49 books like How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market

The most popular book by the father of value investing, The Intelligent Investor imparts Graham’s time-tested stock and bond selection principles in a manner that is less technical and more conversational than Graham and Dodd’s earlier Security Analysis. Graham’s core principles around conducting intrinsic value analysis first and then purchasing securities that the market has mispriced at below that value are all addressed here in wonderful Graham prose. Since he pioneered that strategy, it makes good sense to read directly from the master. 

Aside from that, what I like about this book is that it addresses the often overlooked but vital psychological aspects of investing. Last but not least, did I mention that The Intelligent Investor is Warren Buffett’s favorite investment book of all time? When I interviewed him for my own book, he stated that Graham’s book “just made clear sense to me as a book about… show more.

Of all the books about trading written over the decades, perhaps none is still so beloved, revered, and followed as this 1923 classic by journalist Edwin Lefèvre. Although technically a work of fiction, the book really is about the life and trading style of one of the greatest speculators of all time, Jesse Livermore (told under the guise of “Larry Livingston”).

What makes this book such a treasure is not just its fun prose, and interesting glimpse into what the process of investing in old exchanges and “bucket shops” was over a century ago, when ticker-tape and board boys with chalk and ladders were one’s only information about market prices, but also how the mind of one of the world’s greatest traders worked.

This book offers many gems of knowledge about trading—based upon the general principle that, although methods and technologies change, human nature does not and therefore “there is… show more.

William O’Neil’s How To Make Money In Stocks is great for anyone looking to learn how to trade stocks part-time.

It gives you a framework of what actually causes stocks to make the big moves of 300%, 500%, 1,000% or more over the span of a few months to a few years along with a historical perspective of why they move the way they move and a strategy of how to take advantage of it that doesn’t require tuning into the news or being glued to a PC all day.

One of the big things you’ll learn in O’Neil’s book is that modeling success is key. The book starts out with over 100 pages of annotated charts of the biggest winning stocks in history. What you’ll quickly notice is that history repeats itself, over and over again.

Warren Buffett is public and candid about his investment choices. He writes his views up every year in the Berkshire Hathaway annual report filed with the SEC. He’s well known for his buy-and-hold investment style. He is less well known for his trading prowess, but Warren Buffett is very much a trader. Pay attention to his discussion of currencies and commodities. There are few better ways to learn about the markets. 

This was a real eye-opener for me when it appeared, because instead of the usual strictly modern-day stories about risk, Bernstein’s story begins with ancient Greek traditions when “risk” was luck and restricted to gambling, and the rest of life was a matter of fate.

He weaves together the invention of Arabic numbering and the Hindu zero, the emergence of scientific experimental methods, and the invention of probability theory, in explaining the evolution of the notion of risk. 

As the story moves into the modern era, Bernstein tracks the major practical applications of risk in addition to its conceptual development. And this is no dry historical recitation. Bernstein brings to life the major players, their hopes, dreams, capabilities, and flaws. This book is an absolute page-turner. 

Van Tharp’s Super Trader is the book that changed my perspective on trading.

After reading it I began thinking of trading like a business (O’Neil touches on this as well) that works best with well-designed systems and processes.

Tharp goes deep into psychology and belief systems. He says “We don’t actually trade the market. We trade our beliefs about the market.” If this is the case, we better gain as much awareness of our beliefs as we can! He was a huge inspiration in this department and was one of my biggest inspirations in the realm of trading psychology.

Tharp also introduces position sizing concepts in this book that reveal “how much we bet” has far more to do with our overall success in trading than most anything else. Even more so than where we enter and exit. 

Mark Minervini’s Think and Trade Like A Champion solidifies the lessons in Darvas, O’Neil, and Tharp and takes it to a whole other level! Mark is one of the big reasons why I was finally able to put everything together, find my own success, and do it all while still working the 9-5. This book changed my life.

In Think and Trade Like a Champion you’ll learn the finer details and nuances of chart patterns (what to look for and how to trade them) and what to avoid, the sizing and risk management strategies that helped Mark win multiple US Investing Championships including how to manage the reward to risk relationship, mindset, plus a whole lot more.

Mark has written several books and I recommend studying each of them. Think and Trade Like A Champion is my personal favorite.

Mark also wrote the Foreword to my book.

The classic from 1972 is the book that inspired me to write 100 Baggers. Phelps studied all the stocks that returned at least 100 to 1 from 1932 to 1971. You’ll learn where to look for 100 to 1 stocks and what key traits to focus on. Phelps writes in a folksy and quotable manner as he expounds on his philosophy of buying right and holding on. He writes, “When I was a boy a carpenter working for my father made this sage observation: ‘A lot of shavings don’t make a good workman.’” Let Phelps show you the power of patient, long-term investing.

For creatives, this book is the move. Many writers who find themselves in reading lulls, also find themselves in writing lulls. Over the last two decades, writing professor Susan Shapiro has taught more than 25,000 students of all ages and backgrounds at NYU, Columbia, Temple, The New School, and Harvard University. And now the content from her wildly popular course “Instant Gratification Takes Too Long” is in this book for everyone who wants to get published fast, and with all the best secrets of the trade.

Byline Bible is full of advice for writers on how to break into publishing, but also includes tons of essays and pieces published by Susan Shapiro’s students, which make for great reading in and of themselves. 

Over 100 years ago, a stockbroker wondered why his clients lost money over a full cycle in the stock market. After all, if stocks were back to where they started, shouldn’t they have broken even? He found that at bottoms, investors were cautious short-term traders, whereas at tops, they were confident long-term owners.

This little booklet is available inexpensively on Amazon.