boost your monthly savings to $400, and the return you need falls to about 8% annually. Possible? I suppose. But perhaps still ambitious. ... ... Remember, though, having a million bucks 37 years from now isn't like having that sum today. In fact, assuming a modest 2.5% inflation rate, $1 million in 2047 would be the equivalent of having about $400,000 now. Or, viewed another way, you would need about $2.5 million in 2047 to have the purchasing power of $1 million today."

• Who Really Cooks the Books? by Warren Buffett
  "For many years, I've had little confidence in the earnings numbers reported by most corporations. I'm not talking about Enron and WorldCom - examples of outright crookedness. Rather, I am referring to the legal, but improper, accounting methods used by chief executives to inflate reported earnings. The most flagrant deceptions have occurred in stock-option accounting and in assumptions about pension-fund returns. The aggregate misrepresentation in these two areas dwarfs the lies of Enron and WorldCom."

• Pitfalls in Retirement
  A very good, detailed, overview of reasonable retirement planning and retirement spending expectations. "Spending rates of 3% or less are likely sustainable, while those much above 5% may not be. Careful research confirms these observations. The sustainability of spending rates within the range of 3–5% depends on the period in question as well as the other factors noted above" Curious Cat Investing Blog post on the paper

• Fund manager keen on Malaysia by Mark Mobius
  "Mobius said that over the past 25 years, he had been telling people that equities was the way to go and emerging markets were the places to be. Supply of stocks is growing in Asia and is actually soaking up the flow of hot money from offshore to this region. ... 'I am bullish on property everywhere. I put one third of my own money in equities, a third in property and a third in cash.'"

• Why stocks beat gold and bonds by Warren Buffett
  "Ideally, these assets should have the ability in inflationary times to deliver output that will retain its purchasing-power value while requiring a minimum of new capital investment. Farms, real estate, and many businesses such as Coca-Cola, IBM, and our own See's Candy meet that double-barreled test."

Investing Web Sites and Resources

• Management and Leadership Quotes by John Hunter
  Quotes on management, business, leadership and many related topics: innovation, problems solving, change, statistics, planning, motivation, etc..

• Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog by John Hunter
  

• Canadian Value Investing
  "- Investment decisions should be few and far between. Use a 20 spot punch card (Patient) - Investment Concentration - No more than 10 positions. - Diversification is an excuse for ignorance. - Large periods of inactivity. I prefer doing nothing; it's easier than making a decision. - Read, Read, Read..."

• TIAA - Saving For Retirement
  Articles to help learn about the financial issues and strategies to plan for a successful retirement savings strategy.

• Money Magazine Retirement Site
  Lots of articles on retirement savings and investment strategies.

• The Motley Fool
  " Our mission: To educate, amuse, and enrich Our vision: To build the world's greatest investment community Our core values: Honesty, optimism, teamwork, innovation, winning"

• Bloomberg
  

• Money Under 30
  

• Yahoo Finance
  

• Seeking Alpha
  "We handpick articles from the world's top market blogs, money managers, financial experts and investment newsletters - publishing approximately 250 articles daily. Seeking Alpha gives a voice to over 3000 contributors, providing access to the nation's most savvy and inquisitive investors."

• Gen Y Wealth
  Blog by R.J. Weiss: "Personal financial planning, because it's not that hard to get rich"

• Jubak Picks by Jim Jubak
  "The goal is to bring you the best market intelligence that I can on a schedule that keeps you at least one step ahead of the market. What's my definition of market intelligence? I’ve always aimed for a mix of analysis that lets you understand how things work — money flows, new technologies, company strategies, economic trends—and specific stock picks that let you make money from that analysis. When I make a buy or a sell I want you to understand the logic and facts behind it so you can say, Yes, that makes sense for me, or No, I disagree because..."