Ask HN: Best investment books?

[olalonde]

What would be some good introductory books on investing and finance?

More specifically, I'd like to be able to make sense of the data and graphs up here: http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog.

[imkevingao]

No need to read Ben Graham unless you're already a well educated investor. The theories that Ben Graham proposes are solid foundations and very useful, but at the same time there are more competition nowadays in the industry with the wide and fast spread of information, thus you need to take a different approach than if you would 50 years ago and find the best buys on the Moody's list.

My question to you would first be whether you want to learn investing from a technical perspective, which is analysis of graphs, or fundamental perspective, which goes to the fundamentals of things that positively affect Google=good, negatively affect Google=bad.

How hard is fundamental anaylsis? depends. you just need to make sure you constantly stay up to date with the latest news, ability to analyze financial statements (can get hard). I mean all the stuff stayed previously are just plain old simple speculations, which basically drives for most of the market activities. There's no trick, but if you can somehow know how the people will speculate, you'll be well off.

Technical analysis is voodoo science to some, and best thing ever discovered to others. Some has lost fortunes, and some has been consistently outperforming and winning.

I personally just like Warren Buffet books because they are inspirational. It all really depends on which financial sector or knowledge you want to learn.

[micky_25]

A great read is "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham. The main ideas from it aren't about getting rich quick but rather minimizing your losses and securing a consistent return

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intelligent_Investor

[deepGem]

It's a heavy read. So be prepared before you dive in :).

[mu100]

As you read the books suggested by others, I would also suggest referencing ( http://www.investopedia.com/ ) when you are unfamiliar with investment terminology. Per your link, it's a great tool for defining Mkt Cap., P/E, etc.

[naithemilkman]

I recommend 2 books:

1) A random walk down wall street

2) The little book of common sense investing

[olalonde]

OpenCourseWare from Yale (Financial Markets): http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/financial-markets/content/sess...