The Best Stock Market Books for Beginners
Trying to decide which investment books to read? Here is a collection of the best financial books to help improve your investment strategies. Money touches everything we do, so learning how to properly invest early in life can make a huge difference in your ultimate success.
Consider beginning with a comprehensive book that outlines the diverse spectrum of investment opportunities, spanning stocks, bonds, real estate, fine art, and cryptocurrencies. Whether you aim to focus on a specific investment area or grasp the underlying principles guiding experts in their approach to investing and finance, such a resource can serve as a valuable starting point.
What is the Best Investment Book?
- The Little Book of Common Sense Investing – John C. Bogle
- The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing – Benjamin Graham
- The Little Book of Valuation: How to Value a Company, Pick a Stock and Profit – Aswath Damodaran
- Mastering The Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side – Howard S. Marks
- The Little Book of Value Investing – Christopher H. Browne
- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail – Ray Dalio
- The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness – Morgan Housel
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing – Burton G Malkiel
- The Richest Man in Babylon – George Samuel Clason
- University of Berkshire Hathaway: 30 Years of Lessons Learned from Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger at the Annual Shareholders Meeting – Daniel Pecaut
- I Will Teach You to Be Rich – Ramit Sethi
- A Beginner’s Guide to the Stock Market: Everything You Need to Start Making Money Today – Matthew R. Kratter
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger – Charles T. Munger
- One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market – Peter Lynch & John Rothchild
- The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing – Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer & Michael LeBoeuf
- The Little Book That Beats the Market – Joel Greenblatt
- The Dhando Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns – Monish Pabrai
- The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All – Mary Childs
- Investing QuickStart Guide: The Simplified Beginner’s Guide to Successfully Navigating the Stock Market, Growing Your Wealth & Creating a Secure Financial Future- Ted D. Snow
- How to Money: Your Ultimate Visual Guide to the Basics of Finance – Jean Chatzky & Kathryn Tuggle
- Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert T. Kiyosaki
- Get Good With Money: 10 Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole – Tiffany Aliche
- Broke Millennial Takes on Investing: A Beginner’s Guide to Leveling Up Your Money – Erin Lowry
- The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need – Andrew Tobias
- The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness – Dave Ramsey
25. The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness
Author: Dave Ramsey
The Total Money Makeover is the cornerstone of Dave Ramsey’s wealth-building philosophy. It emphasizes the importance of eliminating debt through his seven “baby steps” to achieve financial stability and emotional peace. Ramsey has guided millions out of crushing debt, a crucial step toward achieving true wealth. This book is an excellent foundational read to complement others on this list. While not everyone agrees with Ramsey’s aggressively anti-debt approach, there is no doubt that many find his advice invaluable.
24. The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need
Author: Andrew Tobias
In the latest revision, this best-selling author addresses the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and examines how investors and taxpayers fared during the Trump administration and previous ones. With a blend of knowledge and wit, Tobias guides readers through the basics of various investment vehicles—stocks, bonds (including savings, municipal, corporate, convertible, and zero-coupon), mutual funds, U.S. Treasury bills, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and retirement accounts. He also covers tax strategies and offers advice on finding and dealing with brokers. Tobias recommends a stock market strategy of allocating the bulk of your savings to mutual funds and ETFs, with no more than 20% directed to funds you manage yourself.
Throughout the book, Tobias takes on the role of a wise, well-off uncle, especially evident in the chapter “A Penny Saved is Two Pennies Earned,” where he offers practical money advice on topics ranging from credit cards and vacation savings to monitoring bank accounts and opting for cubic zirconium jewelry over diamonds (which he calls “ridiculous”). The appendices tackle subjects like Social Security, life insurance, saving money by buying wine by the case, the national debt, and selected discount brokers. Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, praised the book, saying, “This is the only investment book I’ve read that truly made sense.”
23. Broke Millennial Takes on Investing: A Beginner’s Guide to Leveling Up Your Money
Author: Erin Lowry
This 2019 book is the second in Lowry’s “Broke Millennial” series and it tackles more modern investment topics, such as dealing with significant student loans, ESG investing, robo-advisor services and online financial resources. Best of all, it is written from the perspective of the millennial generation, which tends to be more wary about the stock market than previous generations and often believes in allowing personal values to guide investment strategy.
Investors who adopt this framework are likely to improve their results and consistently outperform the markets and most professionals. Mohnish Pabrai is a relentlessly insightful thinker who excels at decoding the esoteric world of finance and knows how to tell a compelling story. Whether you’re mystified by what drives stock prices up and down on Wall Street or confident in your understanding, you’ll gain deeper insights from this book. Pabrai’s tales of high finance and his clever examination of core deep value principles are packed with practical ideas you can apply to your own investing. Mohnish shares the ‘secrets’ of his extraordinary success and has made a significant contribution to the literature on value investing.
22. Get Good With Money: 10 Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole
Author: Tiffany Aliche
A self-described “budgetnista,” Aliche has created a 10-step road map to having a good relationship with your money, no matter the size of the goal or the complexities of the market. Speaking from her own experiences of having lost significant money during a recession and then receiving poor investment advice, Aliche’s words have enabled over 1 million women to achieve their goals. Nestled among the honors in her resume, Aliche is the first Black woman to be featured solo on the cover of Money Magazine and her book has been a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller. She has been a legislative trailblazer in partnering with New Jersey assemblywoman Angela V. McKnight to write “The Budgetnista Law,” which mandated financial literacy education throughout New Jersey’s middle schools.
21. Rich Dad Poor Dad
Author: Robert T. Kiyosaki
A best-selling book for more than 25 years, “Rich Dad Poor Dad” tells the story of Robert Kiyosaki’s own experiences with his father (the “poor dad”) and his best friend’s father (the rich one) and explains how to grow wealth. It reinforces the reader’s understanding that you do not have to earn a high income to be rich – you just need to ensure your money is working for you. Readers should know that Robert Kiyosaki’s track record on predicting stock market crashes is horrendous, so it’s best to stick to the more generalized advice he gives about assets and liabilities in this certified classic.
20. How to Money: Your Ultimate Visual Guide to the Basics of Finance
Authors: Jean Chatzky and Kathryn Tuggle
Chatzky, a 25-year veteran of personal finance reporting for the “Today” show, and Tuggle, a New York writer and editor, teamed up to create HerMoney, a team whose stated goal is “to improve the relationship that women have with money.” This New York Times bestseller will take readers from the basics of creating a budget through all the firsts (student loans, jobs, credit cards) right into investment principles. Beautifully illustrated, it will amplify your understanding of earning, managing and using money in your daily life.
19. Investing QuickStart Guide: The Simplified Beginner’s Guide to Successfully Navigating the Stock Market, Growing Your Wealth & Creating a Secure Financial Future
Author: Ted D. Snow
This book is part of a series of informational guides to different aspects of investing. Snow has more than 30 years of experience as a working financial advisor, and each book comes with free lifetime access to online resources (including coaching) created to support the reader’s growing knowledge. The second edition, released in January 2022, expands on real estate investments and managing tax liabilities. It also introduces the growing field of environmental, social and corporate governance, or ESG, investing.
18. The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All
Author: Mary Childs
This may be the year for books about Bill Gross. In addition to The Bond King by Mary Childs, which we rank the best overall investing book on our list, the subject himself has released a self-published autobiography titled I’m Still Standing: Bond King Bill Gross and the PIMCO Express.
Childs’ authoritative, engaging book about pioneering bond trader Gross, from the investment management firm PIMCO, portrays him as brilliant and a visionary, who devised a new way to invest by making a market for trading bonds. Yet he also comes across as an egotistical, mercurial boss who was so verbally abusive to his staff that some avoided walking by his office to keep from running into him. After many years, enough staff members quit—including PIMCO’s former co-CEO and co-CIO, economist Mohamed El-Erian, whom Gross had recruited from Harvard Management Co. as his eventual successor—that Gross was forced to resign from the company he built.
Childs, a co-host of NPR’s “Planet Money” podcast who has also reported for Barron’s, the Financial Times and Bloomberg News, takes the reader through the subprime mortgage crisis, in which many Americans lost their homes due to predatory lending practices. At the time, Gross’ number was on the speed dial, so to speak, of many top federal and banking officials who valued his opinion and sway.
Early on, Gross learned about strategy by successfully counting cards as a blackjack player at various Las Vegas casinos. He took that same push-to-the-limit mentality to the bond market, where he was dubbed the “Bond King” by Fortune in 2002. During those years, he was a darling of the financial press—beaming from business magazine covers, being interviewed on CNBC, and being a sought-after speaker at financial gatherings.
After he was ousted from PIMCO, he went to Janus Capital Group, where he was unable to duplicate his earlier success. In 2019, Gross revealed that he had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, which affects communication skills. In 2022, far from having “lost it all,” Forbes put Gross’ net worth at $2.6 billion.
17. The Dhando Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns
Author: Monish Pabrai
In a straightforward and accessible manner, The Dhandho Investor presents a powerful framework for value investing. Targeted at intelligent individual investors, this comprehensive guide distills the Dhandho capital allocation principles of the business-savvy Patels from India and demonstrates how they can be successfully applied to the stock market. The Dhandho method builds upon the groundbreaking principles of value investing championed by Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger.
16. The Little Book That Beats the Market
Author: Joel Greenblatt
The Little Book That Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt offers a practical strategy for selecting companies to invest in, focusing on actionable steps rather than delving into investing philosophies and stories. In a straightforward and accessible style, Greenblatt explores the basic principles of successful stock market investing and reveals his time-tested formula for automatically buying above-average companies at below-average prices. Though the formula has been extensively tested and hailed as a breakthrough in academic and professional circles, Greenblatt explains it using sixth-grade math, plain language, and humour. He shows how his method can help investors beat both the market and professional managers by a wide margin. The book also explains why most individual and professional investors fail to achieve success and why the formula will continue to work even after it becomes widely known.
The Magic Formula is a long-only strategy, suggested and tested as a long/short strategy—going long on the highest quality/cheapest stocks and shorting the lowest quality/most expensive stocks. However, the long/short strategy failed around 2000, resulting in a 100% loss. The true benefits come to those who adhere to the long-only strategy. While the formula is simple, understanding why it works is key to success for investors. The book guides readers step-by-step through the principles of value investing, providing a long-term strategy that they can understand and stick with through both good and bad market periods.
15. The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing
Author: Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer & Michael LeBoeuf
The advice of The Vanguard Group founder John Bogle is echoed in this comprehensive guide for investors of all experience levels. Packaged into 23 short, lighthearted chapters, this book contains practical advice and explores many aspects of investing, from how to choose the financial lifestyle that fits you to how to balance your emotions to truly master your investments. This guide also provides external resources and other information for readers who want to dive deeper into any of the topics that the longtime Bogleheads cover.
The Bogleheads are investing enthusiasts who honor Bogle and his advice, living by a philosophy to “emphasize starting early, living below one’s means, regular saving, broad diversification, simplicity, and sticking to one’s investment plan regardless of market conditions.” Members actively discuss financial news and theory in a forum.
14. One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market
Author: Peter Lynch & John Rothchild
This book by Peter Lynch can help you take your investment game to the next level and beat the pros. One Up on Wall Street is suitable for amateur investors and teaches them to identify investment opportunities in unconventional ways.
13. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
Author: Charles T. Munger
Charles Munger, more commonly known as Charlie Munger, may not be known to casual investors, but his longtime friend and business partner, Warren Buffett, should be. Munger served as Buffett’s right-hand man leading the conglomerate and holding company Berkshire Hathaway for decades, and recently passed away in late 2023 at the age of 99. Widely considered one of the sharpest business minds of the 20th and 21st centuries, Munger based this book on 11 talks he gave between 1986 and 2007.
12. A Beginner’s Guide to the Stock Market: Everything You Need to Start Making Money Today
Author: Matthew R. Kratter
Published in 2019, this book offers a road map to getting started with investing. You will learn how to open a brokerage account and how to buy your very first investment. Kratter is a retired hedge fund manager who lived through the 2008 market crash, so his advice can be useful during modern market upheavals, especially in identifying the mistakes that often plague beginners.
11. I Will Teach You to Be Rich
Author: Ramit Sethi
Advisor and The New York Times bestselling author Ramit Sethi outlines a six-week program for 20- to 35-year-olds to learn the four pillars of personal finance: banking, saving, budgeting, and investing. Sethi shares his strategies for eliminating student loans and debt; finding a balance with saving and spending every month; and preparing to purchase a house or car. In the newest edition, he includes stories from readers and insights on the psychology of investing. Sethi strives to demonstrate to investors how to make investments that grow with them and their goals, and how they can spend their money on the things they want without feeling guilty.
10. University of Berkshire Hathaway: 30 Years of Lessons Learned from Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger at the Annual Shareholders Meeting
Author: Daniel Pecaut
University of Berkshire Hathaway is a remarkable retelling of the lessons, wisdom, and investment strategies handed down personally from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger to shareholders during 30 years of their closed-door annual meetings. From this front row seat, you’ll see one of the greatest wealth-building records in history unfold, year by year. If you’re looking for dusty old investment theory, there are hundreds of other books waiting to cure you of insomnia. However, if you’re looking for an investing book that’s as personal as it is revelatory, look no further.
9. The Richest Man in Babylon
Author: George Samuel Clason
The Richest Man in Babylon, based on “Babylonian parables”, has been hailed as the greatest of all inspirational works on the subject of thrift, financial planning, and personal wealth. In simple language, these fascinating and informative stories set you on a sure path to prosperity and its accompanying joys. A celebrated bestseller, it offers an understanding and a solution to your personal financial problem. Revealed inside are the secrets to acquiring money, keeping money, and making money earn more money.
8. A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing
Author: Burton G Malkiel
If Graham teaches you how to evaluate a business, Burton Malkiel explains why that might not help you. The Princeton economist argues that markets demonstrate efficiency because people are analyzing a company’s value. (Efficiency means a company’s share price reflects its current worth, and its price will change when new information alters a business’ worth.) Malkiel recommends earning the market’s return instead of beating it, which he compellingly argues is good enough.
The book was first published in 1973, but updated editions have added contemporary topics. These include exchange-traded funds and investment techniques like smart beta (which Morningstar prefers to call “strategic beta,” but I digress).
In A Random Walk Down Wall Street you’ll learn the basic terminology of “The Street” and how to navigate it with the help of a user-friendly, long-range investment strategy that really works. Drawing on his own varied experience as an economist, financial adviser, and successful investor, Malkiel shows why, despite recent advice to the contrary from so-called experts in the wake of the financial crisis, an individual who buys over time and holds a low-cost, internationally diversified index of securities is still likely to exceed the performance of portfolios carefully picked by professionals using sophisticated analytical techniques. In this new edition, Malkiel has provided valuable new material throughout the book on exchange-traded funds and investment opportunities in emerging markets, and in a brand-new, timely chapter, Malkiel authoritatively assesses the pitfalls and prospects of the latest investing trend, “smart beta.”
7. The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness
Author: Morgan Housel
This engaging book explores the sometimes peculiar ways people think about money and the behavioral psychology behind it, while offering suggestions for becoming more financially secure. Morgan Housel emphasizes the importance of staying wealthy rather than just getting wealthy. To illustrate this, he draws on the life and work of Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, who began investing as a child and loves making money but famously avoids modern trappings of wealth.
Housel’s book covers some of the most important topics in finance, which are unexpected and fun to contemplate. Why were Warren Buffett and Bill Gates so successful? Sure, they’re smart people, but there are a lot of smart people out there. The book provides a refreshing break from denser finance books that focus on the raw math behind investing well, sometimes neglecting common behavioural hurdles. Investing, personal finance, and business decisions are typically taught as a math-based field where data and formulas dictate actions. However, in reality, people don’t make financial decisions on spreadsheets. They make them at dinner tables or in meeting rooms, influenced by personal history, unique worldviews, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives.
6. Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail
Author: Ray Dalio
Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order examines history’s most turbulent economic and political periods to reveal why the times ahead will likely be radically different from those we’ve experienced in our lifetimes—and to offer practical advice on how to navigate them well. In this remarkable and timely addition to his Principles series, Dalio brings readers along for his study of the major empires—including the Dutch, the British, and the American—putting into perspective the “Big Cycle” that has driven the successes and failures of all the world’s major countries throughout history. He reveals the timeless and universal forces behind these shifts and uses them to look into the future, offering practical principles for positioning oneself for what’s ahead.
5. The Little Book of Value Investing
Author: Christopher H. Browne
There are many ways to make money in today’s market, but the one strategy that has truly proven itself over the years is value investing. Now, with The Little Book of Value Investing, Christopher Browne shows you how to use this wealth-building strategy to successfully buy bargain stocks around the world. You’ll explore how to value securities and find bargains in the stock market. You’ll also learn to ignore irrelevant noise, “advice” from self-proclaimed gurus, and other obstacles that can throw you off your game.
4. Mastering The Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side
Author: Howard S. Marks
The legendary investor shows how to identify and master the cycles that govern the markets. We all know markets rise and fall, but when should you pull out, and when should you stay in? The answer is never black or white, but is best reached through a keen understanding of the reasons behind the rhythm of cycles. Confidence about where we are in a cycle comes when you learn the patterns of ups and downs that influence not just economics, markets, and companies, but also human psychology and investing behaviours.
3. The Little Book of Valuation: How to Value a Company, Pick a Stock and Profit
Author: Aswath Damodaran
Valuation is at the heart of any investment decision, whether that decision is to buy, sell, or hold. In The Little Book of Valuation, expert Aswath Damodaran explains the techniques in language that any investors can understand, so you can make better investment decisions when reviewing stock research reports and engaging in independent efforts to value and pick stocks. Page by page, Damodaran distills the fundamentals of valuation, without glossing over or ignoring key concepts, and develops models that you can easily understand and use. Along the way, he covers various valuation approaches from intrinsic or discounted cash flow valuation and multiples or relative valuation to some elements of real option valuation.
2. The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing
Author: Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham, known as the father of value investing, taught Warren Buffett, a modern investing icon. His book establishes a framework for evaluating a business’s worth based on financial value, rather than short-term trading techniques. In his book, Graham defined many important investing concepts, such as “margin of safety,” a key component in the Morningstar Rating for stocks.
The key lesson from Benjamin Graham’s highly praised book is: “Don’t lose.” Easier said than done, of course. The reason this book, originally published in 1949, remains in print is that it offers investors—whether beginners, those with some knowledge and success, or seasoned professionals—the fundamentals of value investing, which involves buying stocks of quality companies whose worth is undervalued.
1. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
Author: John C. Bogle
Investing icon John Bogle died on Jan. 16, 2019, but he left behind an impressive legacy: He revolutionized the mutual fund industry and was a tireless advocate for investors. He pioneered the index fund, which allowed investors to gain diversified exposure to the stock market at a very low cost, helping them keep more of their hard-earned money in their pockets. His book explains why low fees significantly affect returns. It also addresses topics like mean-reversion and tax costs.
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing is the classic guide to getting smart about the market. Legendary mutual fund pioneer John C. Bogle reveals his key to getting more out of investing: low-cost index funds. Bogle describes the simplest and most effective investment strategy for building wealth over the long term: buy and hold, at very low cost, a mutual fund that tracks a broad stock market Index such as the S&P 500.
Conclusion
There are many great titles on financial literacy, but this selection will give you a well-rounded knowledge base – both technically and emotionally. It will enable even the most inexperienced investors to feel confident and comfortable crafting a budget, reducing debt and gaining enough knowledge to either dive deeper into investing for themselves or have an engaging conversation with a financial advisor.
