Books you read in 2013

Books & Tutorials
1

Hi,

Let’s share what stock market/investing related book we have read in 2013, and which one we find interesting so that we can learn from each other mini reviews.

On Investing

  1. Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor
  2. Predictably Irrational
  3. The (Mis) Behavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin And Reward
  4. What Works on Wall Street
  5. Contrarian Investment Strategies in the Next Generation
  6. Think and Grow Rich
  7. The Most Important Thing
  8. Super Stocks (Wall Street Wizard Series)
  9. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings
  10. The Only Three Questions That Count
  11. Conservative investors sleep well
  12. The Elements of Investing: Easy Lessons for Every Investor
  13. Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets
  14. Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders
  15. Mean Markets and Lizard Brains How to Profit from the New Science of Irrationality by Burnham, Terry [Wiley,2005] [Hardcover]
  16. Stocks for the Long Run, 4th Edition
  17. The Guru Investor: How to Beat the Market Using History’s Best Investment Strategies
  18. The Small-Cap Investor: Secrets to Winning Big with Small-Cap Stocks
  19. The Value Investors: Lessons from the World’s Top Fund Managers
  20. The Indomitable Investor: Why a Few Succeed in the Stock Market When Everyone Else Fails
  21. The Soros Lectures: At the Central European University

**Other Non-fiction
**

  1. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
  2. A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present
  3. Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles
  4. The Difficulty of Being Good
  5. Gdel, Escher, Bach
  6. Why Nations Fail
  7. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
  8. Sophie’s World
  9. Swaraj - (English)
  10. Bill Bryson’s African Diary
  11. Neither Here nor There
  12. Naked Economics
  13. Tribes
  14. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data
  15. Thinking, Fast and Slow
  16. Breaking India

Will write small reviews of interesting books after a while.

2

Subash,

Would request you to suggest books (investing and other non-fiction) which are a must read.

Regards,

Ankit

3

**The Most Important Thing : **The best investment related books read till date

**What works on wall street : **The book might be boring, but the summary you get from reading this book is just amazing. I have recommend this as one of the 4 initial books to read on investment to couple of my friends.

**Common stock and uncommon profit : **Bible of growth investing

**Mean Market and Lizard Brain : **Good book on behavioral investing

**Stocks for the long run : **Prof Siegel at his best. Initial few chapter might be boring though

**Antifragile : **Taleb’s magnum opus, many people dont like it. I absolutely loved this

**Thinking fast and slow : **Book on behavioral science/economics/mental biases from the best guy in it’s field. One cant just ask more.

**The difficulty of being good : **Gurcharan Das at his best. Characters from Mahabharat are taken one after another, put behind moral/ethical/pshychological microscope, thoroughly analyzed from many dimensions, using western philosophy, modern examples. Explains why the character behaved the way he is. At the end an awesome book, which explains why it is not so easy to be good.

**Why Nations Fail :**Good book on why some nation prospers and other stagnate/fails

**The Checklist Manifesto : **Good book on the use/advantages of using checklists and real life examples how it has helped in diverse fields

**Sofie’s world ****: **The history of western philosophical development described as a fiction.

**Breaking India ****: **A perception-modifying book on the nexus of Western academic/Christian missionaries/NGOs/Maoist/Islamist and how they are trying to undermine/break india using subtle means. A must read book to understand things like “why people create so much noise for ford-foundation-funded-ngo’s of some new-age-politician of india”, to understand “how poor folks are lured into christianity”, to understand the psuedo-liberals of india, and why they behave the way behave.

4

any good book for technical analysis?

5

NONE. Don’t understand TA, don’t even read threads on TA here. I am a pure fundamental guy.

6

Hello Subhash

Thank you for sharing the list. How do you read them on eBook reader like Kindle or do you buy them.

7

Friends

Sorry for being slightly off topic.

I spend a fair bit of time driving to and from work.

Rather than listed to music or news or radio, I wanted to listed to audio versions of investing books. I tried to download audio books on investing and found Intelligent Investor, Common Stocks U/c profits, books on Warren Buffet, etc. but none of them are full versions.

Does anyone have such audio books that can be shared? Would greatly appreciate if they could be uploaded on our common gmail link.

Many thanks.

8

I recommend ‘The New Buffettology’ for all investors (new or experienced). It provides an insight in to the way Mr.Buffet selects businesses, what he looks at, various criteria, lot of gyan on moats, how moats work, etc. The earlier part of the book is easy to understand, but the later part of the book goes in to numbers, ratios, real examples, but if one is patient its a valuable guide.

Its not as heavy as the classics and its not too abstract, instead it provides a practical framework that you can implement. The biggest USP is that the reader can take home some ideas and start implementing them in his portfolio.

9

Anthony Bolton’s “Investing against the tide” is one book that I keep going back to. Great investment books are meant to be read n re read!! I seek solace n comfort in them!!

10

dont read with hopes that more books i read more intelligent investor I become

11

I just finished reading The Warren Buffett Way by Robert Hagstrom.

Its an interesting book which gives a short account of Buffett’s investing methods. Its a small book and not too loaded with stats… Mainly it deals with Buffett’s concentrated bets in Coca Cola, Washington Post, American Express, Wells Fargo, and some other bets…

It seems that he made his best returns when he bought while going against the tide and buying these businesses when they were suffering from temporary problems.

There is some wisdom about concentrated investing labelled as focus investing.

12

Hiteshbhai, Which book do you think a beginner must read for any new equity investor ?

Regards,

Sandip

13

No doubt buffett by being vocal has put down a great method and learning for investors everywhere but why was he more successful than anybody else??? I guess the answer lies in leverage. Ofcourse leverage not the regular way but through his insurance subsidiaries.

Leverage is when you use money that you dont own for your business(in our case investing. Buffett has always said the insurance money is not his but of the people who have paid premiums covering future losses. Ofcourse by using probability and all that he has made sure to be profitable on it, so rather than giving interest he actually charged fees for safekeeping of the money but somewhere within the outstanding result is a coz of leverage also, I think.

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14

I think two must reads are

One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch and

Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing by Pat Dorsey.

15

_It is not a recommendation but only for information _…

My long time friend and a wonderful individual Guy Spier has requested me to spread the information among investor community about his book "The Education of a Value Investor" …

You can get some idea from the below link…

http://thealephblog.tumblr.com/post/96437440523/qa-with-guy-spier-of-aquamarine-capital

16

Aveek,

Has the book released in India? I would love to read it. Have seen two of his interviews along with Mohnish Pabrai.

17

**It’s available on amazon india. **

18

I have just completed a wonderful book… Not on investment directly but one really to help in understanding one’s own self…

“Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) … Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts” ------- Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson

It needs to be read slowly and reflected upon honestly … Then only some benefits can be apparent IMHO.

19

1000 stock market related Books available in this link. You can find most of the book.

https://t.co/JvXfGWGtxU

20

The Art of Execution by Lee Freeman-Shor.
The book gives a great insight. I just wanted to share. Quote from the book-
“Over seven years, 45 of the world’s top investors were given between $25m and $150m to invest by fund manager Lee Freeman-Shor. His instructions were simple. There was only one rule. They could only invest in their ten best ideas to make money. It seemed like a foolproof plan to make a lot of money. What could possibly go wrong? These were some of the greatest minds at work in the markets today - from top European hedge fund managers to Wall Street legends. But most of the investors’ great ideas actually lost money. Shockingly, a toss of a coin would have been a better method of choosing whether or not to invest in a stock. Nevertheless, despite being wrong most of the time, many of these investors still ended up making a lot of money. How could they be wrong most of the time and still be profitable? The answer lay in their hidden habits of execution, which until now have only been guessed at from the outside world. This book lays bare those secret habits for the first time, explaining them with real-life data, case studies and stories taken from Freeman-Shor’s unique position of managing these investors on a day-to-day basis.A riveting read for investors of every level, this book shows you exactly what to do and what not to do when your big idea is losing or winning - and demonstrates conclusively why the most important thing about investing is always the art of execution.”
The book argues that selection of stocks are not very important- most of the great investors end up selecting bad stocks. In fact theoretically, market is the greatest stock selector. What differentiate a good investor from a bad one is “art of execution”. Eye opening.

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