The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing

About the book

For me, this is one of the most useful and informative investing books I have come across. Consisting of 364 pages and made up of numerous chapters, Pat Dorsey's book on successful stock investing is a must-have book for any aspiring investor.

Contents

This book consists of 26 chapters. The first few chapters cover the introduction, the five rules for successful stock investing, and seven investing mistakes to avoid. The next few chapters are devoted to definition of investment terms and learning how to read and analyze a company's financial statements. The remaining chapters describe the factors to look for in several types of industries.

Review

This is an excellent book because it is highly informative, easy to understand, and simple enough to follow. It contains a lot of lessons that cannot be absorbed in just one reading.

Difficulty Level = 2.5/5

The book is easy enough to read. For those who have little knowledge with terms and accounting, the book devotes a few chapters for those topics.

Personal Rating = 5/5

This is one of best modern investment books around. I only hope that there soon comes up a newer revised edition. At the end of the book, the author gives a list of his own recommended readings. Most of those I have already read and indeed found very enlightening. So, my fellow readers, do keep track of my blog to know what those recommended books are.

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Buffettology

About the book

Spanning 319 pages, Buffettology is authored by Warren Buffett's former daughter-in-law, Mary Buffett, and David Clark.

Contents

This work is separated into two parts, namely the basic and the advanced section. The basic part deals with some definition of terms, pointers about Warren Buffett's investment strategy, and discussions about inflation and compounding.

The advanced section, meanwhile, contains, several chapters teaching you how to estimate earning power, growth rates, future values, and compounded rate of return, among other things. It also mentions 54 real-life companies that Warren Buffett looks or looked at before.

Review

Although this was written by Warren Buffett's daughter-in-law, I find this work too summarized. It is an effort to simplify Warren Buffett's investing strategy for the benefit of average readers and investors. Rather than helping you grasp more about Warren Buffett's style, it makes you feel that you need to learn more about Warren Buffett. It makes you want to look for other works about the successful billionaire and put his strategies in a wider context. Furthermore, the advanced section involving computations lacks further guidance and is hard to follow. One would need to buy the Buffettology workbook to get a better working idea. 

Difficulty Level = 3/5

Even though the language is easy to understand, there seem to be too many simplified ideas and lessons built into every chapter.

Personal Rating = 2/5

In my opinion, it would be better to start learning first about basic finance computations and fundamental analysis techniques before reading this book. 

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The Intelligent Investor

About the book

This is the second book authored by the father of modern security analysis, Benjamin Graham. This revised edition spans 623 pages and is moderately challenging to read. This edition also comes with a commentary by well-known author Jason Zweig.

Contents

This book contains 20 chapters covering topics such as: investment vs speculation, the investor and inflation, up to the margin of safety principle. Furthermore, each chapter ends with a chapter commentary by Jason Zweig.

Review

This work was first published in the 1970s and as such, discusses companies,stocks, and bonds that were popular during those times. As such, young investors born much later than that period will have difficulty relating with it. However, this is offset by the more modern commentary provided at the end of each chapter.

Difficulty Level = 3/5

For me, this is easier to understand as compared to Security Analysis. However, more modern investment books can be easier to understand.

Personal Rating = 4.5/5

This is one of the investment classic books that every investor has to read. Those new to investing and have little knowledge in it may opt to delay reading this fine work.

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Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits

About the book

This investment classic book is around 292 pages long. It was also written by Philip A. Fisher, one of the mentors who shaped the now investment philosophy of billionaires Warren Buffett and Charles Munger (Warren Buffett's longtime friend, partner, and sidekick).

Contents

Unlike Benjamin Graham's focus on analyzing financial statements (quantitative) and preference for cheap value companies, Philip Fisher prefers to explore growth companies and delve into the qualitative characters of the business or company. Most of the chapters in this book tell the reader what aspects to look for when analyzing a business.

Review

I found this book very useful and is a good complement to Benjamin Graham's writings. To properly evaluate a company, one needs both quantitative and qualitative analysis and not just one. Although it is an old work, the questions and principles stated in the book are still very much applicable today.

Difficulty Level = 3/5

You certainly don't need to be an accountant to understand the book. However, since this is a classic book, the style of discussion in the book is quite different from modern investment books.

Personal Rating = 4/5

One should not miss out on reading this book. It is a work full of timeless information.

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Financial Shenanigans

About the book

This 2nd edition of the book is around 295 pages. As far as I know, this is sold only as hardcover editions. There is currently a new hardcover edition which is more available and updated.

Contents

As the subtitle infers, most of the chapters of this book provide clear instructions on how to detect accounting gimmicks and fraud (shenanigans). It will provide you, the reader, with specific items and trends to watch out for when reviewing a company's financial books.

Review

For those who have access to a company's books and who do a lot of financial auditing, this book is a must read. You do not need to be a CPA to understand this book. However, you will need to have at least a basic knowledge of financial accounting. Furthermore, most of the examples provided were publicly-listed firms in the United States. Hence, some of the accounting gimmicks may not be applicable for other types of companies.   

Difficulty Level = 4/5

This book requires a good basic knowledge of financial accounting in order to appreciate the lessons taught in this book.

Personal Rating = 3.5/5

Although this work is not useful for everyone, it certainly provides very specialized knowledge to those who know how to make use of it.

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