Our 2023 list of best books on value investing includes classic titles such as Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd as well as more recent books such as Where The Money Is by Adam Seessel.
Whether you want to invest in public markets or not, having a foundational understanding of how businesses work and what constitute a “great business” is key. Additionally, you need to have a framework which allows you to look at the world and spot the solid investment opportunities.
These Value Investing books help with both and are welcome addition to the shelves of all those who are enthusiastic about building a long-term track record of satisfactory returns.
Our 2023 List of Best Value Investing Books
- Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd
- Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond by Bruce C. Greenwald et. al
- The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
- The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America by Lawrence Cunningham
- Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor
by Seth Klarman
- Pitch the Perfect Investment by Paul D. Sonkin and Paul Johnson
- Where The Money Is by Adam Seessel
- The Outsiders by William Thorndike
- Competition Demystified by Bruce C. Greenwald
- Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings by Philip Fisher
- The Little Book That Still Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt
- You Can Be a Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt
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Below you can find a brief summary of each book along with our take on each of the titles:
Security Analysis (7th Edition) by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd
First published in 1934, Security Analysis is one of the most influential financial books ever written. With more than million copies sold, it has provided generations of investors with the timeless value investing philosophy and techniques of the legendary Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd.
The Seventh Edition features the ideas and methods of today’s masters of value investing, who discuss the influence of Graham and Dodd on today’s markets and contextualize the philosophy that has influenced so many famous investors.
The successful value investor must constantly be in the process of reinvention, of raising his or her game to navigate the terrain of new eras, novel securities, nascent businesses, emerging industries, shifting standards, and evolving market conditions.
With the diverse perspectives of experienced contributors, this new edition of Security Analysis is a rich and varied tapestry of highly informed investment thinking that will be a worthy and long-lived successor to the preceding editions.
Note: At 864 pages and written with a dense style, reading this book requires significant amount of time. Our suggestion is to start from “lighter” books on this list.
Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond (2nd Edition) by Bruce C. Greenwald et. al
The substantially rewritten Second Edition delivers an incisive and refined approach to investing grounded on almost 100 years of history, beginning with Graham and Dodd. Founded on the value investing course taught for almost twenty-five years by co-author Bruce Greenwald at Columbia Business School, the book helps investors consistently land on the profitable side of the trade.
Readers will learn how to search for underpriced securities, value them accurately, hone a research strategy, and apply it all in the context of a risk management practice that mitigates the chance of a permanent loss of capital.
The new edition includes:
- Two innovative new chapters discussing the valuation of growth stocks, a perennial problem for investors in the Graham and Dodd tradition
- New profiles of successful investors, including Tom Russo, Paul Hilal, and Andrew Weiss
- An extended discussion of risk management, including modern best practices in an environment where it is often divorced from individual security selection
- A substantive expansion of an already highly regarded book, Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond is the premier text discussing the application of timeless investing principles within a transformed economic environment.
This book is an essential resource for portfolio managers, retail and institutional investors, and anyone else with a professional or personal interest in securities valuation and investing.
Note: This book, at its heart, is a “how to” book. It’s written with a relatively easy language and after reading it you’ll get a solid foundation of how to apply “modern” value investing principles in practice. We liked the First Edition (published in 2004) more which you can check out here.
The Intelligent Investor (Revised Edition) by Benjamin Graham
This classic text is annotated to update Graham’s timeless wisdom for today’s market conditions. The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham, taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham’s philosophy of “value investing” — which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies — has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949.
Over the years, market developments have proven the wisdom of Graham’s strategies. While preserving the integrity of Graham’s original text, this revised edition includes updated commentary by noted financial journalist Jason Zweig, whose perspective incorporates the realities of today’s market, draws parallels between Graham’s examples and today’s financial headlines, and gives readers a more thorough understanding of how to apply Graham’s principles.
Our Take: Buffett regularly talks about how reading Chapters 8 and 20 of this book and specifically “Mr. Market” passages, changed his view and philosophy of investing. This is a classic value investing text and much easier read than Security Analysis.
The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America (Fifth Edition) by Lawrence Cunningham
The fifth edition of The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America continues a 25-year tradition of collating Warren Buffett’s philosophy in a historic collaboration between Mr. Buffett and Prof. Lawrence Cunningham.
As the book Buffett autographs most, its popularity and longevity attest to the widespread appetite for this unique compilation of Mr. Buffett’s thoughts that is at once comprehensive, non-repetitive, and digestible. New and experienced readers alike will gain an invaluable informal education by perusing this classic arrangement of Mr. Buffett’s best writings.
Our Take: This is an absolute must-read. If you’re going to read only one book from this list, it’s probably this one. Read it, reflect on it…and read it again.
Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor
But value investing – the strategy of investing in securities trading at an appreciable discount from underlying value – has a long history – has a long history of delivering excellent investment results with limited downside risk.
Taking its title from Benjamin Graham’s often-repeated admonition to invest always with a margin of safety, Klarman’s ‘Margin of Safety’ explains the philosophy of value investing, and perhaps more importantly, the logic behind it, demonstrating why it succeeds while other approaches fail. The blueprint that Klarman offers, if carefully followed, offers the investor the strong possibility of investment success.
Our Take: This book is now out of print and because it has developed a cult following over the years, its original copies now sell for $1,000+ on the Internet. It’s certainly a great read if you can get your hands on it.
Pitch the Perfect Investment by Paul D. Sonkin and Paul Johnson
You’ll gain world-class insight into search strategy, data collection and research, securities analysis, and risk assessment and management to help you uncover the perfect opportunity; you’ll then strengthen your critical thinking skills and draw on psychology, argumentation, and informal logic to craft the perfect pitch to showcase your perfect idea.
The ability to effectively pitch an investment is essential to securing a job on Wall Street, where it immediately becomes a fundamental part of day-to-day business. This book gives you in-depth training along with access to complete online ancillaries and case studies so you can master the little skill that makes a big difference.
It doesn’t matter how great your investment ideas are if you can’t convince anyone to actually invest. Ideas must come to fruition to be truly great, and this book gives you the tools and understanding you need to get it done.
- Persuade potential investors, clients, executives, and employers
- Source, analyze, value, and pitch your ideas for stocks and acquisitions
- Get hired, make money, expand your company, and win business
- Craft the perfect investment into the perfect pitch
Money managers, analysts, bankers, executives, salespeople, students, and individual investors alike stand to gain massively by employing the techniques discussed here. If you’re serious about success and ready to start moving up, Pitch the Perfect Investment shows you how to make it happen.
Our Take: This is an excellent pick for those readers who are looking for “Value Investing Made Easy” books but also those who want to know how they should analyze a business, how they should assess the effectiveness of the thesis and how to pitch it in the context of being a security analyst. One of our favorite titles!
Where The Money Is by Adam Seessel
Technological change is reshaping the economy in a way not witnessed since Henry Ford introduced the assembly line. A little more than ten years ago, only two of the ten most valuable publicly traded companies in the world were digital enterprises—today, they comprise eight of the top ten. Investors around the world are struggling to understand the Digital Age and how they can use the stock market to profit from it.
Author Adam Seessel understands. Several years ago, he watched his old-school portfolio built using traditional value investing principles decline while the market, driven by “expensive” tech stocks, advanced. Determined to reverse course, he set off in search of a new investment paradigm, one that remained true to the discipline that Ben Graham gave us a century ago while reflecting the new realities of the Digital Age.
In this “helpful take on playing the stock market” (Publishers Weekly), Seessel introduces a refreshed value-based framework that any investor, professional or amateur, can use to beat the modern market. Like all sectors, the tech sector follows certain rules. We can study these rules, understand them, and invest accordingly. The world is changing, and we can profit from it.
Approaching tech this way, the economy’s current changes and the rapid rise of tech stocks are not reasons to be frightened or disoriented—they’re reasons to be excited. Infused with the same kind of optimism and common sense that inspired Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor and Peter Lynch’s One Up on Wall Street, Where the Money Is ushers in a new era of modern value investing.
Our Take: We liked the fresh perspectives of the author about the fact that, traditional value investing tools need to be adapted to realities of today’s digital economy. This is a good read for those interested in analyzing companies in sectors such as technology.
The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike
In this refreshing, counterintuitive book, author Will Thorndike brings to bear the analytical wisdom of a successful career in investing, closely evaluating the performance of companies and their leaders. You will meet eight individualistic CEOs whose firms’ average returns outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of twenty—in other words, an investment of $10,000 with each of these CEOs, on average, would have been worth over $1.5 million twenty-five years later.
You may not know all their names, but you will recognize their companies: General Cinema, Ralston Purina, The Washington Post Company, Berkshire Hathaway, General Dynamics, Capital Cities Broadcasting, TCI, and Teledyne. In The Outsiders, you’ll learn the traits and methods—striking for their consistency and relentless rationality—that helped these unique leaders achieve such exceptional performance.
Humble, unassuming, and often frugal, these “outsiders” shunned Wall Street and the press, and shied away from the hottest new management trends. Instead, they shared specific traits that put them and the companies they led on winning trajectories: a laser-sharp focus on per share value as opposed to earnings or sales growth; an exceptional talent for allocating capital and human resources; and the belief that cash flow, not reported earnings, determines a company’s long-term value.
Drawing on years of research and experience, Thorndike tells eye-opening stories, extracting lessons and revealing a compelling alternative model for anyone interested in leading a company or investing in one—and reaping extraordinary returns.
Our Take: Excellent read to get an understanding of what constitutes “good management” and being able to spot great capital allocators. It’s very easy to read and highly engaging.
Competition Demystified: A Radically Simplified Approach to Business Strategy by Bruce C. Greenwald
Based on his hugely popular course at Columbia Business School, Greenwald and his coauthor, Judd Kahn, offer an easy-to-follow method for understanding the competitive structure of your industry and developing an appropriate strategy for your specific position.
Over the last two decades, the conventional approach to strategy has become frustratingly complex. It’s easy to get lost in a sophisticated model of your competitors, suppliers, buyers, substitutes, and other players, while losing sight of the big question: Are there barriers to entry that allow you to do things that other firms cannot?
Our Take: This book goes very well with the other Greenwald title on this list and provides the right qualitative and conceptual framework to define a “good business”.
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings by Philip Fisher
Widely respected and admired, Philip Fisher is among the most influential investors of all time. His investment philosophies, introduced almost forty years ago, are not only studied and applied by today’s financiers and investors, but are also regarded by many as gospel. This book is invaluable reading and has been since it was first published in 1958. The updated paperback retains the investment wisdom of the original edition and includes the perspectives of the author’s son Ken Fisher, an investment guru in his own right in an expanded preface and introduction.
“I sought out Phil Fisher after reading his Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits…A thorough understanding of the business, obtained by using Phil’s techniques…enables one to make intelligent investment commitments.”
Our Take: A very eye-opening that’s still fresh even 60+ years after its publication. This is not necessarily considered a “typical” value investing book but it certainly talks about how to research a business in a thorough way and come up with insights that give you “edge”.
The Little Book That Still Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt
Now, with a new Introduction and Afterword for 2010, The Little Book that Still Beats the Market updates and expands upon the research findings from the original book. Included are data and analysis covering the recent financial crisis and model performance through the end of 2009. In a straightforward and accessible style, the book explores the basic principles of successful stock market investing and then reveals the author’s time-tested formula that makes buying above average companies at below average prices automatic.
Though the formula has been extensively tested and is a breakthrough in the academic and professional world, Greenblatt explains it using 6th grade math, plain language and humor. He shows how to use his method to beat both the market and professional managers by a wide margin. You’ll also learn why success eludes almost all individual and professional investors, and why the formula will continue to work even after everyone “knows” it.
While the formula may be simple, understanding why the formula works is the true key to success for investors. The book will take readers on a step-by-step journey so that they can learn the principles of value investing in a way that will provide them with a long term strategy that they can understand and stick with through both good and bad periods for the stock market.
Our Take: A very quick read with some important insights on how to buy quality businesses for cheap or reasonable price.
You Can Be a Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt
A comprehensive and practical guide to the stock market from a successful fund manager—filled with case studies, important background information, and all the tools you’ll need to become a stock market genius.
Fund manager Joel Greenblatt has been beating the Dow (with returns of 50 percent a year) for more than a decade. And now, in this highly accessible guide, he’s going to show you how to do it, too. You’re about to discover investment opportunities that portfolio managers, business-school professors, and top investment experts regularly miss—uncharted areas where the individual investor has a huge advantage over the Wall Street wizards. Here is your personal treasure map to special situations in which big profits are possible, including:
- Spin-offs
- Restructurings
- Merger Securities
- Rights Offerings
- Recapitalizations
- Bankruptcies
- Risk Arbitrage
Our Take: A key message of this book is “look where nobody is looking”. It’s a fantastic read on learning about profitable scenarios besides traditional “buy and hold” situations.