Read And Recommend
The Best Investment Books

Finding the best investment books has been a hobby for my 20+ years of investing. Especially the best books on dividend investing. I am constantly striving to learn more to improve my investing performance.

I sometimes choose books that is outside my investing style to see if there are strategies or information that I can use.

I'm sure I'm not alone in this endeavor.

I've started a list of what I consider to be the best investment books, best books on dividend investing, best books on options trading. The books listed below are the only ones that made it to the list out of the hundreds of books on dividend investing, options trading, and investing in general, that I have read. To sum it up, these are the only ones I think are worth buying.

I can't talk about the BEST books without first putting a plug in for MY eBook! Go to THIS LINK to learn more about my eBook "How I Protect My Stocks With A Put Option Hedge" (this link opens in a new window).

This is a short but information packed eBook talking about the simple, effective, and low cost strategy I have successfully used to protect my portfolio against stock market losses.

You can use this eBook together with ideas from the best books on dividend investing to build a portfolio that goes up regardless of the direction of the market.

Scroll down the page to see the books I recommend. You can also go directly to the section of interest by clicking on these links:

Best Books On Investing

Best Books On Dividend Investing

Best Books on Options Trading

Best Books On Risk Management

Being Successful In Life

By the way, when buying books in print I usually buy used books. I have found that I can find used books that are "like new condition" despite being sold at a deep discount to the new book.

As a convenience to you clicking on the links below will take you to an Amazon.com page where you can purchase the book. I am an affiliate of Amazon.com and may receive a commission if you buy a book from this page.

Best Books On Investing

As a value investor I consider this book to be at the top of my list of "best" books. I am not alone since Warren Buffet wrote the Preface to the Fourth Edition and said The Intelligent Investor is "by far the best book about investing ever written."

The book, though first published in 1949, continues to provide timeless basic principles for value investors. Graham provides the analytical tools, discusses the emotional framework (the roller coaster of unsustainable optimism and unjustified pessimism), and business principles that, if used and followed, will lead you to the best stock opportunities.

My copy, which I have re-read several times, is marked up and worn but continues to be my favorite.

Stocks for the Long Run: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns & Long Term Investment Strategies, 4th Edition
by Jeremy J. Siegel

Siegel provides proof that stocks out perform every other asset class over the long run. The book thoroughly discusses topics like:

• Long term returns in relation to risk and portfolio allocation
• The impact of taxes
• Valuation and how it affects future stock returns
• How various classes of stocks and investing styles (ie, large cap, small cap, value stocks, growth stocks) perform, and how to evaluate each type
• Global investing
• The effect of inflation and the Federal Reserve has on investing
• How the business cycle and world events affects the stock markets
• Various products like ETFs, Futures, and Options
• Market volatility
• Technical analysis, behavorial finance, and the psychology of investing
• A methodology to build wealth through long term growth of stock investments

Bull's Eye Investing: Targeting Real Returns in a Smoke and Mirrors Market
by John Mauldin

I bought this book when it was first published in 2004. It was the first time I was exposed to John Mauldin's theory of the "muddle along economy" and the first time I read his assertion that "successful investing for the period 2004 through 2010 will require you to do things differently than you did in the 1980s and 1990s." Boy, was he right!! The lessons John provides continues to be valid as we start the second decade of the muddle along economy. Must read!

Best Books On Dividend Investing

The Little Book of Big Dividends: A Safe Formula for Guaranteed Returns (Little Books. Big Profits)
By Charles B Carlson

I have been very happy with the "Little Book" series. So, of course I love the Little Book series and was especially happy when the Big Dividends was published in 2010. Written concisely, the book offers an action plan for dividend investors (or those who want to be). He offers his Big Safe Dividends plan which, if followed, minimizes pitfalls and allows investors to find opportunities to build yield-rich portfolios. This book is a "must own" for the dividend investor.

Best Books on Options Trading

Options as a Strategic Investment
by Lawrence McMillan.

This book is the options investing bible. It starts of describing the options basics (what is a put, what is a call, how options are priced and traded). It also provides a Masters Degree level education in all aspects of options and options trading, hedging, using complex strategies, and so on. Anyone who invests with options, or wants to invest with options, should have this in their library as a ready reference. This book is not cheap, but the price indicates the value you get from this 1,000+ page book. I find that I consult this book frequently. Highly recommended.

The Four Biggest Mistakes in Option Trading (Trade Secrets Ser)
by Jay Kaeppel

A surprisingly short book (about 60 pages) that gives you exactly what the title says. I’ve read on many occasions that most options traders lose money. According to the author there are four basic mistakes all beginning option traders make. This book tells you the things you need to avoid as an options investor.

Get Rich with Options: Four Winning Strategies Straight from the Exchange Floor (Agora Series)
by Lee Lowell

Yeah, I know. This book’s title is obviously hype.

But setting that aside you will find that this book distills all options strategies down to four that he believes are the most practical for investors and traders. I agree with him. I recommend this book for its concise list of profitable options strategies.

Best Books On Risk Management

If you have been browsing my website you know that I employ trend following strategies to determine when I hedge my portfolio to protect against losses. There are many books that discuss the details of technical indicators. These books are like encyclopedias of technical indicators where they describe each one and discuss how to employ them in trading. I have not found those to be valuable. There are two books on trend following that are worth reading. They both provide good insight to why it is important to have a solid investing strategy and trading system regardless of what that trading system is, and regardless of what you use to trigger your trades.

The first of these books is by Michael Covell who is probably the best known and most successful trend following trader. His book is Trend Following (Updated Edition): Learn to Make Millions in Up or Down Markets

The other book is by Curtis Faith, one of the original "Turtles" (people who had no prior knowledge of investing who were taught a specific strategy and able to successfully trade on that strategy). His book is called Way of the Turtle: The Secret Methods that Turned Ordinary People into Legendary Traders.

John Mauldin's book which I mentioned above, Bull's Eye Investing: Targeting Real Returns in a Smoke and Mirrors Market contains a healthy dose of information explaining risk management and the strategies that individual investors need to employ to avoid the "muddle through economy." His forecasts and predictions have come true since the book was first published in 2004, and investors who employed his recommendations for risk management would have out performed the market.

Nassim Taleb's book, The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility", has become the de-facto adjective for describing any improbable, unplanned catastrophic event. The basic concept is that we focus too much on what we know and fail to consider what we don't know. As a result we never fully understand the true risk or probability of a catastrophic event. It seems to me that we have been reading a lot about 1,000 year events in the financial and investing world (events that shouldn't happen more often than once every 1,000 years). The truth is the experts are concluding these are infrequent events because of flawed analysis and poor risk management. This is not a casual read, but I found it extremely interesting. I recommend this book.

The other popular book by Nassim Taleb is Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.

This book is a very interesting read on luck and randomness, and how people assign skill for things that are actually random. You can apply the concepts in this book to investing...and many other things...and understand why risk management is so important (because events and your success is more dependent on luck and randomness than you realize).

The next two books are "Armageddon books" meaning they predict a future catastrophic crash to the financial system and offer suggestions for how to avoid that crash. One book was published in 2002, the other in 2003. I purchased these books when they were first published almost ten years ago. I thought the books were interesting "thought experiments" when I first read them, but dismissed them as being "extreme." Well, I have recently pulled these out from the box in the attic and am re-reading them considering all the stuff going on in the world. They actually look pretty smart now. You might find it interesting. If nothing else, they give you insight as to why risk management is important. The stock market doesn't always have to rebound to new highs. This is also the reason I hedge my portfolio, and why I published my eBook.

The first financial doomsday book is Financial Reckoning Day Fallout: Surviving Today's Global Depression.

The other is Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression.

Being Successful In Life

There is one book that I recommend very strongly called The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime..

I was given this book by a friend and was initially very skeptical by the cover...a title with a $ in the title, as in "Fa$tlane" and a picture of a Lamborghini. Hmmm. Pretty skeptical. Looks like a get-rich quick book. The first couple of chapters didn't really do anything to eliminate the first impression. But, for some reason, I kept on reading. I came to appreciate this book and its message and now believe that this is an incredibly powerful book for changing your frame of reference to achieve a successful life. This book very accurately describes why most of us will never achieve our dreams. We trade our limited time for limited income. We spend money in ways that practically guarantees that we will not experience financial wealth. We listen to people who do not have our best interests at heart. We invest using a strategy that statistically and mathematically will not result in us achieving our dreams. The book tells you how to change your frame of thinking to be able to make the money you desire in order to live your dreams.

I very literally give this book credit for changing the way I live my life. It is the reason I started this website. It's the reason I published my first eBook. This is an extremely powerful book.

What is your best investment book?

Read a good dividend or options investing book? Other readers are looking for ways to learn and improve their portfolio performance. Share it!

Return to Resources from Best Investment Books