The shelf
Books worth the time, and what each one is actually for.
A short, opinionated shelf rather than a long list. Each entry says what the book teaches, where it has dated badly, and the one idea worth carrying into your own research.
The Intelligent Investor
Benjamin Graham · 1949
Start here
The book everyone cites and few finish.
Graham prose is dense and his examples are seventy years old. Read chapters 8 and 20 first — Mr. Market and margin of safety — then decide whether the rest is for you. The framework has survived because it describes temperament, not technique, and temperament has not changed.
Where it dates. Graham quantitative screens assume a market with far less information and far more mispricing. Applied literally today they mostly find businesses that deserve to be cheap.
The full shelf
Nine books - curated, not comprehensive.
The Intelligent Investor
Graham
The Intelligent Investor
Benjamin Graham
The origin of margin of safety and Mr. Market. Dense, dated in places, and still the clearest statement of what separates investment from speculation.
Key lesson. Price and value are different things; the gap between them is the only thing you control.
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
Fisher
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
Philip Fisher
The qualitative counterweight to Graham. Fisher scuttlebutt method is a research process, not a screening rule.
Key lesson. Talk to customers, competitors and former employees before you trust a management narrative.
The Outsiders
Thorndike
The Outsiders
William Thorndike
Eight CEOs judged on capital allocation rather than operating charisma. The best case study collection on buybacks done well and badly.
Key lesson. A CEO most consequential job is deciding where the cash goes.
Poor Charlie Almanack
Munger
Poor Charlie Almanack
Charles T. Munger
Mental models, inversion, and a long catalogue of the ways human judgement fails under incentives.
Key lesson. Understand the incentives before you try to understand the behaviour.
Competition Demystified
Greenwald
Competition Demystified
Bruce Greenwald
A stripped-down theory of competitive advantage: barriers to entry are the only advantage that survives.
Key lesson. Most claimed moats are operational efficiency, which competitors can copy.
Financial Shenanigans
Schilit
Financial Shenanigans
Howard Schilit
A field guide to accounting manipulation, organised by the mechanism used rather than by the company caught.
Key lesson. Cash flow and earnings diverging over several years is the signal worth chasing.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Kahneman
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
The research behind the biases that investors quote and then commit anyway. Slower and more careful than its popular reputation.
Key lesson. Confidence is a feeling produced by coherence, not by accuracy.
Capital Returns
Chancellor
Capital Returns
Edward Chancellor (ed.)
A capital-cycle framework: supply, not demand, is usually what determines industry returns.
Key lesson. Watch where capital is flowing in; returns follow capital flowing out.
The Essays of Warren Buffett
Cunningham
The Essays of Warren Buffett
Lawrence Cunningham (ed.)
The shareholder letters reorganised by theme. The accounting sections are more useful than the famous aphorisms.
Key lesson. Owner earnings, not reported earnings, is what you are buying.