Which Benjamin Graham book should I read first: Security Analysis or Intelligent Investor?
I would recommend reading Intelligent Investor first. It was written slightly more recently (1949) than Security Analysis (1934). More important is that a recently revised edition* of Intelligent Investor was published. The preface and appendix were written by Warren Buffett. Intelligent Investor is more practical as an introduction for a novice. You may decide not to read Security Analysis at all, as it seems more like an academic text or professional's guide i.e. for accounting. Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor remains relevant. It is used, successfully, as a guide for value investing, despite the hysteria of market sentiment and day-to-day variations, even extreme volatility. For example, I just read a nice article about applying the value investing principles extolled in Intelligent Investor a few weeks ago. It was written in the context of current markets, which is amazing, to be so applicable, despite the passage of decades. For reference, you might want to glance at this book review (published in March 2010!) of the original 1934 edition of Security Analysis.     * The URL links to a one-paragraph summary by U.S. News & World Report. It does not link to a book sales website! "I would start with The Intelligent Investor.  It's more approachable than Security Analysis.  I read the revised edition which includes post-chapter commentary and footnotes from Jason Zweig. I found the added perspective helpful since the original book is quite old. Warren Buffet has called Intelligent Investor ""the best book about investing ever written.""  (Source)  I would suggest that endorsement ranks it before the other.  :) Security Analysis is more detailed and, perhaps, oriented at a more professional audience – though individual investors would certainly benefit from reading it.  Security Analysis is used as a textbook on value investing in some university-level business & finance courses. (p.s. If you haven't yet heard about William Bernstein's The Intelligent Asset Allocator, I also recommend adding it to your reading list.)" First The Intelligent Investor and then the 1962 edition Security Analysis - which is out of print, you can get it on Amazon.com used or ebay. Then you can read the edition backward but the 1962 edition is the best - IMHO. And don't forget The Rediscovered Benjamin Graham and  Benjamin Graham on Value Investing by Jane Lowe If you're looking to learn more about investing for personal use (as opposed to academic interest), I'd recommend something like The Ages of the Investor instead. "Having thought about it, I decided to start with another book by the same author : ""The Interpretation of Financial Statements"". I do not have a sufficiently strong basis to know what either ""The Intelligent Investor"" or ""Security Analysis"" are even about. Yeah, I might understand things, but I wouldn't grasp the essence, as I would be too busy figuring out what I didn't understand and miss the forest for the trees." Read the Security Analysis.  I believe if you read it completely, you will have a real good chance of succeeding at making good money.  If you find the book hard to read just go through it and underline under the text as you read it.
I'd recommend looking at fundamental analysis as well -- technical analysis seems to be good for buy and sell points, but not for picking what to buy.  You can get better outperformance by buying the right stuff, and it can be surprisingly easy to create a formula that works.  I'd check out Morningstar, AAII, or Equities Lab (fairly complicated but it lets you do technical and fundamental analysis together).  Also read Benjamin Graham, and/or Ken Fisher (they are wildly different, which is why I recommend them both). I would always recommend the intelligent investor by Benjamin Graham the mentor of warren buffet once you have a basic knowledge ie what is a share bond guilt etc  In terms of pure investment the UK is fairly similar the major difference is the simpler tax structure, ISA allowance and the more generous CGT regime. This is Rob Bennett, the fellow who developed the Valuation-Informed Indexing strategy and the fellow who is discussed in the comment above. The facts stated in that comment are accurate -- I went to a zero stock allocation in the Summer of 1996 because of my belief in Robert Shiller's research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. The conclusion stated, that I have said that I do not myself follow the strategy, is of course silly. If I believe in it, why wouldn't I follow it? It's true that this is a long-term strategy. That's by design. I see that as a benefit, not a bad thing. It's certainly true that VII presumes that the Efficient Market Theory is invalid. If I thought that the market were efficient, I would endorse Buy-and-Hold. All of the conventional investing advice of recent decades follows logically from a belief in the Efficient Market Theory. The only problem I have with that advice is that Shiller's research discredits the Efficient Market Theory. There is no one stock allocation that everyone following a VII strategy should adopt any more than there is any one stock allocation that everyone following a Buy-and-Hold strategy should adopt. My personal circumstances have called for a zero stock allocation. But I generally recommend that the typical middle-class investor go with a 20 percent stock allocation even at times when stock prices are insanely high. You have to make adjustments for your personal financial circumstances. It is certainly fair to say that it is strange that stock prices have remained insanely high for so long. What people are missing is that we have never before had claims that Buy-and-Hold strategies are supported by academic research. Those claims caused the biggest bull market in history and it will take some time for the widespread belief in such claims to diminish. We are in the process of seeing that happen today.  The good news is that, once there is a consensus that Buy-and-Hold can never work, we will likely have the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history. The power of academic research has been used to support Buy-and-Hold for decades now because of the widespread belief that the market is efficient. Turn that around and investors will possess a stronger belief in the need to practice long-term market timing than they have ever possessed before. In that sort of environment, both bull markets and bear markets become logical impossibilities. Emotional extremes in one direction beget emotional extremes in the other direction. The stock market has been more emotional in the past 16 years than it has ever been in any earlier time (this is evidenced by the wild P/E10 numbers that have applied for that entire time-period). Now that we are seeing the losses that follow from investing in highly emotional ways, we may see rational strategies becoming exceptionally popular for an exceptionally long period of time. I certainly hope so! The comment above that this will not work for individual stocks is correct. This works only for those investing in indexes. The academic research shows that there has never yet in 140 years of data been a time when Valuation-Informed Indexing has not provided far higher long-term returns at greatly diminished risk. But VII is not a strategy designed for stock pickers. There is no reason to believe that it would work for stock pickers. Thanks much for giving this new investing strategy some thought and consideration and for inviting comments that help investors to understand both points of view about it. Rob "Read ""The intelligent Investor"" book before you do anything. I started when I really didn't understand anything about stocks. I bought an internet stock for $150 per share which sold at 75cents a year later. I sold it for a profit but would've been a disaster." Barton Biggs's book Wealth, War and Wisdom aims to answer the question of what investments are best-suited to preserving value despite large-scale catastrophes by looking at how various investments and assets performed in countries affected by WWII.  In Japan, stocks and urban land turned out to be good investments; in France, farm land and gold did better. Stocks outperformed bonds in nearly every country.  Phil Greenspun recently wrote a review of the book. I think that MFin is best suited for more technical roles in banks (I assume when you say IB you mean sell/buy side M&amp;A), HF, AM, and PM roles. I don't view PE, CF, or IB as technically challenging as most of the analysis is done on the areas outside of finance. "There is only one book worth reading in my opinion: One Up on Wall Street. It's short and no other book even comes close to it for honesty, correctness and good sense. Also, it is written by the second most successful investor of all time, Peter Lynch. The Intelligent Investor has some good technical content, but the book is dated and a lot of it is irrelevant to the modern investment environment. When I was younger I used to ready books like this and when a friend of mine asked for investment advice. I said ""Look at stocks with a PE ratio of 5-10"". A few days later he comes back to me and says ""There are none"". Right. That pretty much sums up the problem with the I.I. Graham himself in interviews during the 1970s said that his book was obsolete and he no longer recommended those methods." as someone who made a fair attempt at understanding money subjects, I'd like some more writing from you.  I took high school level Marketing; Business economics; commercial law. it took six months on top of my previous High school ( with high level maths).  during those months I got medium grades, and failed  in- can you believe it - marketing. I had a go at The intelligent investor. I made it to page 96. But honestly I felt like I needed a lot of background in order for me to understand it. English is my second language. Sure I can understand  words like liability vs assets. but to this day i still can't remember the difference between a bull and bearish market. I know its about risk assesment on a national/ global level.  So who honestly gave finance a go but got their ass kicked. What would you say?  any books? "Thanks!  I came across many books on credit risk in my google searches - what I'm really looking for is which one is the ""industry standard"" reading (does that make sense?). For example, in derivatives, everybody recommends John C. Hull's Options... book. Why of all the CRM books, do you recommend those three in particular?" "(Leaving aside the question of why should you try and convince him...) I don't know about a very convincing ""tl;dr"" online resource, but two books in particular convinced me that active management is generally foolish, but staying out of the markets is also foolish.  They are: The Intelligent Asset Allocator: How to Build Your Portfolio to Maximize Returns and Minimize Risk by William Bernstein, and A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time Tested-Strategy for Successful Investing by Burton G. Malkiel Berstein's book really drives home the fact that adding some amount of a risky asset class to a portfolio can actually reduce overall portfolio risk. Some folks won a Nobel Prize for coming up with this modern portfolio theory stuff. If your friend is truly risk-averse, he can't afford not to diversify.  The single asset class he's focusing on certainly has risks, most likely inflation / purchasing power risk ... and that risk that could be reduced by including some percentage of other assets to compensate, even small amounts. Perhaps the issue is one of psychology? Many people can't stomach the ups-and-downs of the stock market.  Bernstein's also-excellent follow-up book, The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio, specifically addresses psychology as one of the pillars." Now it's been a while since I read these, and I'm not complete sure if these are the kinds of books that you're looking for, but I found them quite good:  Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives by Hull: http://amzn.com/0133456315  Investments and Portfolio Management by Bodie, Kane &amp; Marcus: http://amzn.com/0071289143  I hope this helps! "Benninga's book(s) are pretty much the best crash course to financial modelling with Excel - be aware though, he has two distinct types of book. One is more of a walk-through of financial principles in Excel('Principles of Finance with Excel, 2nd Ed.'), and the other could better be described as a 'glossary' of financial applications in Excel(the oft-recommended 'Financial Modeling') . As far as I'm aware, both contain roughly the same volume of information about the same topics (could be some minor differences, as the walk-through-style book is newer), but are taught in somewhat different ways. It might be useful to obtain a copy of one or the other from a library and see if you enjoy the style of the book before purchasing it. I was fortunate enough to have a roommate where between us, we have both, but doing this individually is a 200+ dollar endeavor, and you will only be duplicating identical information. ;)  If you're interested in reading other interesting material, that may help you develop different perspectives/insight into investing, I would suggest, aside from reading the usual stuff (Intelligent Investor, Random Walk, etc), also obtaining a copy of Seth Klarman's ""Margin of Safety"". You'll have to do so in .pdf form, as the book is entirely out of print (and from what I've heard, Klarman himself bought out many retailers of all of their copies and had them destroyed), but it's an interesting read, that has a lot of modern relevance -  perhaps best evidenced by the fact that it's author, president of one of the largest hedge funds in the world, no longer wants it in print." You're asking for a LOT. I mean, entire lives and volumes upon volumes of information is out there.  I'd recommend Benjamin Graham for finance concepts (might be a little bit dry...), *A Random Walk Down Wall Street,* by Burton Malkiel and *A Concise Guide to Macro Economics* by David Moss. Assuming you were immersed in math with your CS degree, the book **'A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street' by Andrew Lo** is a very interesting book about the random walk hypothesis and it's application to financial markets and how efficient markets might not necessarily imply complete randomness.    Lots of higher level concepts in the book but it's an interesting topic if you are trying to branch out into the quant world.  The book isn't very specific towards algorithmic trading but it's good for concept and ideas.  Especially for general finance, that will give you a good run down about markets and the way we tackle modern finance.    **A Random Walk Down Wall Street** (which the book above is named after) by **Burton Malkiel** is also supposed to be a good read and many have suggested reading it before the one I listed above, but there really isn't a need to do so.    For investing specifically, many mention **'The Intelligent Investor' by Benjamin Graham** who is the role model for the infamous Warren Buffet.  It's an older book and really dry and I think kind of out dated but mostly still relevant.  It's more specifically about individual trading rather than markets as a whole or general markets.  It sounds like you want to learn more about markets and finance rather than simply trading or buying stocks.  So I'd stick to the Andrew Lo book first.    ---  Also, since you might not know, it would be a good idea to understand the capital asset pricing model, free cash flow models, and maybe some dividend discount models, the last of which isn't so much relevant but good foundations for your finance knowledge.  They are models using various financial concepts (TVM is almost used in every case) and utilizing them in various ways to model certain concepts.  You'd most likely be immersed in many of these topics by reading a math-oriented Finance book.  Try to stay away from those penny stock trading books, I don't think I need to tell a math major (who is probably much smarter than I am) that you don't need to be engaging in penny stocks, but do your DD and come to a conclusion yourself if you'd like.  I'm not sure what career path you're trying to go down (personal trading, quant firm analyst, regular analyst, etc etc) but it sounds like you have the credentials to be doing quant trading.    ---  Check out www.quantopian.com.  It's a website with a python engine that has all the necessary libraries installed into the website which means you don't have to go through the trouble yourself (and yes, it is fucking trouble--you need a very outdated OS to run one of the libraries).  It has a lot of resources to get into algorithmic trading and you can begin coding immediately.  You'd need to learn a little bit of python to get into this but most of it will be using matplotlib, pandas, or some other library and its own personal syntax. Learning about alpha factors and the Pipeline API is also moderately difficult to get down but entirely possible within a short amount of dedicated time.     Also, if you want to get into algorithmic trading, check out Sentdex on youtube.  He's a python programmer who does a lot of videos on this very topic and has his own tool on quantopian called 'Sentiment Analyzer' (or something like that) which basically quantifies sentiment around any given security using web scrapers to scrape various news and media outlets.  Crazy cool stuff being developed over there and if you're good, you can even be partnered with investors at quantopian and share in profits.    You can also deploy your algorithms through the website onto various trading platforms such as Robinhood and another broker and run your algorithms yourself.    Lots of cool stuff being developed in the finance sector right now.  Modern corporate finance and investment knowledge is built on quite old theorems and insights so expect a lot of things to change in today's world.  ---  With a math degree, finance should be like algebra I back in the day.  You just gotta get familiar with all of the different rules and ideas and concepts.  There isn't that much difficult math until you begin getting into higher level finance and theory, which mostly deals with statistics anyways like covariance and regression and other statistic-related concepts.  Any other math is simple arithmetic. "They aren't necessarily trustworthy. Many institutions claim to have a ""Chinese Wall"" between their investment banking arms and analysis arms. In practice, these walls have sometimes turned out to be entirely imaginary. That is, analysis is published with an eye to what is good for their investment banking business. One of the most notorious cases of this was Henry Blodget, an analyst with Merrill Lynch during the dot-com bubble. Blodget became a star analyst after he correctly predicted Amazon would hit $400/share within a year. However some of his later public analysis dramatically conflicted with his private comments. Famously when he started covering GoTo.com, rating it as ""neutral to buy"", he was asked  ""What's so interesting about Goto except banking fees????"" Blodget replied, ""nothin"". Eventually he was permanently banned from the securities industry."