Hello monkeys,
As I am gearing up to start interviewing for equity research jobs, I am wanting to read some books to have a better understanding of investing and the markets. A little background on me, I am a CPA working in big 4 audit trying to break into ER. I have recently started reading Security Analysis/The Intelligent Investor by Graham and Dodd, but was just wanting some more suggestions to help me better understand the markets and investing. Thanks.
Not being a dick but...recommended*
Read a dictionary
I've seen spelling errors in this site before but this one is just too ridiculous. Come on.
theaccountingmajor you must have seen a lot the whole month you’ve been a member on here.
Now I'm curious. What was the original spelling?
Ok. To answer your original question. Have you heard of Howard Marks from Oaktree Capital? His books and memos are pretty good and comes highly recommended for investing and market research.
@JBK I think it was rccmended or some obvious typo I didn't review. No I haven't, but ill give those a look, thanks. Also, is it just me or are all these books value investing focused? I looked up Howard Marks and it looks like he is a value investor. Is value investing by far the most popular investment philosophy? What are the other big ideas I should look at besides value investing? Thanks.
Howard Marks is technically a value investor (I guess), but his book “the most important thing” is just a really good book. It discusses risk and how to think about price as a component of risk. By far my favorite finance book, and his memos are great too.
If you haven’t read many of Buffett’s annual letters, “The essays of warren Buffett” is interesting, as it organizes his writings into topics. It can be somewhat high-level, but it’s interesting to hear how Buffett thinks about things (definitely not what you’re looking for if you’d call yourself a ‘growth’ investor).
If you want behavioral finance, read somethign by kahneman or Thaler. Thaler’s books are interesting, as are Kahneman’s, but the latter’s get very dry very quickly.
Once you get a job, “Best practices for equity research analysts” will be an amazing tool.
“One up on Wall Street” is pretty retail-focused, but kind of interesting, because Peter Lynch certainly had a successful career.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of the books you listed. Intelligent Investor I found particularly worthless to anyone with a finance background.
Aswath Damodaran is a famous professor of valuation at NYU. He has a blog that is filled with gold. He makes videos to explain all his posts and posts all his models to the public. Highly recommend checking it out. Just search for any topic you want to learn about.
Lastly, I haven’t read it, becasue I don’t love the idea of spending $700 on one book, but “margin of safety” is pretty well known.
Thanks, this is really helpful. I do consider myself a value investor but just wanting to have a feel for all the big ideas that are out there.
Yeah I have almost gotten through all of the Graham & Dodd books, it seems like when the books were written these ideas were revolutionary but now most of these concepts are taught to undergrad finance students.
Curious as to why you found Intelligent Investor worthless. Reading it right now as I've seen several posts recommending the book.
There are some really good threads on here where people at HFs and what not are kind enough to share their investment process. Being from the buyside, they usually start with macro/geo trends which won't help you much but they also discuss finding outperformers within sectors, seeing where competitive advantages lie, revenue drivers, etc.
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