13 Feb 2025
8 MIN READ
Best 20 books for investment experts
1. What Works on Wall Street
Author: James O’Shaughnessy
A highly recommended book for every investor, What Works on Wall Street by James O’Shaughnessy rundown a fresh inquiry on investment strategies. An all-time bestseller investigating the best strategies for maximum returns. O’Shaughnessy breaks down the intricacies of investment methodology and provides a comprehensive understanding of investments, comparing stock-picking strategies and their results. It is a complete guide on the current investment markets and it concludes with the most efficient investing strategies where he brings incontrovertible data on what works and what doesn’t.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
2. The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World
Author: Mark Spitznagel
The Dao of Capital was written by Mark Spitznagel, a hedge fund manager and the founder and president of Universa Investments. He is an investment advisor, and an expert in equity tail-hedging or profiting from extreme stock market losses. His book is centered around an investment methodology, what he called Austrian investing, taking a ‘roundabout’ path aiming at the indirect means rather than directly at the ends. In the book, Spitznagel takes an indirect investment approach inspired by Austrian economics and Daoist philosophy.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
3. Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard
Author: Mark Minervini
A book written by one of America's most successful stock traders and a Wall Street veteran for over 30 years. Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard by Mark Minervini, founder of Minervini Private Access is an encyclopedic literature on how to invest in growth stocks. In the book, stresses his trademarked stock market method SEPA, a method of combining risk management, self-analysis, and perseverance, known to bring returns in most markets.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
4. Inside the House of Money
Author: Steven Drobny
Inside the House of Money written by Steven Drobny emphasizes global macro is an investing strategy that encompasses different types of strategies. In the book, Drobny founder and CEO of Drobny Global Asset Management offers the perfect channel to connect with today's top global macro hedge fund managers. A must-read book for all financial professionals, where Drobny through interviews of 13 highly successful global macro traders offers a picture of how today's highest-paid money managers of “global macro” succeed.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
5. Unknown Market Wizards
Author: Jack Schwager
In the Unknown Market Wizards by Jack Schwager World-renowned author and trading expert shares his trading wisdom, and insights guiding traders in shaping outcomes. In the book, Schwager writes down the lesson from interviewing successful traders who are trading their own accounts. The author with his familiarity with interviewing trade wizards reveals how the above traders succeeded even surpassing many professional asset managers. He shared the mind-opening details on their training, experience, tactics, strategies, and their best and worst trades.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
6. A Man for All Markets
Author: Edward O. Thorp
A Man for All Markets is an autobiography of how Thorp devised his mathematical system to defeat card counting, by maneuvering scientific thinking, problem-solving, and dogged determination. Considered one world’s best blackjack players and investors, Throp notes down his wisdom on modern finance and investing. The book is a reliable reference for reader who values finance and new trading opportunities. Throp shared his journey of how a card-counting mathematics professor reached to be a renowned hedge-fund manager, including his passions and motivations, and the curiosity that has always driven him to disregard conventional wisdom.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
7. Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation
Author: Edward Chancellor
Devil Take the Hindmost takes the readers back in time to understand the evolution of speculative spirit and connects it to today’s stock market. Edward Chancellor who had worked for the investment bank Lazard Brothers traced the speculative origins and mapped out the history of stock market speculation from the 17th century to the present day. A historian from Cambridge and Oxford Universities brings light to the speculative spirit by tracing back to ancient Rome and chronicles and how it is revived in the modern world. In the book, the nuances of how the psychology of investing changed and has not changed over the last five hundred years have been discussed.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
8. Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity
Author: Michael Lewis
Lewis in his New York Times bestseller work creates a report on modern-day financial culture and how the underpricing of risk leads to catastrophe. Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity is an account of the financial history of recent times, penning down an analysis of five of the financial crises. The book covered the 1987 stock market crash, the 1998 Russian default, the Asian currency crisis of 1999, the Internet bubble of 1995-2001, and the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
9. The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings, and the Biology of Boom and Bust
Author: John Coates
The Hour Between Dog and Wolf by Coates, a Canadian Cambridge neuroscientist is an eye-opening and unconventional book, conveying a profound question of what happens to your body when you take risks, What happens to it when you make or lose a lot of money? A book that has been mentioned as a finalist for the Financial Times and has been shortlisted for the Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year. The former Wall Street trader in his book forwarded on what happens to your body when you engage in risk-taking. A worthy reading to understand why risk isn't a matter of mind over body, it's a matter of mind and body working together.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
10. The Myth of the Rational Market
Author: Justin Fox
The Myth of the Rational Market resonates as one of the most reliable sources for readers researching an efficient market/behavioral finance debate. From the work of Time Magazine economics columnist Justin Fox, the book is an analytic text on the rise and fall of the world’s most influential investing idea and efficient markets theory. Fox attempted to conclude how successful investing yielded high results. In the book, a historical insight into financial markets is outlined and explored the the replacement theory of behavioral economics.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
11. Markets, Mobs & Mayhem: How to Profit From the Madness of Crowds
Author: Robert Menschel
Markets, Mobs & Mayhem by Robert Menschel examines the crowd psychology phenomenon and its relative effectiveness on business and culture. The approach is seemingly changing the narrative of such mob psychology in the history of business. In defending his theories, the author pointed out that such psychology shapes market bubbles and irrational exuberance. A variable of the world of history was presented, from the rise of the Nazis in Germany to the fanatical love of brands, to the Dutch tulip craze of the seventeenth century, to America’s 1990s Internet bubble.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
12. The Zurich Axioms: The rules of risk and reward used by generations of Swiss bankers
Author: Max Gunther
The Zurich Axioms is a classic work on investments, author Max Gunther underlines a set of cardinal rules of practical philosophy to manage risk, which can be followed effectively by anyone, not merely the 'experts'. First published in 1985, the book is a compilation of bits of advice for expert investors on how to manage the risk and uncertainty of investing for high returns. A literature review handing out some of the best pragmatic and analytical insights on how to anticipate the psychological challenges in encountering uncertain situations.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
13. More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places
Author: Michael J. Mauboussin
The book More Than You Know steps into the premise that financial subjects as an economic subdiscipline that steps ahead of an “imperial” science, enclosed exclusively in theory and math, into a discipline that is adhered to by input from the other social sciences. A book authored by Michael J. Mauboussin, head of global financial strategies at Credit Suisse and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. The book is penned into essays divided into four parts Investment Philosophy, Psychology of Investing, Innovation and Competitive Strategy, and Science and Complexity Theory.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
14. The Art of Execution: How the World's Best Investors Get It Wrong and Still Make Millions
Author: Lee Freeman-Shor
The Art of Execution is authored by Lee Freeman-Shor who is widely popular for currently managing over $1bn in High Alpha and Multi-Asset strategies. In his book, he shared how he reviewed 1,800 investments made by fund managers under his leadership to find similar habits that might result in their success or failure. After such an experimental approach, the finding revealed that general practices of losing and winning investments improve and hurt returns. A book by the world's top fund managers evaluating the behavior of what not to do when your big idea is losing or winning
Where to find this book? Here is the link
15. The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence
Authors: Benoit Mandelbrot & Richard Hudson
In The Misbehavior of Markets, the authors present a new model and outlook for understanding the financial markets and their behavior, offering a critical insight into the unpredictability of the market. Mandelbrot and Hudson in their book employed fractal geometry theory to propose a new, more accurate way of describing market behavior. They claimed the theory helps predict the volatility of markets in far more accurate terms than other failed theories that have continuously led the financial system to the edge of disaster.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
16. Investing with the Trend: A Rules-based Approach to Money Management
Author: Gregory L. Morris
Authored by Gregory L. Morris, an industry leader and chairman of the Investment Committee for Stadion Money Management, LLC. In his book Investing with the Trend shared an approach to rules-based investment behavior and the mandate to take part in the good markets and avoid the bad ones. Morris as a technical market analyst challenges many principles of conventional financial wisdom and practice.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
17. Bull! A History of the Boom, 1982-1999
Author: Maggie Mahar
First published in 2003, Bull! A History of the Boom provides a blueprint of the economic environment, mapping out who all are the key figures, also who had a great impact on the stock market. Journalist and financial reporter Maggie Mahar authored the book narrating the episode of the Great Bull Market of 1982–1999. The book outlines the inception of the boom and guides the readers behind the scenes, on Wall Street, on Main Street, and in Washington.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
18. Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought
Author: Andrew Lo
First published in 2017 by Andrew Lo, the book Adaptive Markets brings light to a new evolutionary simplification of markets and behavioral patterns of investors. In the book by MIT Sloan School of Management professor answers the long ongoing question of whether investors and markets are rational and efficient, as modern financial theory assumes. The author and professor ended the prolonged debate with a new framework in which rationality and irrationality coexist termed the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
19. Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms
Author: Mark Spitznagel
The book is written by Mark Spitznagel, founder and Chief Investment Officer of the hedge fund Universa Investments, who is also the author of The Dao of Capital. In the book Safe Haven, Spitznagel challenges the notion of conventional financial theory, which argues investors are allowed to increase their returns by taking higher risks. He strongly believes and argues such a theory is simply wrong, supporting his theoretical framework with risk mitigation can raise wealth by lowering risk.
Where to find this book? Here is the link
20. The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns
Author: Mohnish Pabrai
Published in 2007, The Dhandho Investor by Mohnish Pabrai is a highly insightful and comprehensive literature on investment, it laid down a relevant framework for value investing. Pabrai is the Managing Partner of Pabrai Investment Funds, an investment group modeled after the original 1950s Buffett Partnerships. Additionally, the methodology introduced in the book stresses the principles of value investing set forth by Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger.
Where to find this book? Here is the link