15 Books That Can Make You a Better Investor

"In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads -- and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out."

Those are the words of Warren Buffett's business partner, Charlie Munger, and they really just reinforce what many of us already know: If we want to be smarter -- about money and life -- we'd do well to read a lot. Here are 15 books that can make you much savvier about money management and investing, among other things.

5 Stocks Under $49
Presented by Motley Fool Stock Advisor
We hear it over and over from investors, “I wish I had bought Amazon or Netflix when they were first recommended by The Motley Fool. I’d be sitting on a gold mine!" It's true, but we think these 5 other stocks are screaming buys. And you can buy them now for less than $49 a share! Click here to learn how you can grab a copy of “5 Growth Stocks Under $49” for FREE for a limited time only.

Peter Lynch's One Up on Wall Street is a longtime favorite of many investors, offering a lot of easy-to-read guidance on how to find and evaluate promising stocks. In case you don't know, Peter Lynch was the manager of Fidelity Investment's famous Magellan mutual fund from 1977 to 1990, and he averaged an annual return of 29% during that period. That's quite impressive.

First published in 1958, Philip Fisher's Common Stock, Uncommon Profits and Other Writings is another longtime investing classic, admired by Warren Buffett, among others. The book includes lists of things to do and not do. For example, don't follow the crowd and don't overstress diversification. He tackles topics such as 15 things to look for when you're searching for great investments and how to find growth stocks, in particular.

John Bogle is an investing icon, having founded Vanguard and pioneered index funds. He passed away in 2019, leaving behind a lot of guidance for those investors seeking it. His The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns is a great place to start. It covers topics such as mutual funds, index funds, dividends, taxes, and "Selecting Long-term Winners," among others.

ALSO READ: 3 Reasons to Invest in Index Funds

Morgan Housel's book, The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness, was published recently, in 2020, and has been called "one of the best and most original finance books in years" by noted financial writer Jason Zweig. It features 20 easy-to-read and often entertaining chapters on topics such as "Getting Wealthy vs. Staying Wealthy" and "Luck and Risk."

Behavioral finance and behavioral economics are fascinating fields, exploring why people make often irrational financial decisions. James Montier's The Little Book of Behavioral Investing: How Not to Be Your Own Worst Enemy is a great example and well worth reading, as it can help you learn to get out of your own way when managing your money. The introduction says that the book "will take you on a guided tour of the most common behavioral challenges and mental pitfalls that investors encounter and provide you with strategies to eliminate these innate traits."

5 Stocks Under $49
Presented by Motley Fool Stock Advisor
We hear it over and over from investors, “I wish I had bought Amazon or Netflix when they were first recommended by The Motley Fool. I’d be sitting on a gold mine!" It's true, but we think these 5 other stocks are screaming buys. And you can buy them now for less than $49 a share! Click here to learn how you can grab a copy of “5 Growth Stocks Under $49” for FREE for a limited time only.

If you want to be a successful hands-on investor, studying companies and making your own buy and sell decisions, you'll do well to learn how to make sense of financial statements such as balance sheets and income statements. Thomas Ittelson's Financial Statements: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding and Creating Financial Reports can be a great help as you learn to wring meaning from the documents.

Joel Greenblatt's The Little Book That Beats the Market, published in 2005, was so successful that he followed it up in 2010 with The Little Book That Still Beats the Market. Here's one of his author bios: "Joel Greenblatt is the founder and a managing partner of Gotham Capital, a private investment partnership that has achieved 40% annualized returns since its inception in 1985. He is a professor on the adjunct faculty of Columbia Business School, the former chairman of the board of a Fortune 500 company, the cofounder of the Value Investors Club website, and the author of You Can Be a Stock Market Genius."

Warren Buffett is famous the world over for his investing prowess and track record (averaging annual gains of about 20% over more than 50 years). Less well known but well worth knowing is Charlie Munger, his longtime business partner. In Poor Charlie's Almanack, Munger, currently a 98-year-old billionaire, offers many insightful nuggets that can help us be better investors and better people.

Those who invest in stocks over many years or decades are likely to see speculative bubbles form and burst, delivering big blows to many portfolios. It doesn't have to be that way, though. For best results, we should learn to expect occasional market crashes -- and, ideally, learn to identify speculative bubbles that precede some of them. Edward Chancellor's Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation offers a look at many of history's most fascinating speculative frenzies.

ALSO READ: How to Survive Your First Market Crash

Andrew Tobias is a longtime personal finance expert, and his The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need can get you making smarter moves in all kinds of areas. The New York Times has said of the book: "So full of tips and angles that only a booby or a billionaire could not benefit." It covers saving, taxes, investing, insurance, Social Security, and much more.

5 Stocks Under $49
Presented by Motley Fool Stock Advisor
We hear it over and over from investors, “I wish I had bought Amazon or Netflix when they were first recommended by The Motley Fool. I’d be sitting on a gold mine!" It's true, but we think these 5 other stocks are screaming buys. And you can buy them now for less than $49 a share! Click here to learn how you can grab a copy of “5 Growth Stocks Under $49” for FREE for a limited time only.

Great investors need to be able to identify great businesses, and Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck -- Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen offers a lot of insight into that, explaining how and why various companies have succeeded -- or failed. They look most closely at a handful of companies that turned initial investments of $10,000 into anywhere from $2.9 million to more than $10 million.

As you become a savvier investor, you'll be developing an approach for finding the most promising stocks. Pat Dorsey's The Little Book That Builds Wealth: The Knockout Formula for Finding Great Investments can help with that. Its description notes that it "reveals why competitive advantages, or economic moats, are such strong indicators of great long-term investments and examines four of their most common sources: intangible assets, cost advantages, customer-switching costs, and network economics."

ALSO READ: 5 Top Stocks for May

Not everyone realizes that we at The Motley Fool have published a bunch of books on investing, too. Our first major book was The Motley Fool Investment Guide: How the Fools Beat Wall Street's Wise Men and How You Can Too by David and Tom Gardner, and it's now in its third edition. It's very suitable for beginning and intermediate investors, offering guidance on how to identify great, fast-growing investments and how to evaluate them. It also discusses index funds, which are perfect for most investors.

If you're an admirer of Warren Buffett, you might want to read The Intelligent Investor, first published by his mentor Benjamin Graham back in 1949. It's more than 600 pages long and denser than many books in this group, but it's still very relevant, and it's cited as a major influence by plenty of very successful investors. A recent cover of the book calls it "The Definitive Book on Value Investing," a strategy espoused by Buffett and many others that focuses on undervalued stocks.

Finally, there's The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens: 8 Steps to Having More Money Than Your Parents Ever Dreamed Of, written by David and Tom Gardner, along with yours truly. It's aimed at teenagers and clever preteens, but adults can get a lot out of it, too -- especially beginning investors. It offers eight steps to wealth (such as avoiding financial blunders) and also explores how to find and evaluate great businesses.

5 Stocks Under $49
Presented by Motley Fool Stock Advisor
We hear it over and over from investors, “I wish I had bought Amazon or Netflix when they were first recommended by The Motley Fool. I’d be sitting on a gold mine!" It's true, but we think these 5 other stocks are screaming buys. And you can buy them now for less than $49 a share! Click here to learn how you can grab a copy of “5 Growth Stocks Under $49” for FREE for a limited time only.

You needn't read all of these books, of course, but reading at least a few of them should make you much savvier about money, investing, and business and make you a more effective investor. There are gobs of other great financial books out there, too -- spend a little time reviewing them and you'll find more that appeal to you. Don't assume that these books are boring -- because many of them can help you grow rich!

The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.