Good books for a background on the stock market

jamels2

I'd like to learn more about the stock market , just wondered if anyone can recommend any books?
I've seen buffet in the shops, Lars krojers, Tim Hale, Benjamin Graham intelligent investor etc. I don't want anything too technical though. Any ideas where to start?

lassfarfromhome

Lars Krojers is an excellent person to listen to. Low cast index investing is what you want. Don't mess around picking individual stocks.

bowlhead99

It depends what you are looking to do. If you want to understand more about how markets work and what type of investments might be useful and efficient over the long term and how different types of assets might be useful to invest in a diversified portfolio, all of the above might be of use. If you want to actually buy a share on the stock market, Lars Kroijer etc are not actually going to talk you through the whole process of opening an account with a broker and click the buttons.

Something like https://www.harriman-house.com/diyinvestor might be useful for the practicalities of opening and using ISAs and SIPP etc as well as the features of different types of investments (the writer founded an investment platform and pensions administration firm). You could see the contents page and some of the content for free via Google Books, e.g.https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_DIY_Investor.html?id=zzMoDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y

Most authors are going to give you 100-300 pages of content because if they don't, it's more of a pamphlet than a book. It is difficult to do hundreds of pages while not getting "too technical" because after a few pages of saying what a market is, how else would you fill hundreds of pages without giving some technical explanations or personal opinions. Tim Hale will help you conclude why passive investing can be useful, and is not too complex - but in doing so he will give you tables of data and if you don't like loads of numbers it may be intimidating. You could always skip the proof and just nod along with the conclusions that he and Kroijer make.

Still, the science of how best to invest is several levels beyond "how does a stock market work".

eskbanker

lassfarfromhome wrote: »

Low cast index investing is what you want.

How's the Indian market doing these days?

worried_jim

eskbanker wrote: »

How's the Indian market doing these days?

Ahem, caste.

Clive_Woody

The Monevator website is probably worth a read, along with having a look at some FIRE websites, based on the other thread you started about retiring early.

https://monevator.com/

ChopperST

Another for monevator, the bogglehead forum (US based but generalisations can be made).

Tim Hale - Smarter Investing is easy to read but has a very passive tilt.

sendu

I think one of the best books out there is "A random walk down wallstreet". The author was recommending a passive index style of investing in earlier editions of the book before index funds even existed. Today it's a very readable explanation of why buying the whole market makes sense.

N1ckS

John Kay - The Long and the Short of It

eskbanker

ChopperST wrote: »

the bogglehead forum

Anyone looking for this would do better to search for Bogleheads (https://www.bogleheads.org/), named as it is after the godfather of passive investing rather than a 1970s word game!

DrSyn

Take a look at both of these first before you read any books. Both of them are interesting and easy to follow:-

http://www.kroijer.com/

https://www.ifa.com/indexfundsthemovie/