Learning Long-Term Investing

Investment Learning
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For a complete beginner, can you suggest some books or resources on long-term investing like how to select stocks from thousands of other alternatives, how to analyse the business model and the corporate governance (especially the quality of top management), read the annual report, the analysis of conference call, and understand the financials or any other parameters which i’m not aware of?

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In addition to valuepickr, if you are after long term investing, I would recommend you to go through drvijaymalik website, in case if you have not already. He has done analysis of lot of companies and explain the process step by step.

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It’s not about the finding a stock but a process. One needs to figure out their own.

  1. Go through the long list of quarterly results, see what stands out and then dig down from there.

  2. See what’s trending - top gainers/ 52 week high list would often tell you that. Find out the triggers for these.

Company’s quarterly presentations will give you an idea about its top business lines, partners, products and its future trajectory. From concall check management commenry for past few quarters and validate.

Tracking positions quarterly, day trading top gainers/losers helps in learning from mistakes without paying heftily.

Often the call is between the growth and valuations. There is seldom a balance. But good news is markets are not perfect either, ineffiencies throw you opportunities - valuations dip while runways remain. Be ready - patient but nimble.

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Glad to have this thread. I wish to share my thoughts.

My favourite books on investing are these

  1. The most important thing by Howard Marks

  2. The Snowball by Alice Schroeder

  3. 100 baggers by Christopher Mayer

These are the best as per me and I have really read a lot.

Apart from this I highly highly recommend watching all of the videos of Siddhartha Bhaiya from Aequitas.

A very basic starting screener you could use is

Market cap > 500

PE < 12

ROE > 15

Right now this screen is giving me 50 companies. I can see 5 quality names in there.

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Hi Based on my experience I have listed some books which has helped me over last 15 years, disclaimer this is not exhaustive and not the only books I have read, below are the books that I have liked over the last 15+ years

Investing

  1.  100 to 1 -Thomas Phelps

  2.  Buffettology – David Clark and Mary Buffet

  3.  Trust – L J Rittenhouse

  4.  Investing between the lines – L J Rittenhouse

  5.  Financial Shenanigans – Howard Schilit.

  6.  Common stocks and uncommon profits – Phil Fisher

  7.  Letters to shareholders – Lawrence Cunningham

  8.  Little book that builds wealth – Pat Dorsey

  9.  Where are the customer’s yacht – Fred Schwed

  10. Zebra in Lion Country – Ralph Wagner

  11. One up on Wall street – Peter Lynch

  12. Margin of Safety – Seth Klarman

  13. Masterclass of superinvestors

  14. What I learned about Investing from Darwin – Pulak Prasad

  15. Most Important Thing – Howard Marks

Thinking

  1.  Poor Charlie Almanack – Peter Kaufman

  2.  Seeking Wisdom – Peter Bevlin

  3.   All I want to know where I will die – Peter Bevlin

  4.  Lessons from Sherlock – Peter Bevlin.

  5.  Latticework – Robert Hagstorm

  6.  Mental models – Safal Niveshak

  7.  Farnam Street Blog

  8.  Factfulness – Hans Rosling

  9.  Pebbles of Perception – Laurence Endersen

  10. Black Box thinking

  11. Great Mental Models Vol – 1

  12. Great Mental Models Vol – 2

  13. Great Mental Models Vol – 3

  14. Great Mental Models Vol - 4

  15. Clear Thinking – Shane Parrish

Human Psychology/Behavioral Economics

  1.  Influence – Robert Cialdini

  2.  Predictably irrational – Dan Airley

  3.  Art of thinking clearly – Rolf Dobelli

  4.  Art of good life – Rolf dobelli

  5.  Thinking fast and Slow – Daniel Kanhemann

  6.  Marauders of Hope

  7.  Dangerous Persuaders

History

  1.  Wealth war and wisdom – Barton Biggs

  2.  Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harrari

  3.  East India company – Tirthankar Roy

  4.  The Indian Mutiny 1857–58 - [Gregory Fremont-Barnes](https://www.amazon.in/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&field-author=Gregory+Fremont-Barnes&search-alias=stripbooks) 

  5.  Depression A diary

  6.  Rise and Fall of Great Powers- Henry Kissinger

  7.  [Lessons Of History](https://www.amazon.in/Lessons-History-Will-Durant/dp/143914995X/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1FEIA0TI1WH2W&keywords=lessons+of+history+by+durant&qid=1703835336&s=books&sprefix=lessons+of+his%2Cstripbooks%2C175&sr=1-3) – Will Durant

  8.  Devil takes Hinmost

  9.  Why you win or lose, The Psychology of Speculation - Fred C Kelly

  10. Silk Roads – New History of world

Strategy/Decision Making/Communication

  1.  50 decision models

  2.  44 ideas on communication

  3.  The one thing

  4.  How you measure your life – Clayton Christenen

  5.  Good Strategy/Bad Strategy

Biography/Business

  1.  No rule rules.

  2.  Made in America – Sam Walton

  3.  How the mighty fall

  4.  Who says elephant cant dance – Lou Grestner

  5.  Hard thing about hard things – Ben Horowitz

  6.  Benjamin Franklin

  7.  Empire of Pain – Sackler Dyansty

  8.  Bad Blood

  9.  Fortune’s Children - [Arthur T. Vanderbilt](https://www.amazon.in/Arthur-T-Vanderbilt/e/B001HCVGF8?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1703835441&sr=1-1)

  10. Churchill – Paul Johnson

  11. The Biography of a Failed venture – Prashant Desai

Self-Improvement

  1.  Rich dad poor dad – Robert Kiyosaki

  2.  Spy the Lie

  3.  Almanack of Naval Ravikant

  4.  Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel

  5.  Same As Ever

  6.  Rules of Money – Richard Templar

  7.  Art of Spending – Morgan Housel

Philosophy

  1.  Little history of Philosophy

  2.  Plato and Platpyus walk into bar

Risk/Negotiation

  1.  Against the gods – Peter Breinsten

  2.  Never split the difference – Chris Voss

  3.  Zurich axioms

  4.  FIASCO – Frank Portony

  5.  Black Swan

Start-Ups

  1.  Zero to one – Peter Theil

  2.  Angel Investing – Sanjay Kulkarni

  3.  [Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups](https://www.amazon.in/Angel-Invest-Technology-Startups-Timeless-Investor/dp/0062560700/ref=sr_1_5?crid=2CKPAODO7CSXS&keywords=Angel+how+to+invest&qid=1703835708&s=books&sprefix=angel+how+to+invest%2Cstripbooks%2C171&sr=1-5) – Jason Calacanis

  4.  Angel Investing – David Rose

Economics

  1.  Downfall of money

  2.  When money dies

  3.  Changing world order – Ray Dalio

  4.  Freakonomics

  5.  Superfreakonomics

  6.  Undercover Economist.

Others

  1.  Poor richard’s Almanack

  2.  On Life well spent – Cicero –

  3.  Mahatma and Poet – Letters from Gandhi to Tagore

  4.  Making numbers count

  5.  Job be Damned

  6.  What Owen didn’t know

  7.  Rare Metals War

  8.  Power of Habit- Charles Duhig

Physics/Science/Medicine

  1.  Immune

  2.  Six Easy pieces – Feynman

  3.  Emperor of all Maladies

  4.  Laws of Medicine

  5.  Pure white and deadly

  6.  Dissenting Diagnosis

  7.  How not to die -foods to prevent and reverse disease

Spiritual

  1.  Power of subconscious mind – Joseph Murphy

  2.  Wellness Sense – Om Swami

  3.  Mindfull to mind full – Om Swami

  4.  A million thoughts – Om swami

  5.  Fistful of wisdom – Om Swami

  6.  Monk who sold his Ferrrari – Robin Sharma

  7.  Big questions of life – Om swami

  8.  Being Mortal
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The biggest edge in long term investing is not predicting stocks.
It’s developing the ability to identify good businesses and holding them patiently for years.
Start with The Psychology of Money to build the right mindset.
You can also Read One Up On Wall Street to understand how to identify good businesses around you.

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I came across a thread that curates a selection of investment‑related books, which I found to be very helpful (the link to the thread is included at the end). Based on its recommendations, I began reading the first book listed—The Five Rules for Successful Stock Market Investing by Pat Dorsey—and it is highly accessible and insightful for a beginner.

Since there is already a thread that serves the purpose of recommending the investment books. I suggest we can create a thread to discuss the learnings and the reiterate the concepts for better understanding.