Best Investing Books for Beginners

Investing could be a complex and complicated topic to learn, especially if you are just getting started. From my experience, there is no better way to learn than reading. Hence, here are my suggestions on some of the best investment books to help you on your investment journey.

This list includes the best investing books for beginners and veterans. It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner in investing, or you are looking to strengthen your investment knowledge, these top investing books can help you a long way.

To get you started

Broke Millennial Takes On Investing: A Beginner's Guide to Leveling Up Your Money, by Erin Lowry

If you are a beginner in investing and are just about to start your investing journey, this book is perfect for you. This book is definitely one of the best investing books for beginners.

For a start, this book details how to prepare your finances so that you can start your investing journey safely. It prepares you for investing by explaining several basic yet essential personal finance topics, such as the 401(k), emergency fund, and even ways to deal with student loans.

After setting up your finances, the book talks about several ways to start investing for beginners. It also describes the differences between stock picking, investing in mutual funds, and using robo-advisers. Most importantly, it explains the mindset needed for beginners to weather market crashes.

If you are looking for a book to kickstart your investment journey, this is the book that you wouldn’t want to miss.

Also, if you are looking to start investing, be sure to check out my blog on how to start investing.

Building the right investing mindset

Rich Dad Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki

I don’t want to sound cliché, but this book is a must-read if you want to succeed financially. Having the right investing mindset is what separates great investors from the rest. And this book is written to help you form the right investing mindset.

In this book, Robert Kiyosaki introduces the best and the only way to build wealth — investing in assets and avoiding liabilities. It sounds simple, but in reality, it is much more complex to implement. But rest assured, this book will provide you with all the tools you need to identify the best assets and avoid the common pitfalls that most people encounter.

Deriving from his own experience, Robert Kiyosaki also claims that the best investment one can make is investing in improving one’s financial literacy. Having this understanding could bring your life to a whole new level.

If you haven’t read this book, I strongly recommend getting it. It will change your life, literally.

A proven way to build wealth

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, by John C. Bogle

If you are new to investing, this is one of the best investment books on familiarizing yourself with the principles of investing. Written by the legendary John C. Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, the second-largest asset management firm globally, this book is known to be the bible of passive investing.

Passive investing may sound boring, but John will tell you why the simplest, most straightforward investment strategy can be your best way to build wealth in this book. Not only this, the book discloses the best ways to invest passively and how you can beat most investors in the market by investing passively. Isn’t that amazing?

If you are a person who wants to put your money aside and let it works for you, this book is perfect for you.

Learning from the legendary investor

The Intelligent Investors, by Benjamin Graham

If you are learning to invest, learn from the best. The author of this book, Benjamin Graham, is a legendary investor and Warren Buffet’s teacher in investing. So, I am not exaggerating with I said you will be learning from the best by reading this book.

This book is considered to be one of the best books on stock investing and the epitome of value investing, which is the investment strategy Warren Buffet uses to build his wealth. It explains the underlying principles of value investing, i.e., identifying and investing in undervalued companies, and avoiding and selling overvalued ones. It also includes the steps you need to take in deploying this strategy to build your wealth consistently.

If I were to be completely honest, this book is probably the best investing book ever written. Why? This book was written in 1949 and is still considered a must-read for every investor. Now, you should understand why you should definitely read this book.

Understanding the psychology of investing and avoid biases

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

Benjamin Graham once said, “The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.” More often than not, in the realm of investing, you are competing with yourself rather than other people. And by that, I mean you are consistently fighting against your emotions and biases.

It should not be a surprise when I tell you that to be successful in investing, you need to make rational decisions all the time. However, it is not as easy, as it sounds as we humans are not built to do that naturally. We are constantly affected by the externalities and factors around us. These are called biases and heuristics, and they make it hard for us to think rationally.

In this book, the Novel Laureate Daniel Kahneman uncovers how our brains think and why we are susceptible to biases and heuristics. The book introduces all types of biases and heuristics and explains how they might impact your decision-making process. After reading this book, you will understand why the market is often described as irrational, and you might even be able to spot and capitalize on the over-reactions in the market.

In the end, we are all humans, and we are all affected by biases. I can assure you, in one way or another, you are affected by your biases without realizing it. Hence, overlooking them can have a detrimental effect on your investing performance. If you are in the investing game for the long term, make sure to equip yourself with this knowledge. It will make a huge difference in not just your investment but your life as well.

Developing your investment principles

Principles, by Ray Dalio

Investing is about making key and critical decisions. If you want to be successful in investing, you need to develop your own decision-making system, and this is the best investing book for that.

Ray Dalio, the founder of the world’s large hedge fund, has written this book just for that. In this book, Ray Dalio discloses his principles in both life and work, and explains how these principles help him to get to where he is now.

Having your own investing principles and system is the best way to avoid biases and heuristics. And this is absolutely critical to investing as it helps you make rational, rather than emotional, decisions.

If all of these sound interesting to you, get this book now and thank me later.

Final thoughts

As Bill Gates once said, “Reading is still the main way that I both learn new things and test my understanding.” Thus, whether you are a beginner or an expert in investing and finance, you should never stop reading, and learning.

Are there any best investing books you think should be on the list? Let us know!