What Investing Books am I Reading?

I still have a bunch of investing books I am trying to read (after excluding the ones given by publishers to review). Even a guy like me, who loves to talk about personal finance, can consume only limited quantities of these books at a time. Here is what I am in the middle of reading right now:

The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham

The Four Pillars of Investing by William Bernstein

Rule #1 by Phil Town

The Seven Secrets to Becoming a Multi-Millionaire by Bill Staton

Automatic Wealth by Michael Masterson

So far these are all really powerful investing books that I have gleaned something from. Now I just need to finish them and write up what I have learned.

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Comments (9)

isn't it hard to grasp information from different books? i find it quite hard to read one book at a time, and it would be even more harder trying to read more books.

i mean... do you read them just as if "for fun", o trying to learn something new? ;-)

Posted by Po0kiZz | October 17, 2006 12:02 PM

The intelligent investor is a very good book and I have enjoyed it a lot.

Posted by Sun | October 17, 2006 12:09 PM

What do you think of Rule #1? I haven't totally made up my mind on whether the author is legit or whether he's making money off all of us suckers by feeding us nonsense. Something about his website makes me think its a sham...

Posted by Anonymous | October 17, 2006 5:14 PM

Wow, that's impressive I'm struggling through two at once.

Posted by Matt | October 17, 2006 6:31 PM

I am very early in the book - but I visit phil towns site every once and awhile. I think hes legit - I hear a lot of things while Im reading that really register to me.

The only thing Im not sold on is the technical trading aspects. I like his criteria - margin of safety, wide moat, excellent management, etc. This is stuff I use today when making an investment.

His angle in a sense is market timing and it logically it makes sense by watching institutional activity (supply/demand). Not sure if it works, but I like the ideas so far.

Posted by 2 million | October 17, 2006 6:35 PM

2mil - this talk of 'picking stocks' and stuff makes me want to ask the question, what form of the efficient market hypothesis to you subscribe to? (ie. weak, semi-strong, strong). I don't know if you've addressed this issue on your blog; I've read a lot of the archives, but maybe not all of them. I always get worried when people try to become stock-pickers. I think about the best a person can do is pick industries, and even that seems to be a gamble. I'm of the mind that the best bet for nearly everyone is to consistently invest in low-cost mutual funds, either index or otherwise.

Also, I'm surprised that you can be 'in the middle' of five books. I guess you're absorbing everything you need?

Posted by CPA1298 | October 17, 2006 10:19 PM

I didn't mean to get into this situation. I have just been stumbling across these books and can't wait to jump in them. I stop reading them every once and a while to reflect on them but that gets me in trouble because I find another book to read.

CPA1298 - I like to own businesses - I won't deny it. I hate the idea of throwing my money into index funds - however the majority of my money is in index funds simply because they get better results (so far). I am reading more about investing in stocks to become a better investor.

I think its important regardless of investing in companies or index funds to have a deep understanding of evaluating business and how the market works.

Posted by 2 million | October 18, 2006 9:18 AM

$2m,

Nice reading list!

I just read the Four Pillars. Excellent book. My next reads will be The Intelligent Asset Allocator and All About Asset Allocation (by Rick Ferri).

BTW, William Bernstein wrote The Four Pillars, not Jeremy Siegel.

Regards,
makingourway

Posted by makingourway | October 30, 2006 4:33 AM

Good catch - apparently a brain hicup on my part -Ive made the correction.

Posted by 2 million | October 30, 2006 10:05 AM