The first book you read should be Adam Smith’s, “Wealth of Nations” or it’s actual name, “An Inquiry into the nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.”
I understand that you were looking for more of a technical guide as to how to make wise investments and how to evaluate a company, but a little information can be a bad thing. “Why” things happen is the first thing to learn, “How” to do it isn’t all that relevent and can be figured out easily. Books that rely on “systems” for investing are merely cookbooks.
If someone reccomends a particular book that has been recently published, find out what books that author read, then read those books instead. You cannot make an informed decision about an investment just because you understand why a particular investment pays off, you are only informed when you understand what moves markets, what moves people and what motivates people. Cycles are more important than trends, find the cycles and you will have unlocked the secrets.
Immediately after wealth of nations, read the Tao Te Chi, in nature as in finances, there is beauty in chaos. The point is that thunder, lightning, wildfires, hurricanes and all other natural calamities are to be expected and appreciated, not feared. They actually should be embraced as they are a neccesary component to the cycle. A Taoist isn’t afraid of nature, take that same approach to investing. Market crashes, recession/depression, wars, pandemics, nothing should make you afraid. All of it is neccesary to the cycle of economics, once you stop fearing it, you can profit from it.
Take housing, in 2006, it looked like a can’t lose investment. Banks, the government and people, ignored risk because there had been sunshine for as long as they could remember. By 2009 it looked like everything was going to hell in a handbasket. But looking back, which was a better time to buy? Stocks have similar cycles, so does just about everything. The greatest book to learn from isn’t a book, it’s the 12 month weather cycle. Look how you have become accustomed to it and can rely on it. When the days are at their coldest or their hottest, you feel inside that this will subside soon. You don’t think that it will become 200 degrees by December, you know the cycle will turn, maybe later or earlier, but it will return. You don’t buy fans in September and you don’t buy heaters in February, because you are near the end of the cycle, if you don’t already have them it’s too late. For some reason, we feel weather so we learn and understand the cycles, we expect them, we buy our clothing based on them. But few people “feel” economics, so they don’t really learn, expect or plan for the cycle. But it’s there.
