The best investing books in stocks, dividends and alternative investments
Stocks, bonds, funds, mutual funds, ETFs, markets, REITs, compound interest… The investing world can sound intimidating if you’re a beginner and don’t know how to get started.
The good news is that you don’t have to be an expert to create a profitable investment portfolio and secure a better financial future. There are a number of resources available for you to learn and use as a guide and advice in order to make smart financial decisions.
The following list of books is meant to be a comprehensive compilation of the best investing books you’ll need to learn about how the market works, how to start investing, and how the different investing styles and options can be incorporated into your personal investing strategy.
Hopefully, you’ll find some of these books about investing to be easy to understand and practical to implement. They’re packed with info about the rules and trends of investing, tips on techniques and insights from experienced investors.
Best Books to Learn About Investing
Step-by-Step Investing by Joseph Hogue, CFA
Joseph’s Step-by-Step Investing guide is the easiest to understand and follow in order to create a simple investing strategy to help you succeed in the stock market.
With this book, you’ll realize that you don’t need a very complicated strategy of timing and trading or an expensive brokerage firm to get you started with your investment plan.
This book, the first one in a series of four, outlines a simple step-by-step process that’ll allow you to build an investing strategy that’s right for your goals.
Starting with the ten investing basics that every investor must know and how to actually implement them, Joseph’s guide is the perfect starting point for you to learn:
- How to pick investments that are right for your goals.
- How to maintain your portfolio without having to watch the markets all the time.
- How to match your investing strategy with your financial goals.
Unlike other investing authors, Joe lays a complete wealth management book that outlines the six investing steps that’ll get you going, including everything from how to set up an online account and buy stocks online to picking the best investments for your goals and a simple way to maintain your portfolio.
Step-by-Step Investing is a complete wealth management book that lays out everything from how to budget your investment dollars to when to sell stocks.
Each of Joe’s books in his Investment Guide series can be read on its own or as part of the series. Each provides a simple investing strategy and investing basics into different types of investments, giving you a well-rounded portfolio that will meet your goals.
Invest and Beat the Pros-Create and Manage a Successful Investment Portfolio by Barbara Friedberg
Barbara’s investing guide provides you with a proven way to grow your earnings into lifelong financial security and stability. Her investing approach is meant to help you beat 60-70% of active mutual fund managers by using a Nobel Prize-winning theory.
After investing a few hours with this book, you’ll have a better grasp on key elements that’ll help you reach your personal investment goals, including:
- An easy to apply index fund investing approach.
- How to create your own investment strategy and avoid making poor choices.
- Increased investing literacy.
- When you should look for financial advice and what to look for if so.
- A vision to apply during market ups and downs
- How to manage mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs)
- Sample portfolios to help you the right investments for you.
- A guide to integrating your workplace retirement account with your other financial accounts.
Barbara’s book is an easy read that’ll leave you with a clear idea of how to build a portfolio plan for the long term fast to help you reach your financial goals, now and later.
7 Investing Steps That Will Make You Wealthy: Simple Advice For Investing Success by Jon Dulin
Jon’s book is aimed at helping you create an investment strategy that’ll take out the emotion and fear of losing your money. He came up with these seven steps after over 20 years of investing experience, and a desire to helping you avoid mistakes when building a successful portfolio that’ll grow over time.
This book outlines a seven-step process to help you become a successful investor. Some of the things you’ll learn include:
- Simple advice for investing success whether you are new to investing or not.
- Straight-forward and easy to follow steps.
- Be rewarded. By following these steps, you will become a successful investor and see your wealth grow.
- A 1-minute trick to increase your returns by 5% every year.
- A way to reducing your losses and increasing your gains, all without taking on more risk.
- Trade tricks to reduce trading costs and investment fees.
- Advice to remove emotion from investing so you’re more effective.
Jon’s advice claims to allow you to put your investing on auto-pilot so you’ll only have to check your portfolio once a year to review your investments and not have to worry about anything else but enjoying your investment earnings.
The Sassy Investor: Investment Workbook by Michelle Hung
Michelle’s step-by-step guide to investing is clearly aimed at young women, but investors of any gender and level of financial knowledge can benefit from it. The book is formatted as an activity workbook with beautifully designed worksheets that set it apart from other books of its kind and will help you learn more about money and how to build a secure financial future.
Excellent and insightful writing make this book a great read that’s not only fun but also full of valuable information and advice that make personal finance and investing simple but not dumbed-down. No matter your gender, age, or financial expertise, you’ll benefit from great material, including:
- Gender-neutral information.
- Both Canadian (Michelle’s Canadian) and American terms, accounts, and products.
- A comprehensive and easy to follow guide and process.
- Useful and fun worksheets.
Despite all the info it packs, The Sassy Investor won’t make you feel overwhelmed while you learn about personal finance (income, getting out of debt, saving, budgeting), investing (stocks, bonds, indexing, planning, execution, taxes), and valuations to get you started and on your way to a more secure financial future.
The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel by Benjamin Graham
Considered to be one of the greatest investment advisors of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people all around the world. The Intelligent Advisor was written in 1949, but its principles still apply today. Considered the “market bible”, this is a must-read for everybody interested in the investment world, from beginners to expert investors.
The text is annotated to properly update the author’s timeless wisdom for today’s markets. His “value investing” philosophy is aimed at protecting you from substantial investing errors to help you develop long-term strategies.
The Intelligent Investor is a timeless resource for investors, some of the most valuable insights you’ll learn include:
- Know the business you’re investing in.
- Know who runs the business.
- Invest for profits over time, not for quick buy-and-sell transaction profits.
- Choose investments for their fundamental value, not their popularity.
- Always invest with a margin of safety.
- Have confidence in your own analysis and observations.
All investors should read The Intelligent Advisor. Its content has stood the test of time and offers a solid foundation for developing a sound investing strategy. The most important takeaway from The Intelligent Investor is that you must make your own investment decisions based on your own research and analysis to build a solid long-term investment strategy if you want to earn more than the market’s return.
Best Books about Dividend Investing
Step-by-Step Dividend Investing by Joseph Hogue, CFA
In the second volume of Joseph’s series of Step-by-Step investing guides, he shows you a clear path to successful dividend investing without the complications and jargon other books have. The book outlines a simple process to invest in dividends that’ll produce a regular stream of cash as a constant source for positive returns from dividend stocks.
This book shows you the three income investments you need in your portfolio, it gives you an investment plan that will benefit from a regular stream of cash and upside price appreciation, and you’ll learn key aspects of dividend investing, including:
- Four reasons dividend stocks can help you reach financial freedom.
- Dividend stocks that outperformed the stock market by 100% over the last decade.
- Real estate dividend investment that has returned 13% a year for four decades.
- A simple four-step process for investing in dividend stocks.
This is a guide you can really use to get the basics of dividend investing and learn the secrets to pick dividend stocks and tax-advantaged income stocks that will fit your needs.
Dividend Investing Your Way to Financial Freedom: A Guide to Live Off Dividends Forever by Millionaire Mob
Millionaire Mob has put together a comprehensive guide to not only help you craft a dividend investment plan and portfolio but also to educate you and all who read it about how dividend investing is one of the best ways to build wealth by combining value investing with dividend-paying stocks.
On top of a step-by-step guide to living off dividends forever, this guide also includes free resources to calculate your best dividend options, the author’s criteria to find undervalued dividend stocks, and actionable steps to become a better dividend investor and reach your investing and retirement goals.
If you’re an aspiring stock market investor, dividend investing is a key element in your way to financial freedom if you know how to find stocks that provide true value. This book will help you combine dividends and growth through steps and tips that include:
- How to improve your portfolio returns.
- How to develop your own dividend investing strategy.
- What the pros and cons of dividend investing are.
- How to build wealth through a long-term compound interest plan.
- How to screen for undervalued dividend stocks
- Fundamental and technical analysis to build a plan to help you reach financial freedom.
This book gives you proper investment advice and techniques for a fraction of the cost to help you increase your income, reach your retirement and financial goals, and learn dividend investment principles.
The Dividend Growth Investment Strategy: How to Keep Your Retirement Income Doubling Every Five Years by RoxAnn Klugman
This book discusses and evaluates investment strategies (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, dividends) and compiles them into an informative guide that shows how DGIS (Dividend Growth Investment Strategy) maximizes growth, produces income, and is a much better investment tactic to reach your financial goals.
RoxAnn Klugman tells how Anne Scheiber invested $5,000 in blue-chip stocks that produced an annual income of up to $1,000,000 in dividends and a value worth of $22,000,000 when she died. Klugman explains how anyone can apply Anne Scheiber’s method to maximize growth and produce income that doubles every five years while also minimizing anxiety over market downturns and inflation.
The book examines and compares the various investment strategies of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds and includes research suggestions, materials, charts, and tables to help you choose stocks and develop a plan to reach your retirement and financial goals.
Dividends Still Don't Lie: The Truth About Investing in Blue Chip Stocks and Winning in the Stock Market by Kelley Wright
Geraldine Weiss wrote Dividends Don’t Lie in 1988. Her book focused on the Dividend-Yield Theory to produce consistent gains in the stock market. She went on to be the founder of one of the most successful investment newsletter, Investment Quality Trends. Her approach to identify value in blue-chip stocks still performs better than most methods based on risk-adjustment.
Kelley Wright, Managing Editor of Investment Quality Trends, brings you a timely update to Weiss’s book that teaches you an investing strategy that uses a stock's dividend yield as the primary measure of value through a system that identifies dividend-yield patterns.
Kelley’s guide is a straightforward guide to help you find stick-to-quality blue-chip stocks with reliable dividend histories, it teaches you how to buy and sell according to dividend yields, and helps you gain the confidence you need to make sophisticated stock market decisions and obtain solid value for your investment dollars.
If you’re a beginner investor, this book provides you with an excellent foundation to learn about dividend investing and a very solid approach to go about it. However, advanced investors will also find valuable insight to help you improve your dividend investment skills through and enjoyable read. A few key takeaways you’ll get from the book include:
- How to screen for dividend stock quality.
- How to judge dividend stock valuation using the dividend yield theory.
- How to determine your investment objectives.
- How to build and manage a dividend stock portfolio
The book successfully exposes how Investment Quality Trends go about their business by giving you actionable advice and insightful information. Everything without sounding like a sales pitch for their newsletter and asset management services.
Best Books to Learn About Bond Investing
Step-by-Step Bond Investing by Joseph Hogue, CFA
Volume 3 in Joseph’s Step-by-Step Guide to Investing clearly outlines a process and the advantages of one of the most neglected investment opportunities. Bond investing is critical to reaching your financial goals, and this book serves as a straightforward guide to an investment option that provides safety, security, and cash flow through stable returns for decades without worrying about constant crashes in the stock market.
This guide makes it surprisingly easy to start putting a portfolio of bonds together by understanding bond basics and how to avoid costly mistakes. Key insights included in this book are:
- How to reduce the five key risks in bond investing.
- How to use bonds as an asset class to reach your goals.
- The four types of bonds you must include in your portfolio.
- How to build a simple bond investing strategy to cover monthly living expenses.
- How to minimize costs and maximize return.
While most investing books don’t even mention bond investing, Joseph’s guide will show you how investing in bonds might be the best decision you make to reach your financial goals.
The Bond Book by Annette Thau
Annette Thau has updated and revised her first two editions bestsellers to deliver a third edition of The Bond Book that includes everything you need to know on treasuries, munis, bond funds, and more for today’s new economy. If you’re a beginner investor searching for opportunities in fixed-income investing or a seasoned expert looking to get a deeper understanding, The Bond Book is a one-stop resource with the latest information and cutting-edge strategies.
The Bond Book is an insightful source of easy-to-read info that’ll help you diversify your holdings by making the best decisions while assessing risks and opportunities. The book includes up-to-date listings of online resources with bond prices and other information and key insights on topics like:
- Individual bonds or bond funds
- Detailed info on open-end funds, closed-end funds, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs)
- Updated info for municipal bonds: the changed rating scales, the near demise of bond insurance, and Build America Bonds (BABs)
- What the safest bond funds are.
- Junk bonds (and emerging market bonds).
- How to buy Treasuries without paying a commission
The Bond Book, third edition, is your must-read to learn the ins and outs of bond investing and how to enhance your fixed-income portfolio.
The Strategic Bond Investor: Strategies and Tools to Unlock the Power of the Bond Market Hardcover by Anthony Crescenzi
The Strategic Bond Investor is the ultimate proof that Anthony Crescenzi really does know bonds. He explains the ins and outs of the bond market and offers you tips on how to build an exciting and profitable bond portfolio with maximized returns.
The book is filled with aggressive yet risk-conscious tips, tools, and strategies so you can easily build bonds into your overall trading strategy in the fixed-income market. Some of the more outstanding takeaways from the book include:
- How to track market sentiment.
- Hot to spot market extremes.
- How to analyze volume and liquidity.
- Parallels between the credit and bond markets.
- The power of the New Fed.
- How to navigate price fluctuations.
- Descriptions of different bond types.
- Data on bond performance.
- Economic market reports.
- Techniques for predicting changing interest rates
- How to use the yield curve and other indicators to predict the direction of the markets and the economy
If you’re looking for a comprehensive educational tool that is also practical, The Strategic Bond Investor gives you the know-how and insights you need to better take advantage of the bond investment market.
Best Books About Emerging Markets investing
Step-by-Step Emerging Markets Investing by Joseph Hogue, CFA
Developing economies in Latin America and Asia have doubled their share of the global marketplace in the last few years. They now represent a growing opportunity for investors looking to diversify their portfolio. Opening your portfolio to these markets by staying ahead of these trends means your investments will benefit from them for the next several decades.
Joseph’s Step-by-Step Guide to Emerging Markets Investing is a comprehensive approach to directly investing in emerging market stocks to provide you with the growth you need to meet your financial goals and reduce the risk of a stagnant economic picture in the United States. In the book, you’ll find a detailed process on how to position your investments for the developing change in world markets.
While most books focus on the most popular companies in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Southafrica), this guide expands to 17 available countries and has a detailed guide to position your assets in the best investments to meet your needs with the least amount of management time possible.
This Step-by-Step Guide to Emerging Markets Investing will allow you to learn:
- The seven periods of boom and bust in emerging market investments and what to look for in the future.
- The three principal risks in emerging markets.
- Emerging market regions and 17 countries with tradable stocks.
- How to build a strategy that’ll meet your goals
- How to maintain your emerging markets portfolio and when to sell.
The Little Book of Emerging Markets: How To Make Money in the World's Fastest-Growing Markets by Mark Mobius
Mark Mobius has compiled all the information you need to invest in emerging economies in this one little book. With the world’s economies in constant change, having the right tools to make investment decisions is crucial While opportunities to invest in these markets abound, the risks can be extremely high.
Having an internationally renowned expert explain the intricacies of emerging market investment and giving practical advice is a key factor to be successful. In this book, you’ll find insights about the importance of policies, regulations, global contenders, techniques to manage risk, advice on how and when to get out, how to recognize genuine opportunities, and a plethora of other valuable techniques to make sure you reach your emerging market investment goals.
Winning in Emerging Markets: A Road Map for Strategy and Execution Hardcover by Tarun Khanna
Written by Harvard Business School professors, Tarun Khanna and Krishna Palepu, Winning in Emerging Markets is a practical guide that provides you with a framework to develop emerging market investment strategies.
The book is based on over a decade of research and practical experience that will guide you through the ins and outs of emerging market investing that map out institutional contexts for different individual markets.
The authors’ expertise and knowledge if condensed to give you practical tools to determine different aspects of your emerging market strategy, including:
- How to replicate or adapt an existing business model.
- How to collaborate, or not, with domestic partners.
- How to navigate around that market’s voids, or actively try to fill them.
- How and when to enter the market.
- Where to look for opportunities.
- When and how to exit each market.
- Enter the market immediately or look for opportunities elsewhere.
There is an abundance of resources out there to help you be a better investor. Many of the books you’ll find are written by experts, some will claim to have the key to unlock wealth and prosperity. But the fact is that you need to do your research to find out the right learning material for your specific situation and financial goals.
The books mentioned above provide great resources for you to learn and understand the different areas of investing. But you have to go through the process of doing your own research and learning the ins and outs of the business so you can successfully walk down the path of investments. Use these investing books as a way to get started and as a guide to be a better investor.
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