Dear investors, read these Books!

My belief has always been that an educated investor is a happy investor!

And Investment related education and knowledge also comes from various directions - seminars, workshops, financial papers, websites and - books!

Being an blog-writer and trainer, reading is an essential part of my routine and among the 500 books that I have in my collection, many relate to the field of finance and investing.

I have read many books on this subject but some of these have left a larger impact on me than others. From my 'favorites' I would like to share my thoughts on a few :-

Following is my favorite Top five books (according to me) along with a small synopsis of it for your reference.

1. 'One Up on Wall Street' - Authored by the legendary fund manager of Fidelity ,Peter Lynch , this is a well written and easily understandable book on how to pick stocks for long term investing. His simple explanation of seemingly complex topics like P/E multiple and Cashflow analysis is really the highlight of the book and also it has lots of examples of how and why he picked up certain stocks and he goes to the stories behind his stock picking exercise.

2. "Rich Dad Poor Dad " - Authored by the US billionaire investor Robert Kiyosaki, this is a benchmark for personal finance books. In many of my seminars I give reference to this book and urge investors to read it. Again this too is written in simple language and with lots of real life examples.

3. "Market Wizards" - by Jack Schwager is a must read book for financial market traders as well as investors. The basic format of the book is that the author Jack Schwager interviews America's top traders and bombards them with questions which are usually of the minds of most traders. The answers by the respondents are both straight forward as well as thought provoking. If you are a trader in the stocks and other securities - go read this book!

4. "Extra-ordinary Popular Delusions and Madness of Crowds" - by Charles Mackay . It is said that to understand the future, we need to re-visit the past. This is precisely what this book does. It takes us through history and gives us a deep lesson in investor behavior. Throughout history investors seem to have made similar mistakes - investing their life savings in a euphoria and losing everything in market panics. The most popular real life incident is of 'Tulip-mania' which actually brought down the dutch economy to its knees in the 1600s.

5. "Traders Guns and Money" authored by Satyajit Das takes us all in to the seemingly dangerous and frightful world of derivatives. In this amusingly written book Das, an Indian having worked for international investment banks, takes us behind the doors of the big bad world of investment banking and the various 'questionable' practices being followed , which the general public is not even aware of! It remains my favorite and I frankly I have read it a couple of times just to re-live the amusing and satirical writing of the author.