Books are documented resources that can boost your knowledge regarding any subject. If you’re a value investor, here are some must-read value investing books.
18 Best Value Investing Books You Need to Own
Financial freedom is a state that can be elusive to many, but if attained, it can bring one a lot of joy. Value investing is a significant contributor to achieving financial independence.
Therefore, understanding it becomes a vital starting point for any investor.
Many value-investing books offer valuable information on this concept. Before we explore the books, let’s first understand the meaning of value investing.
What is Value Investing?
The term value investing is used to mean an investment model that includes buying of securities which seem undervalued in the market. Value investing is derived from an investment philosophy which was initially taught by Benjamin Graham.
Millionaire Mob has explored some excellent books that can help you when making investments. Some of them include:
This piece will look at some of the best value investing books that you should have in your library. Value investing is just one way to invest your money.
So, here are the 13 best value-investing books that you must own.
List of Top Value Investing Books
These are some of the best value investing books to help you learn more and build a strategy that works for you.
1. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
A personal favorite and one of the best investing books of all time. This revised edition of Graham’s Intelligent Investor is one of the best value investing books that no prospective or experienced investor can afford to miss. The book conveys the timeless wisdom of Benjamin Graham in value investing that has transformed the investing life of many.
Since its first publication in 1949, the book has continually played a major role in shaping the investing journey of many great investors. Jason Zweig, who is a financial journalist and the author of the new edition, shares his perspective on today’s market realities which helps the readers to understand better and apply Graham’s principles.
The philosophy of value investing coined in this book by Graham helps shield investors against substantial error, as well as teach them how to develop long-term strategies. Crucial lessons you can learn from the book include:
- Investment vs. speculation
- The margin of safety
- The concept of Mr. market
- Different approaches for defensive & enterprise investors, and more.
The book is practically the best guide to value investing that you will come across. I’ve read this classic a number of times and it simply doesn’t get old.
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2. The Dhandho Investor by Mohnish Pabrai
This book is a comprehensive value investing outline that targets individual investor. The Dhandho Investor offers a guide to value investing that every investor must have. The guide explores and tries to explain how individual investors can use the Patels’ “Dhandho capital allocation business framework” in the stock market.
Dhandho method has its roots from the principles of value investing that were illustrated by Graham, Buffett, and Munger.
This book will introduce you to essential concepts of value investing such as “Few Bets, Big Bets, Infrequent Bets,” and “Heads, I win! Tails, I don’t lose that much!”
Using an accessible and easy to use format, Pabrai gives the readers a guide to a low-risk value method that will help them gain high returns.
Any investor whether new or skilled will significantly benefit from using this book to improve their results as well as beat the markets.
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3. The Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor 1st Edition by Seth A. Klarman
Adopting its title from a Benjamin Graham firm warning to always invest with a margin of safety, this book explains the value investing philosophy and the logic behind it. It expounds on why the approach succeeds while others fail.
Klarman provides the readers with the strong possibility of investment success blueprint. The book tries to help investors understand that they should not fall prey to the myriad of approaches from fads of Wall Street that promise instant millions.
This is because these approaches do not offer a real prospect for long-term success and run the risk of substantial economic loss. He states that these approaches often resemble gambling or speculation and not a clear investment program.
The book shows the strategy of trading securities at a considerable discount from the underlying value which has a long history of delivering exceptional results with lower risk.
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4. Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment Written by James Montier
James Montier’s Value Investing book expounds to readers on how value investing is a tried and tested approach to delivering sustainable returns in the long-term. The books try to make readers think outside the box and beyond what they learned in business school.
It urges the reader to think appropriately about risk and valuation, the ways to avoiding the growth investing dangers and becoming a contrarian. James also emphasizes further on the way to avoid value traps and short stocks, as well as how to hedge against ignorance through the use of cheap insurance.
The writer explains why value investing rejects the precepts of modern portfolio theory (MPT) as well as all its tools and techniques.
James provides the reader with tried and tested techniques as well as the latest tools to help deploy the value approach with success. He offers real-time examples of the principles charted in the context of the financial crisis of 2008/09.
The book provides the reader tools that can assist them in starting thinking about how to invest. Also, it introduces the best ways to invest that over-ride emotional investing while pursuing a value approach.
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5. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: 10th Anniversary Edition by John C. Bogle
This book is one of the best-selling books in Amazon. The book is a new version of, “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” that provides you with the same concrete strategy for creating your financial future and more.
This book offers new insights, new information, as well as new perspectives on investing, acting as a classic guide to smart investing.
The author explains in details, his crucial strategy on how to get more out of an investment, that is the low-cost index funds.
More precisely, how to buy and hold, at the least possible cost, a mutual fund that will track a broad stock market, like the S&P 500.
Moreover, it includes two more new chapters that give investors more guidance on asset allocation and retirement investing.
Some critical lessons depicted in this book include:
- How to build a widely diversified and low-cost portfolio
- Focusing on actually working real life things and forgetting the fads, as well as the marketing hype
- Understanding the three sources of stock returns (earnings growth, dividend yield, and market valuation change)
- Recognize that the business reality outdo the market expectations in the long-run
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6. Investing QuickStart Guide by Ted D. Snow CFP MBA
This book is a simplified but comprehensive beginner’s guide that will help you successfully navigate the stock market, grow your wealth & create a secure financial future.
The guide tries to simplify the complex investment ideas and make them clear for the investors to understand. Veteran or new investor, the book provides a unique and practical perspective for investing success.
Also, this book brings together financial insights from more than 30 years’ experience in finance which is ideal both for new and skilled investors.
Insights from renown writers like Peter Lynch, Warren Buffet, and James Altucher play a fundamental role in this investment resource.
The essential lessons you will derive from the book “Investing QuickStart Guide” include:
- Ways of taking advantage of opportunities available in the market, without depending on guesswork
- Every single thing you ought to know before making that first trade
- How to compare and evaluate stocks & other securities
- The disciplined approaches in investing that can propel you to financial freedom and early retirement
- How the economic and geopolitical factors in the national and global levels can affect investment prospect
Moreover, this incredible book helps you to uncover the strategies that you need to invest adequately in mutual funds, stocks, index funds, REITs, bonds and ETFs.
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7. The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, the Fourth Edition by Lawrence A. Cunningham and Warren E. Buffett
As the last work regarding Warren Buffet and the intelligent investment philosophy, it incorporates a cluster of letters from Buffet to stakeholders of Berkshire Hathaway. The book includes an immensely valuable informal education that is a combination of materials written over the past several decades. These letters extract in clear words, every fundamental principle of sound business practice.
With high precision, the author organizes these valuable insights of investment and business wisdom into a single account covering critical topics on both investors and managers.
In this fourth edition of, “The Essays of Warren Buffett Lessons for Corporate America“, you will find additional materials like:
- Buffet’s 50th-anniversary retrospective
- “The Berkshire System,” which is the 50th-anniversary essay by Charlie Munger
- Berkshire’s no-dividend practice definitive defense by Warren Buffet
- The best advice on investing by Warren, whether in businesses, apartments, or farms
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8. Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
In this fantastic book, the author brings together a comprehensive collection of the unique tenets that he has discovered during his career. What’s more, he believes that they have led to the successes of Bridgewater Associates.
The book tries to explain the concept that life, economics, investing, and management can be systemized to form rules. You will find hundreds of practical lessons in this book. These rules are built mainly on his foundations of “radical transparency” and “radical truth.”
As an investor or a prospect investor, this book lays down some convenient ways you can use to make decisions, and handle challenges.
Also, the text is full of ideas that institutions and organizations can use, as well as a transparent approach to the decision-making process.
If investing is what you want, “Principles by Dalio” is one of those books on value investing that you must have.
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9. StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Gallup and Tom Rath
Why is a strength finder book important with value investing? Each value investor is different from their strategy. Thus, you need to formulate your strengths to identify the best possible investment opportunities for you.
With its first version being launched in 2001, this book a complete guide to help people discover their talents and what they do best. The first version of this online assessment ignited a global conversation, as well as helped millions of individuals to identify their five top talents.
Since most often people devote most of their time fixing their shortcoming, the book helps you to discover how to use more time developing your strengths. In StrengthsFinder 2.0, which is the latest bestseller, Gallup offers a new and improved edition of its recent, popular assessment, and language of 34 themes among others.
The following are some of the features you will find in this new edition:
- An upgraded version of Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment
- Custom-made guide on strengths unearthing and action-planning to help you apply your strengths.
- A more modified publication of your topmost five theme report
- 50 top most ideas for action – 10 strategies to help build each of your top five themes
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10. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
This is a value investing book that every investor and people desiring to become successful investors should have on their shelves. As one of the best value investing books, it tries to explore some of the habits that successful people exhibit.
The book has dramatically changed the lives of many prominent figures like presidents, CEOs, parents, educators, and students. This is to mean that, the seven habits book can also transform you and change how you do things and propel you to success.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People book, is a comprehensive guide to the step-by-step seven habits including:
- Be Proactive
- Begin with the end in mind
- Put first things first
- Think win-win
- Seek first to understand then be understood
- Synergise
- Sharpen the saw
With this book, you can discover critical lessons about the conducts of successful people which differentiate them from the ordinary folks. The book is delivered in an infographics format which renders it easy to study and apply for you.
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11. The Power of Zero, Revised and Updated by David McKnight
Want to enter the 0% Tax Bracket? Wish to transform your retirement? This book might be that doorway for you. With the average American investor being pulled down by excessively high taxes, most people are trying to find a way out.
This incredible investment book by David McKnight brings into perspective, a step by step guide to reaching the 0% bracket before you retire.
To avoid these high taxes imposed by the government, and seeing that most Americans are saving for retirement through tax-deferred vehicles such as 401 (k)s or IRAs this book becomes essential.
The Power of Zero book offers a precise guide to help you achieve a 0% tax bracket by removing the risk of the tax rate on your retirement picture. Buy this book and make sure that you are in that desired tax bracket by the time your retirement knocks.
The new updated chapter on the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act will help you understand how you can extend your retirement savings’ life when you take advantage of the law now.
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12. Crushing It in Apartments and Commercial Real Estate by Brian H Murray
Real estate investing is one of the most stable forms of investment and one with considerably low risk. In this book by Brian Murray, the author illustrates the simple but certainly effective approach that he has used to create his multimillion-dollar company.
Crushing It in Apartments and Commercial Real Estate book is a novice’s guide to investing founded on the author’s experience. The book will guide you on the steps and strategies to use right from the beginning, up to when you make it.
Some vital lessons that you’ll learn in the book include how to:
- Identify and ingeniously finance a commercial property
- Nurture a portfolio with no outside investors’ assistance or excessive debt
- Use the status of a small-investor as a competitive advantage
- Recognize practical but straightforward methods to help you increase profits whereas still lowering the costs
- The book shares the necessary wisdom and tactics to help you make it big in real estate investing.
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13. The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason
As one of the most Stirring books on wealth and investment ever written, the book brings to light the most exceptional success secrets used by the ancients.
The Richest Man in Babylon book is considered by many as among the most excellent books on financial planning, thrift subject and personal wealth.
If you desire to become a successful investor, or you’re already an investor seeking to grow more, you should grab a copy. The book incorporates the secrets obtaining money, keeping money, as well as strategies to earn more money.
This book was initially a cluster of pamphlets written by George S. Clason and dispersed by insurance firms and banks. Charles Conrad offers a new version of these classic tales, which he recaps in a more precise and straightforward language that today’s readers can understand.
The book is not only informative but also captivating to read. Thus, it will inevitably lead you to the right path of prosperity. You can find this new copy in Amazon and start your journey to value investing.
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14. Financial Intelligence, Revised Edition by Karen Berman and Joe Knight
According to Inc. magazine, the book is considered to be among the best and most precise guides to numbers. On the other hand, people who have read it are convinced that it is a must-read book for any decision maker with no expertise in finance.
The Financial Intelligence book was released in 2006 and has since become a preferred guide for managers who seeks a guided journey through the numbers. This must-have book targets to help managers understand both what the numbers mean and also the reason they matter.
Further, the new version ensures that the numbers are up to date while it still teaches finance basics to managers who intend to drive their business through financial data.
Moreover, it handles issues on the financial crisis, as well as the broader accounting and financial literacy.
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15. Cheap Houses: How I Find & Buy Inexpensive Real Estate by The Homestead Craftsman
This book is an excellent guideline on how you can purchase cheap houses. By reading the text, you will be able to understand how you can identify properties and also close ideal deals in real estate investments.
Those who want to know how to locate and purchase properties at the lowest possible prices here is a good start point.
The book reveals how the author has bought almost all of his properties for a price between $5,000 and $15,000.
If in need of cheap real estate, look no further. This is a book that ought to be on your shelf.
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16. The University of Berkshire Hathaway by Daniel Pecaut and Corey Wrenn
This brilliant book comprises of 30 years’ worth of the lessons taught by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger to shareholders. These lessons, investment strategies, and wisdom were all personally shared during the annual stakeholders’ closed-door meetings.
The book retells some of these lessons in a way that you can understand and more importantly put into action. You will understand why and how Buffett and Munger purchase a specific company, as well as their approaches for assigning value.
Also, the book helps you to:
- Acquire exclusive insight into the strategies, thinking, and decisions that make Buffett and Munger the world’s greatest investors.
- Comprehend Buffett’s value-investing philosophy that is, “straight from the horse’s mouth.”
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17. Trading Options, Advanced Trading Strategies, and Techniques by Branden Lee
You may think why does options trading fit in value investing? Successful value investors have strategies with options as a risk mitigant tool or as a way to scale into a stock position. Options can help you take your portfolio to the next level.
Whether you are a novice investor or a seasoned stock market pro, this book provides you with just the right tools to help you trade. Additionally, this trading options book offers comprehensive strategies, coupled with insights that light the path to successful investing.
With the 40 verified trading strategies incorporated in the book, having it guarantees you a successful investment journey.
Taking control of your financial future is precisely what this incredible book offers, to ensure you meet your retirement goals.
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18. Dividend Investing Your Way to Financial Freedom by Millionaire Mob
Millionaire Mob book “Dividend Investing Your Way to Financial Freedom: A Guide to Living Off Dividends Forever” which explains to investors how they can live off dividend investing. The book offers a 5-step guide that is necessary to help you live off dividends.
It offers free resources to calculate the best dividend investment options, their exact criteria on how to identify undervalued dividend stocks and actionable steps to help you become a better dividend growth investor.
You can use the book to find high-quality dividend growth stocks that will have a high likelihood of increasing their dividends well into the future.
Here is why I created my dividend investing book.
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Conclusion on Value Investing Books
With this collection of value investing books, success is almost a guarantee. Thus, if you follow the concepts and strategies within them. Finding the best value investing books can be a challenge.
I believe that this article has explored enough books that can help you get started.
Which books are you reading as a value investor? Let us know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.
Other Related Resources
- How to Use Geoarbitrage to Unlock Financial Freedom
- My 10 Year Plan: Patience is the Key to Financial Success
- Crowdstreet Review: A Platform for Accredited Investors
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4 Comments
There are some good suggestions on this list. I need to give the Richest Man In Babylon another try. Everyone raves about this book but I just can’t get into it. I’ve added a few new books to my read list. Thanks!
Thanks! Yes, it’s a must-read for sure. If you get it, let me know what you think!
Great list! I have read some of these but will have to place a couple new books on my reading list!
Thanks! Yeah, there are a few ‘sleepers’ in there.