Choice between two Investing Books

Palantir · May 28, 2014, 2:57am

I just started doing what bromion suggested. Ironically I am finding short ideas, not long ones…

lotusunsw · May 28, 2014, 3:46am

Anyone srsly going to trade in their book for $11?..

lotusunsw · May 28, 2014, 3:43am

Theres quite a few gems here in Australia that can be invested into, mostly tech, telecommunications, education and health stocks. Financial sector is overvalued and mining stocks are exposed to crazy fluctuating commodity prices. Gonna wait for a market correction, then I’ll go long.

numi · May 28, 2014, 4:43am

Both books are practically unreadable, but if you really want to be an investor then you’ll read both. They are both seminal works on investing, and my personal thought is that everyone should aspire to read any such books. It is important to develop your own investment style and process, while also understanding what other investors with different styles and processes are thinking.

Personally, I learned to become a better value investor not because I read a ton of books on value investing, but because I read any well respected book on growth, GARP, and momentum investing I could get a hold of including Fisher. Frequently these types of investors are betting on the exact opposite side of a trade that I’m on, not to mention that there are times when other styles of investing work better than traditional value. The more time I spend working at a hedge fund, the more I realize the importance of having a truly flexible mindset. You should consider it a gift that you have a chance to get started on reading two excellent books at a young age.

I also second former trader’s suggestion on the Market Wizards series by Schwager. It’s terrific. I’d read all of them too.

Finally, you should sign up for a guest membership on Value Investors Club – this is probably the best way to get “case studies” without real actual work experience. HBR or other business school publications don’t provide case studies on stock picking. Rather, the case studies come with professor’s guidance on how to tailor it to whatever course they’re teaching For example, I did use some of these case studies in an MBA elective on investing; however, these case studies could also have been used for strategy, general management, and other such cases.

At any rate, Value Investors Club contains write-ups from members that applied to and were accepted based on merits of their write-ups. You won’t be privy to the full discussion boards without a full membership, as it’s limited to 250 members that were accepted via application-only, but the general access via guest membership can be just as informative as you do get to see *some* of the Q&A, and more importantly an astute investor (perhaps yourself) will go through the analytical rigor of figuring out why certain recommendations played out the way they did, while others were wrong. I think becoming a good investor has so much more to do with figuring out why certain things went wrong so as not to replicate these mistakes; becoming a good investor has far less to do with trying to hit homeruns all the time and more to do with avoiding strikeouts on bad balls.

lotusunsw · May 28, 2014, 5:22am

Wow thanks! Good advice there! I’ll look into VIC, never heard of them before.

Greenman72 · May 28, 2014, 1:38pm

First…and this has nothing to do with buy-and-hold value investing…read “Random Walk Down Wall Street”. Single greatest book on investing ever. Even if you don’t agree with the ideas, you’ll still learn a lot of information.

Second, read Warren Buffett’s letters. You can read them online, buy the book, or buy a “condensed” version by Larry Cunningham. There’s no greater value investor than Buffett, and nobody better to learn from than the man himself.

Robotech · May 28, 2014, 2:56pm

The Warren Buffett Way for the buy-and-hold concentrated portfolio.

lotusunsw · May 28, 2014, 3:40pm

Thanks Greenman, I think I’ll look into Larry’s book. He seems to have Buffet’s ideas from his letters thematically sorted which I like. JB, I read the reviews for the book but they werent that great.

igor555 · December 2, 2014, 8:55pm

numi:

Both books are practically unreadable, but if you really want to be an investor then you’ll read both. They are both seminal works on investing, and my personal thought is that everyone should aspire to read any such books. It is important to develop your own investment style and process, while also understanding what other investors with different styles and processes are thinking.

Personally, I learned to become a better value investor not because I read a ton of books on value investing, but because I read any well respected book on growth, GARP, and momentum investing I could get a hold of including Fisher. Frequently these types of investors are betting on the exact opposite side of a trade that I’m on, not to mention that there are times when other styles of investing work better than traditional value. The more time I spend working at a hedge fund, the more I realize the importance of having a truly flexible mindset. You should consider it a gift that you have a chance to get started on reading two excellent books at a young age.

I also second former trader’s suggestion on the Market Wizards series by Schwager. It’s terrific. I’d read all of them too.

Finally, you should sign up for a guest membership on Value Investors Club – this is probably the best way to get “case studies” without real actual work experience. HBR or other business school publications don’t provide case studies on stock picking. Rather, the case studies come with professor’s guidance on how to tailor it to whatever course they’re teaching For example, I did use some of these case studies in an MBA elective on investing; however, these case studies could also have been used for strategy, general management, and other such cases.

At any rate, Value Investors Club contains write-ups from members that applied to and were accepted based on merits of their write-ups. You won’t be privy to the full discussion boards without a full membership, as it’s limited to 250 members that were accepted via application-only, but the general access via guest membership can be just as informative as you do get to see *some* of the Q&A, and more importantly an astute investor (perhaps yourself) will go through the analytical rigor of figuring out why certain recommendations played out the way they did, while others were wrong. I think becoming a good investor has so much more to do with figuring out why certain things went wrong so as not to replicate these mistakes; becoming a good investor has far less to do with trying to hit homeruns all the time and more to do with avoiding strikeouts on bad balls.

which is the better version of security analysis, 6th edition or the original?

Analti_Calte_Equity · December 2, 2014, 9:00pm

igor555:

numi:

Both books are practically unreadable, but if you really want to be an investor then you’ll read both. They are both seminal works on investing, and my personal thought is that everyone should aspire to read any such books. It is important to develop your own investment style and process, while also understanding what other investors with different styles and processes are thinking.

Personally, I learned to become a better value investor not because I read a ton of books on value investing, but because I read any well respected book on growth, GARP, and momentum investing I could get a hold of including Fisher. Frequently these types of investors are betting on the exact opposite side of a trade that I’m on, not to mention that there are times when other styles of investing work better than traditional value. The more time I spend working at a hedge fund, the more I realize the importance of having a truly flexible mindset. You should consider it a gift that you have a chance to get started on reading two excellent books at a young age.

I also second former trader’s suggestion on the Market Wizards series by Schwager. It’s terrific. I’d read all of them too.

Finally, you should sign up for a guest membership on Value Investors Club – this is probably the best way to get “case studies” without real actual work experience. HBR or other business school publications don’t provide case studies on stock picking. Rather, the case studies come with professor’s guidance on how to tailor it to whatever course they’re teaching For example, I did use some of these case studies in an MBA elective on investing; however, these case studies could also have been used for strategy, general management, and other such cases.

At any rate, Value Investors Club contains write-ups from members that applied to and were accepted based on merits of their write-ups. You won’t be privy to the full discussion boards without a full membership, as it’s limited to 250 members that were accepted via application-only, but the general access via guest membership can be just as informative as you do get to see *some* of the Q&A, and more importantly an astute investor (perhaps yourself) will go through the analytical rigor of figuring out why certain recommendations played out the way they did, while others were wrong. I think becoming a good investor has so much more to do with figuring out why certain things went wrong so as not to replicate these mistakes; becoming a good investor has far less to do with trying to hit homeruns all the time and more to do with avoiding strikeouts on bad balls.

which is the better version of security analysis, 6th edition or the original?

6th is better. It is a reissue of the 2nd with a whole bunch of commentary by investing gurus at the beginning of each chapter.

Greenman72 · December 2, 2014, 10:37pm

Warren Buffett likes the 1940 version.

From what I can tell, the 6th edition is largely the same as the 1940 version, but with some obsolete chapters omitted (how to value railroad bonds), and with some commentary from the Graham-and-Doddsville Superinvestors.