If you want to learn more about value investing, these are the books I’ve gotten the most out of:
The Little Book of Value Investing, by Christopher Browne.
As a basic introduction, this book is hard to beat. It explains the principles of value investing in ways that the average person can understand, and provides guidelines for how to analyse a stock against value metrics. It hasn’t got the same sort of rigor as a book like The Intelligent Investor but to explain the overall concept of value investing, this is the book I would recommend.
Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment, by James Montier.
I consider James Montier’s Value Investing to be the best single resource on applied value investing to build a portfolio. He uses historic data to compare growth vs value stocks for long-term returns, and debunks financial concepts like CAPM and the Efficient Market Hypothesis. He also covers an area I haven’t seen elsewhere in Value Investing publications: Applying value metrics to find stocks to sell short.
The Intelligent Investor (2003 edition), by Benjamin Graham.
This book is widely considered the gold standard for value investing. Graham sets out the correct way to think if you want to be a successful investor, and his stock comparisons work very well to instruct the reader on what the look for. The 2003 edition is highly recommended for Jason Zweig’s commentary, where he cites many examples from the dot-com bubble.
Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
More than any other author, Nassim Taleb has changed the way I view the world. His books are not on value investing, rather he points out the errors people make when analysing complex systems (the 4th quadrant domain) using their instinctive capacities. Try not to be put off by his idiosyncratic style of writing, thanks to Taleb I try to make my life as Black Swan robust as possible.
Antifragility, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
This book extends the black swan and robustness concept to systems that benefit from volatility, and is not really a finance book. Definitely worth reading
Other materials:
James Montier’s 10 rules of happiness
Suggestions to improve your own levels of happiness
Some interesting up-to-the minute thoughts from Taleb.
Warren Buffet’s letters to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders
Compulsory reading going back to 1977.
Farnam Street’s Charlie Munger compendium
Charlie Munger is a brilliant thinker and building your own latticework of mental models is a major level up in your life