Warren Buffett says this is the best book on investing ever written. WealthManagement.com readers agree. Dozens of advisors named it as their financial bible. The book has been updated four times; the last in 2003, with footnotes by Wall Street Journal financial columnist Jason Zweig. The order of the words in the title says it all: intelligence is a prerequisite to investing success, and by “intelligence” Graham means the ability to acquire knowledge and skills in six domains: 

► Know the business you're investing in;

► Know who runs the business;

► Invest for profits over time, not for quick buy-and-sell transaction profits;

► Choose investments for their fundamental value, not their popularity;

► Always invest with a margin of safety;

► Have confidence in your own analysis and observations.

Celebrated by a generation of investors as the first book to purchase when starting a portfolio, the title book references the Random Walk Hypothesis, which posits that fluctuations in the stock market are unpredictable. Fifty years after it was published, A Random Walk maintains its relevance through continual updates. Some sections may glaze the eyes of novices, but every chapter rewards careful study.  The latest edition features fresh material on exchange-traded funds, Bitcoin, and investment opportunities in emerging markets; a brand-new chapter on “smart beta” funds and a new supplement that simplifies the complexity of derivatives.

A book on economic bubbles in history. The author shows how history repeats itself, or at least rhymes. The book is on the reading lists of Goldman Sachs and other investment banks and colleges as a cautionary reminder that there is no reason to believe contemporary investors are any savvier in recognizing bubbles than previous generations. 

The Psychology of Money has emerged as the go-to money management book published in the new Millennium. Housel, a financial writer and investor, argues that it’s our relationship with money—rather than the money itself—that governs the (mostly problematic ) investing decisions most people make.  In this insightful book, Mousel explores the complications of personal finance, underscoring the cognitive biases and behavioral distractions that often control our financial decisions.

In the history of corporate frauds, the case of Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes may eclipse even Enron for sheer audacity. That Holmes, currently serving a 11 year sentence in federal prison, hoodwinked so many accomplished men—and that they were all men—is the first investing classic takeaway of the book. The tale that Pulitzer Prize winning Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou tells reads more like a thriller than an investing book. It’s a step-by-step recipe for how to cook up a fraud (step one: seduce a high-powered but clueless board) and how that fraud was painfully unmasked by a dogged reporter.

Holmes’ ‘Big Idea’ was a minilab that could take a pinprick of blood and perform dozens of blood tests in walk-in clinics. Most scientists regarded the idea as unworkable—which it was. But Holmes never met a fact she could not ignore, spin or reject. The promise was grand; the execution a shamble. Despite many warnings, Walgreens sunk over $150 million into empty promises. The second half of the book narrates the reporter’s attempts to unmask Holmes. She does not go down without a fight.

An instant classic when it was released, the French economist Thomas Piketty argued global inequality is baked into capitalism and will inevitably worsen unless stern measures are taken.  It’s a simple proposition that Picketty supports with a mind-boggling array of charts and statistics from every corner of the globe. Piketty tracks the evolution of inequality since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Flowing out of this data is a prediction that wealth grows faster than economic output, a concept he captures in the expression r > g (where r is the rate of return to wealth and g is the economic growth rate). Because there are no natural forces pushing against the steady concentration of wealth, he says, only high growth or government intervention can be counted on to keep income inequality from creating political instability. Out of this analysis flows a policy recommendation of a global tax on wealth he labels “participatory socialism.” Under this rubric, capitalism is gradually abolished via a progressive income tax and a tax on inherited wealth. The proceeds are redistributed in the form of a basic income and a “capital endowment” for every citizen.

Has any client—anyone, really—asked an investment advisor how they invest their own money? Joshua Brown, the co-founder and CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, notes in his introduction that over literally thousands of TV show appearances, podcasts and conversations, not one person has asked him how he invests his own money. This book, written with Brian Portnoy, founder of the Shaping Wealth financial wellness platform, asks 25 investment professionals to answer that elusive question. Given how private most people are about their finances, the result is a revealing glimpse into the financial practices of some of the most thoughtful wealth managers in the industry.

Commonalities quickly emerge. When dealing with their own money, advisors are aggressive savers, skeptical of debt and keen to exploit programs such as Health Savings Accounts and 529 College Saving Plans. Advisors are much more focused on reducing taxes than on reducing fees. While there are exceptions, most advisors sharing their stories say that seeking alpha is simply not worth the effort. Other takeaways from these, sometimes moving, stories include: money scripts matter, money is an expression of identity, process trumps expertise, no one has to figure it out all alone and money can, indeed, buy happiness.

In The Deficit Myth, Stephanie Kelton, former chief economist for the US Senate Budget Committee, dispels six key myths about money and deficits to frame her argument that public deficits can be healthy for an economy. In fact, Kelton argues that economic disruptions, such as the 2008 housing crisis or the Covid-19 pandemic, call for bigger deficits. For readers who experience heartburn from public debt (what the government owes to borrowers) soaring above 100 percent of GDP, economists who advocate Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) prescribe The Deficit Myth as an antacid.

MMT rejects the conventional view that taxpayers fund the government. In fact, MMT argues that government funds taxpayers. The federal government is unlike households or even states. It can run a deficit and there is benefit in doing so. Are deficits evidence of government overspending?  Another myth. The Deficit Myth will make readers reconsider some deeply held, but perhaps unexamined, beliefs about money and deficit. If you can join Kelton on this journey, you may resonate with her radically bold new understanding of how to build a just and prosperous society.

Peter Lynch wrote several popular investing books describing the legendary results he amassed at Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990, beating the S&P Index in 11 of his 13 years at the helm. In this book he describes his investing philosophy and methods to help the individual investor succeed. The one-sentence takeaway—invest in products/companies you know and love—still stands.

The Babylonians were the first people to discover the universal laws of prosperity. In his classic bestseller, George Clason uses ancient parables to reveal their secrets for creating, growing and preserving wealth. Through entertaining tales of merchants, tradesmen and herdsmen, readers learn how to keep more out what they earn; avoid debt; put their money to work; attract good luck; choose wise investments; and safeguard a lasting fortune. The book, now in the public domain, is available in a variety of digital and print formats.

Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio based this book on the unconventional principles he developed while running Bridgewater Associates, which he founded in 1975. These principles inspired Bridgwater’s successful culture, which Dalio describes as “an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency.”

The thesis of New Yorker writer James Surowiecki is deceptively simple: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Groups are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions and even predicting the future. This seemingly counterintuitive notion has endless and major ramifications for how we invest, businesses operate, knowledge is advanced, economies are (or should be) organized and live our daily lives

Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler and Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein show that no choice is ever presented to us in a neutral way. Nudge is about how we make these choices and how we can make better ones. The authors draw on decades of behavioral science research to demonstrate how people are susceptible to biases that can lead them to make bad decisions. It is possible to help people make better decisions by deploying sensible “choice architecture.”

One of the most popular books of its time, The Millionaire Next Door asks the question, “Why aren’t I as wealthy as I should be?” According to the authors, most people have it all wrong about how to become wealthy. The authors identify seven common traits that show up again and again among those who have accumulated wealth.

Former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb created a sensation when he published The Black Swan in 2007. The book focuses on the extreme impact of rare and unpredictable outlier events. Taleb calls the tendency of investors to retrospectively assign simplistic explanations for these events the “Black Swan Theory.” The central thesis of the book is not to attempt to predict Black Swan events, but to build robustness and resiliency into systems to weather them.