Do you know the questions to ask self before buying any investment book? Here is an example. As a regular visitor to a local bookstore in our city, I am generally getting stuck with the investment books shelves there. It is my regular activity for long time. If not referring some books from this store, I feel something have missed to do in the day.
Whenever I am there to the racks, I was giving attention to watch that activities of people coming and searching for investment or trading books. They start shortlisting the books to buy and finally leave without buying any books because of confusion. I found most of them are new to investing may have came there to start investing by inspiring the word or activities of any others. Here is an interesting read.
Some times, as a person standing near to the book place, I may face queries to suggest best books to buy. If such, I never advised them to buy any books but always asking some questions to understand what they know about investing or what is the intention behind buying a book.To know what they know about stock investing, I generally ask a question, how long you want to hold a stock if purchasing now. Most of the time I am getting the reply of less than one year or few months. It is enough to understand the person doesn’t have any investment experience and totally new to this. He may come with an advice from somebody to be a coward article as I said in the above link.for the above answer, I generally answer, I don’t know any books for you. But, very few time I have found someone really looking to be an investor by learning from the beginning. Such people, I generally refer two guides.
My first guide is “Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits” by Philip Fisher published by Wiley and a Wiley classic candidate. Read the review here. It known as one of the best book ever reached in the market to learn all about value investing. Fisher had given enough guidance through his book to construct and shape a real value investor. His best rules of investing is totally based on this guide. From my own words, it is difficult for you to find a company to invest after reading this book 3 times.
The second guide I generally recommend is “The New Buffettology Workbook” from Mary Buffett. Here is a review. Oh Man!!, it is a real wonder. She had outlied the investing style of Buffett dramatically way. This guide is a collection piece for value investor who follow Warren Buffett’s Investment approach. It is enriched with number of examples and step by step guidance to analyze any stock.
I prefer to say investors should buy and read this two books. This is enough for a person to be a right value investor. He will not only identify the right stocks to invest but also receive most required qualities of a value investor. If have little commonsense, one can easily win with this books.
Then what about you? When do you plan to purchase this books ? Today or tomorrow?