Singapore-based financial blog that aims to educate people on personal finance, investments, retirement and their Central Provident Fund (CPF) matters.

Our Reads

We listed down some books that we have read that we think and find useful for you out there trying to learn more about personal finance and investing.
These are books we have read and we think are great.
There are actually a lot more books that are great but we have not read yet, so this list is not exclusive.
We hope you would benefit from this list.
If you would like to recommend some good books for us and share with our readers, feel free to comment or drop us an email!

Personal Finance Basics

Before you start investing, you should always know about personal finance first. It is important to know what you should do with your money, how you can save more money, how you can earn more money, and how you can reduce your expenses.
You should learn all these before you start on Investments, hence below are some books we think are going to lay a good enough foundation to jump-start your financial journey.
    

Investment Basics

Before you can drive a car, you must first learn the basics of handling a car, what is a brake, what is an accelerator, etc. If you have no clue what's in a car, you are a danger to yourself and others on the road. The same principles apply to invest. You must know what is a stock, what is a bond, what is a fixed deposit, what are their risk and characteristics before you invest in them. Hence, these are some books that can provide a basic level of knowledge about investment.
  

Mary Buffett and David Clark write some of the best books on Warren Buffett (the greatest investor ever) investment methods and analysis. They have written multiple books on Warren Buffett, all of which are easy to read, easy to understand, and most importantly, easy to follow and implement!
Yes, you can start your transition to becoming the next Warren Buffett after finishing their series of books. The books detailed things Warren Buffett (and you) look out for in companies before he invests in them. If you apply the same framework, you should achieve results like Warren Buffett.


John C. Bogle is the founder of Vanguard Group, one of the world's largest fund management company, with USD $4.4 trillion worth of funds under its management. John C. Bogle was the first person to create an 'index fund', a fund that aims to track a stock market index like S&P500 or the STI. The index fund would charge low fees and in return deliver more returns to investors. This was contrary to what was being offered at that time when active management was thought of as the only way to invest. In his book, John C. Bogle detailed why investing is actually easy and how you can invest easily too, using common sense.
   

Investment Intermediate

Kenneth L. Fisher, son of the famous investor who wrote the book 'Common Stock and Uncommon Profits'. Kenneth L. Fisher followed his father's footstep and became a fund manager himself, a pretty successful one too. In addition, he is also a columnist for the Forbes magazine.
Personally, I like the books he wrote because it provides simple to understand examples of some of the misconceptions we have when it comes to personal finance and investing - like stocks are riskier than bonds which can be considered as false.



Investment Advanced

George Soros, aka 'The man who broke the Bank of England', is a well-known speculator in the financial industry. His theory of 'reflexivity' is what made him became a billionaire investor. Although he tried to promote his investment framework by publishing it as a book 'The Alchemy of Finance', it definitely is not an easy read (I spent almost 6 months to digest the book). None the less, this is one of the classic investment books we recommend you to read if you wish to challenge yourself. He also authored several other books that are not investment focus but are focused on the economy.
      

Jim Rogers is the partner of George Soros back when they were investing together. Jim Rogers, however, quit his job after he made enough (like tens of millions) and have since travelled around the world several times. He authored several books about trends he saw was happening during his round the world trip, including the great potential he sees in China and the commodity boom. In his books, he detailed how you can start investing in commodities and how to spot trends in the commodity market.
    

Philip A. Fisher, the father of Kenneth L. Fisher, is an America investor. He was a pioneer in the field of "growth investing", the idea of investing in companies that had very high growth rates because they tend to be more valuable in the future. In his book, he discusses a lot about the quality aspect of companies than the numbers on the companies' reports. You should definitely read this if you are interested in investing in growth stocks like technology stocks/companies.


Benjamin Graham, known as 'the father of value investing', was the first person to create and promote the idea of "value investing", the concept that every company had a value and that you can make money if you invest in the company when its selling price is lower than its value. He is the mentor of Warren Buffett. The books are good to read, although they are a little lengthy and can get boring at times. None the less, it is an investment classic that everyone should read.
 

This book is a great book to me because it contains a lot of insights and investing style by famous hedge fund managers in the industry, people like John Paulson, Bill Ackman and Ray Dalio.





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