Books, books, books

Reviewing a book list, not a book: Join me as I explore and critique a curated list of 500+ investment books

Finding the List

Recently I was listening to the Top Traders Unplugged podcast and it mentioned a booklist of “more than 500” investment-related books that they maintain on their website. I’m always looking for new books to add to my Amazon wish list, which I use primarily for tracking books that I heard about once from somewhere and might someday want to read. Finding the list on their page was a bit tricky, but I eventually found the lead page where you sign up an email to get the direct link to the guide. Since the guide is their ‘free resource’ that they use to build an email list, I’m going to be polite and only share the lead page, not the guide itself.

List Design

Their guide is grouped by category. They put ‘Crypto’ first which I thought was an interesting choice; but then I realized it’s alphabetical. If you’re going to list 500+ books, alphabetical is a fine choice, because then you don’t have to establish a ranking system.

Within each section, the books are alphabetical again, and many titles appear in more than one section. Is it enough that their total count fails to exceed 500? I don’t know, I didn’t count!

The categories mostly made sense to me as relevant to the investment-process, although some categories are filled with books that are only tangentially-related (strategic self improvement).

Geopolitics and Natural Resources was filled with books that are on my reading lists from the Master’s Degree I am currently working through in International Affairs & Leadership, which made me think it’s a lot more relevant to investing than I thought. Maybe a pivot to geopolitical consulting for investors would be a better next step for me than a full pivot away from trading into the State Department.

The written descriptions for most books were word for word the blurbs from their Amazon pages. Each entry shows the title and mentions format availability, but it has no hyperlinks to either publisher websites or webstores. You still have to Google it yourself. If the title is too generic, use subtitles (actually I almost always got better results using subtitles) or include the author name in your search query.

Inclusions and Exclusions

The most notable exclusion that I spotted was Adam Grimes. Grimes’ “Art & Science of Technical Analysis” is the title I’ve been sharing lately when asked a “one book recommendation” question. There are others that are more approachable for beginners, but most traders would definitely benefit from it. I plan to read it again this summer and then publish a full post.

I could come up with more trading or investing books that were missed, but nothing else that made me wonder if it was intentional.

Lots of books were included that made me wonder whether any standard was set. This is the 7th edition of their guide. Maybe they made an initial list, and then started adding on whatever books their podcast guests mentioned or asked about them not including?

A few topics were extremely well-covered. The fall of Long-term Capital Management was important, but do we need every title on the topic? Warren Buffett is important, but every biography about him? I can’t complain too much on this one, though. It was a biography of Warren Buffett that first introduced me to finance in 1997 when I was 14 years old.

Not every investor biography is included, or even should be. Michael Steinhardt’s book is missing, for example. There is mention of him in the list because he is covered in one of the many “Market Wizards” books that made the list.

They also included several of their own books in the list. Fine, great! It’s hard to imagine writing a few books, then assembling a list of 500 books in genres related to your own work, and then not including your own books in the list. My only irritation was that their books seemed to be available only through their own website. Who self-publishes and then does not at least make it available through Amazon?

Free v. Expensive

There were enough books on the list currently “free” with Kindle Unlimited to fill out the maximum simultaneous borrow limit. It’s easy enough to get free or cheap Kindle Unlimited trials a couple of times a year that I think of Kindle Unlimited books as being “free”. Many titles were currently available as free listens with Audible, too.

For actually free, many of the books are on the short list that every library has on Libby. (Is there actually such a list? I don’t know, but it sure feels like it.)

The list also includes a few out of print titles that sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars. Some day I will find and read Margin of Safety, but I am not a value investor. $2000 places it squarely under “Not a Priority”.

Final Thoughts

All told, it was a list. It was a pretty big list. I don’t recommend reading them all (and I probably will not be), but it’s worth combing through to see which books catch your eye or which you can get for free through your local library.

If I make a recommended books list I would want to actually write recommendations for each of the books on my list (or at least my own descriptions). I have seen other lists, much more selective, that do that. On the other hand, a lot of the titles on the list are new to me, and some are nostalgic (books I originally read in junior high school when I first discovered finance) and worth reading again, but were not on my list anymore because I’ve already read them.