Each book has a brief description from Amazon.com descriptions. Occasionally some extra commentary is added.
The books are sorted by primary topic lists, although there is considerable overlap of the topics in many of the books in the following lists. Some of the topics might at first seem off topic (e.g., behavioral finance, neuroeconomics, globalization, economics, public policy, Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), the environment and energy sources, and risk of rare events). However they impact on your personal finance results in the long term depends on all of these topics and need to be taken into account.
The books are not sorted within each of the primary topic lists - they are generally listed as they occurred to me (not always). These lists should be better organized in the future by topic or sub-topics and will be reorganized from time to time. Some of the books have come out in revised editions, so getting the latest edition might be a good idea.
For novice investors who want just get started learning the basics, books from
topic 2. Portfolio design and asset allocation
(introductory), would be of primary interest. These include defining terms
such as portfolio, asset and asset allocation and go on from there. To simplify
things, the following list of a few
good introductory books is given below.
Since there are so many good Web sites(and even more that are bad) dealing this
type of personal finance material, there is a list of a few of the better ones
is added at end of the book list 11.
A few selected Investing and Personal Finance related Web sites.
However, the primary focus of this Web page list is books - not Web sites.
The same issues are covered in more, but still introductory, depth are:
Common Sense on Mutual Funds
by Bogle, and B. Malkiel's A
Random Walk Down Wall Street. Good books on bond/bond-fund investing
are The Bond Book by Thou, and
The Only Guide to a Winning Bond
Strategy You'll Ever Need by Swedroe.
In addition, the Bogleheads.org personal
finance forum has written two books The
Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning and
The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing that are also useful. They have a
financial wiki with
definitions and discussion on many of these topics.
Many of the other great books listed below go into much more detail and
explanation for those who want to get into these and related topics in
more depth. And, many of those other books can are also good
introductary books as well.
There are many other sources of personal finance information on
the Internet and elsewhere, but they will not be addressed here. This is
strictly a book list.
A few books that are good introductions to this area are:
The Investor's Manifesto,
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing,
and
A Random Walk Down Wall Street.
This Web page:
http://lemkingroup.com/ListOfPersonalFinanceBooks.html List of a few good introductory books
A few books that are good elementary introductions (i.e. short with little or
no math) to this area are:
The Investor's Manifesto by
W.J. Bernstein, The Little Book of
Common Sense Investing by Bogle,
The Elements of Investing by
Malkiel and Ellis,
The Index Revolution: Why Investors Should Join It Now
by Ellis, The New Coffee House
Investor by Schultheis,
The Bogleheads' Guide to the Three-Fund
Portfolio by by Taylor Larimore,
The Little
Book of Main Street Money by Clements. Bernstein also has a nice little book
The Ages of the Investor: A Critical Look at
Life-cycle Investing that discusses one's human capital that should be taken
into account when investing. A
How to Retire with Enough Money: And How to Know What Enough Is
by Teresa Ghilarducci is a short but useful book on how to think about retirement
funding. How to Make Your Money Last: The
Indispensable Retirement Guide by Jane Bryant Quinn is an easy to read but
fairly comprehensive guide. The
Your Complete Guide to a Successful and
Secure Retirement by Larry Swedroe discusses not only the financial aspects
of retirement but also the emotional aspects.
Jonathan Clements
Money Guide 2016 is pretty comprehensive list of most personal finance questions.
Notation
The primary topics lists
one needs to understand risk and uncertainty in order to invest intelligently. These books
discuss the definition(s) and ways to think about risk from a personal investing standpoint.
how to actually build an investment portfolio of stocks and bonds.
covers more advance topics or treatments of portfolio construction.
demystifies bonds used as part of an investment portfolio.
value investing methodology as in "buy low, sell high".
how human behavior influences our investing, and other decisions.
the effects and history of globalization, economics, and public policy.
the philosophies of some successful investment mangagers.
discusses some of the details of fundamental analysis of stock investing.
how the simple Gaussian models commonly used by many in finance are wrong.
Although seemingly off topic, it is directly related to portfolio risk.
discusses how investing for returns as well as our values can be achieved.
describes the second part of investing, distributing income safely during
retirement.
discuss other aspects for making a successful retirement.
1. Risk and uncertainty in investing
2. Portfolio design and asset allocation (introductory)
2.1 Portfolio design and asset allocation (more advanced)
3. Bonds (as subset of a portfolio)
4. Value investing
5. Behavioral finance, neuroeconomics and neuroscience
5.1 Effects of globalization, economics, bubble history, open source and
technology movements, and public policy
6. Styles of some successful investment managers
7. Stock Investing
8. Fractals, finance and fat-tail event risk
9. Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) and economies
10. Retirement planning and income distribution
10.1 Non-financial aspects of retirement
11. A few selected Investing and Personal Finance related Web sites
Web-site:
http://lemkingroup.com/
Revised: April 4, 2022