Recommended Books For Beginners

The journey to forever begins with a single step. Reading the right books can kick-start and transform your investment journey. Here are a few of the highly recommended books for stock investing.

Do you know that your life can change for good by reading just a single book? It can be a truly rewarding journey and can radically transform your thought process. During the festive period, I wanted to gift my close friend something special and didn’t want to get the typical gift card or game tickets. 

I wanted to get something memorable and useful and decided to get him a book. The challenge was knowing the book to get. I remembered how enthusiastic he had been on researching on the stock market in the new year, so I got him a book on investing.

My friend is from a non-financial background with zero knowledge on the stock market. I pondered on what book to get him that will kindle his interest in the stock market, and at the same time educate, encourage and excite him to take up active stock investing.

As the search began, I figured there was no single book recommended by experts for beginners. My search criteria was based on 3 criteria: Excitement, Accessibility and Readability (E.A.R) and I came across 3 books.

Excitement - The book should provide sufficient encouragement, excitement as well as the necessary confidence for a beginner to start his investing journey.

Accessibility - It should not be impossible to get a copy, either in the bookshop or online and should not create a big hole in your pocket.

Readability - The book should be in an easy to read language and must not contain financial jargon. It should be easy to understand for a beginner.

One online survey produced the results of a book search for beginners on the stock market and it had a recommendation of the top 50 books for beginners. The survey was responded to by over 1,000 participants and the survey matched my E.A.R principle perfectly. 

Here are the top 3 recommended books for beginners: 

1. The Intelligent Investor

This book came up highly ranked and is written by Benjamin Graham. It was labelled as the best investing book by Warren Buffet and was first published in 1949.

2. One Up On Wall street

This book provides encouragement for an individual investor to beat the market experts by using their existing knowledge base. It is a masterpiece by Peter Lynch.

3. The little Book of Common Sense Investing

This book by John C. Bogle also came highly recommended and should be in every beginner’s book stash.

All the three books in this list are of very great quality and written by legends in the field. These books will educate, excite and encourage beginners to take up the path of sensible investing. You would also have a very solid foundation to build your investing empire on.

A member of our team here at Yochaa started reading "The intelligent investor" last year. Later in the month of February we'd share some insights from the book and give examples that relate to our dealings on the Nigerian Stock Market.

The journey to forever always begins with a single step. Go ahead, purchase your copy of The Intelligent Investor now.