so over the past year I've read 40 of the bestselling books on Personal Finance money and investing because I wanted to really get to the bottom of what it takes to be the best investor how to make money in the stock market and make sure I'm making the most of what I actually earn I've read everything from very basic books on Personal Finance beginner's guide to stock market investing beginner's guide to actually investing in different kinds of companies importantly then investing into different kinds of index funds and then also books on the history of index
funds as well I thought that if I read all of these books and more which are always arriving in the post and I'll be able to make more money in stocks become as good as Peter Lynch Warren Buffett or Howard marks and then just retire in a few years off into the sunset but to be honest I think you're going to be really surprised with what I'm going to say as what I've learned is far from what I expected when I first got into this and actually I've completely changed my mind about a few things
and obviously I'm not rich yet but let me explain as we go on so let's just start with the most famous ones because I pretty much run down the Amazon bestsellers list and then a few recommendations I've seen online I didn't want to pretend I knew everything and I wanted to really start from scratch to see what kind of Journey you go on as someone who's new to investing and trying to manage money all right so the basics and super popular ones do they live up to the hype Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert kosaki
sold around 40 million copies apparently and it's really a simple story about two different dads as he puts it showing how wealthy people act in best ways to actually get rich and then stay Rich too and I can easily see why the book's done really well because even though it might seem basic again none of us get told the key principles when we young unless we're really really lucky so basic lessons like explaining the difference between assets and liabilities why some people waste all of their time looking Rich by buying fancy cars and getting huge
mortgages and big houses that actually end up pretty poor and those who are actually wealthy spend their money on assets and things that actually produce income cash flows and increase in value over time all of the concepts sound really basic but they're so important to understand and I can definitely relate to a lot of the stories when I was younger when I would get nice commission paychecks from my job in sales my first thought was great more money to spend and then I'd spend that money mostly on stuff which just ends up losing money over
time and that stuff would all fall into liability category whereas I should have been buying more assets the stuff that goes up in value over time and I would have been a lot richer than I was now I do think that this book deserves its place up there on the best book list nice and short to the point and some great lessons and anyone can read this one I'd highly recommend it here's another one that sold so many copies Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill another one that sold tens of millions first published back
in 1937 so this one's been around for decades this one starts off interestingly enough the author says he's interviewed thousands of people about their success met with the richest man at the time Andrew Carnegie and been an adviser to presidents and he's going to tell you all the secrets of how to be successful too the idea is great and you think right buckle up let's go show me the secrets but then for me it doesn't deliver at all the messages are all too wishy-washy you just think positive thoughts and get rich or you stay persistent
and keep going and you'll just get everything you want and while I know how important a lot of those messages are after working in sales for many years being persistent not giving up and pushing forward there's a time and a place to try new things and not just beating the same old drum I do think the message is valuable though a positive mindset is really important and actually when I go back to some of the business books I've read like Phil Knight shoe dog which is the story of founding Nike or the book about Netflix
you'll always see the same themes that people push through some really hard times to get where they did today and the success that you actually see now wasn't made overnight anyway some good Concepts here but not a recommended one from me I think there's also loads of controversy around whether or not he actually met Andrew Carnegie and did anything he actually says in the book there's no evidence around that and I think there's a lesson here that some of the bestselling books stay in the top sellers because they just stay as top sellers so I
hope you understand what I mean but being a top seller just kind of validates it when in reality it doesn't mean it's necessarily a good book it's just sold Lots in the past still though mindset is important so that's a lesson in itself if you're always going to be negative then you definitely won't get too far in life on some more basic concepts let me share with you some other books that are all going to be worth a read and are all good with getting those foundations right because I definitely don't think you need to
be jumping right into the complex stuff and it all gets very very confusing in the end the psychology of money is a great book and it's no surprise it's staying in the number one spot at the moment up on the Amazon bestseller list so I know we just spoke about how important it is to have the right mindset when it comes to investing and it's easier said than done and this book really goes into all the ways that you need to think about money getting rich and then most importantly keeping that money as well there's
a ton of great lessons in here easy to read too which always helps and there's no jargon about the finance industry one of my favorite quotes from the book is that controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays and also you need a lot of time to make things happen now Morgan talks about Warren Buffett in this book like we all do but reminds us that his success and super high net worth came through compounding returns and time lots of it now patience and controlling your own actions and emotions are some of the most
underappreciated skills in my opinion and even after all of the books I've read on the stock market how to pick winning stocks how some of the best investors have got wealthy I'm now more convinced now more than ever that your own behaviors are so much more important than say spending more hours looking at company financial statements there some great stories in the book too I've covered this one before another video of a regular guy in the US who builds up a massive investment pot and it's only actually found out when he passes away and he
didn't do a fancy job he worked as a gas station attendant and then as a janitor invested small amounts of money and reinvested dividends into save compan companies over many many decades now none of his family knew what he did until after he' passed away when he had $8 million which is a huge amount which he ended up donating to a local hospital and a library as well as the rest of his family now that is a great story and a reminder about what's possible I think this ties back to a lot of the basics
from Rich Dad Poor Dad that a big part of this money and investing business is just saving as much as you can resisting spending money all at once and having the discipline to say I'm not going to buy this nice thing today instead I'm going to have a better thing in the future and I'm going to buy my own Freedom too investing and looking after your own money is really simple in theory but you do have to get over the urge to impress other people with all your nice shiny things and there's plenty of shiny
things to buy this reminds me of an important lesson from a simple path to wealth where the main takeaway is spend less than you make and invest the rest it sounds easy but you've just got to do it over many many years to actually get anywhere there's so many people who want a shortcut to all of this and to get rich quick but the more you look into it the more you realize it's a marathon not a Sprint and having the basics under control cannot be stressed enough I've also done my own Guide to Investing
For Beginners too so feel free to go back and watch that one when you're done with this video anyway as a bit of a bonus speaking about beginners and getting your foundation solid here's two UK specific books I'd recommend first up big shout out to fellow YouTuber and professional financial planner Pete Matthews now he's published the meaningful money handbook and this is a great overview of everything that you need to know in terms of saving money budgeting investing retirement planning and even life insurance and best of all it's UK focused because pretty much everything else
out there is us-based and although most things are Universal there's lots of areas out there that are unique to the UK so go support your fellow UK folks if you aren't already and speaking about another little UK gem this book called money a user guide is great super small you can read it in just a few nights if you take your time with it and it's packed with great info and it's written from the perspective of someone who's been through the same Journey as most of us where we weren't taught only the basics at school
by our parents we get let loose in the world we're expected to just find our way so honestly nice and easy to read highly recommend it and it's £4 on Amazon honestly I will say that books are criminally undervalued for the money that you pay I know they aren't the most exciting topic and lots of people have probably Switched Off already but the amount of value you can get is crazy now I tend to do all of my reading just before bed so if you're quite a busy person you don't have much time honestly rather
than Doom scrolling on social media keep a book handy and even with 30 minutes an hour each night or something like that you'll get through loads and it does help me to get to sleep at least so worth giving that a try okay well how do we get rich then that's what I actually wanted to know and now that we've covered off the basics what are the lessons from the best investors this is where things get interesting because as I mentioned earlier I thought that the more I'd learn would mean that I'd become a better
stock picker I'll just get better returns and I'll put myself way ahead of other people but actually here's what happened you might have seen this graph before it's called the Dunning Krueger curve and it shows how we can overestimate our ability and knowledge about a topic without being a true expert so you start out here knowing very little and then once you learn a bit you start to gain confidence so in the investing world this can happen very fast once you understand the basics about index funds how the market works and what types of account
there are you can start to feel very knowledgeable I think some people in 2020 and 2021 got here very quickly reminding us of the saying that everyone is a genius in a ball market now the next part is really interesting and for me this this is when we start to get into the more intermediate books where we're now talking investing strategies tips and picking stocks now I don't mean that they're hard to read I just mean that you kind of need to be interested in the topic otherwise it might be a bit boring once you
start to look into the data of investing and what it takes to be a good stock picker for me personally made me realize how little I know and actually made me question a lot more about my own strategy and my own level of conviction here's what I mean I'll show you first so there's some great books here and I recommend all of them if you really are into investing Ben groes intelligent investor is certainly a mustre but it's a bit dry and it's pretty old so you're not really going to get the most upto-date examples
but the principles are really important and ultimately if you're a student of Warren Buffett then you're a student of Ben Graham as he really is considered the father of value investing you get all the detail all the metrics and what to look out for in the financial statements then as a great followup on and another legendary investor Peter Lynch's book one up on Wall Street is a great read and he's one of the best investors of all time there's countless lessons in here and actually this is the best place to find the because he didn't
actually do a huge amount of interviews back in the day you might find some clips on YouTube but they're pretty old still very useful but the rest of the lessons we're all in here lots of practical steps from Lynch he's a real Champion for the retail investor that he reckons you or me can beat the stock market if we just make sure that we lean into our own Edge and also that we know what we own and why we own it I always remember how Peter says that when he was at parties or speaking with
groups of people that were like doctors or dentists or something that they'd invest in sectors that had nothing to do with their own industry whereas he reckons they should have focused on products that they use or own for example the stuff they actually used inside their own business he's got loads of examples like Dunkin Donuts Walmart and Kelloggs so for example here's an interesting quote long shots almost never pay off no matter how bad things get people still eat corn flakes just remember that one the next time you're about to invest in the next hot
stock promising to change the world one thing I'd say here is that Lynch is a strange example is that when he left running the mellan fund it had thousands of companies in inside it so it's not like a lot of advice that you get saying that you should concentrate your investments in just a few names something that Buffett does with Burkshire Hathaway I'm not sure how many people can really manage that kind of size of portfolio but maybe that's another video on its own entirely I've also read books from Howard marks and Joel greenblat two
other famous names in the investing World both of whom have amazing track records beting the market for a really long time now Marx is famous for writing his memo that's really really interesting you can actually subscribe to it and he made his money in the distress debt market so basically makes money when companies are in trouble and takes on the risk when times are bad for everyone else then greenl another hugely famous investor talks a lot in his book about companies who split apart what to look out for in special situations when you're trying to
invest now I've put these two together because before reading these kinds of books I was expecting there to be more of a concrete formula to invest you know you do this you do that and then you sit back and you just make money but virtually all the best investors in the world are effectively outliers they don't go with the crowd they operate in an area where they can have an advantage or an edge and they find OPP opportunities where there's less competition and they certainly don't just YOLO into the single hot stock that everyone already
seems to know about hint hint and this makes a lot of sense so think about it like this if you want to beat the stock market and get more than you might do by using an index fund and your portfolio will have to look very different to the market either very concentrated in a few names or maybe in some companies that very few people have heard of because you need to be able to find those winners that everyone hasn't yet found and remember this is very competitive too so this got me thinking a bit how
much of this is scill how much of this is luck and can we replicate it if liel Messi wrote a book on how to be good at football or Michael Jordan wrote the same on basketball would reading it help you I mean how many kids want to be pro athletes singers actors and all the rest obviously loads of people but very few will get to the top and fewer will stay there for a very very long time so what makes the people at the top stay so long then and what part is in our control
and what can be learned now I honestly don't know the answer but I will say that these people are the top of the game and they are massive outliers too and the reality still shows that most people fail to beat the market in fact speaking of this whole topic you've got another great read by Burton Malu a random walk down Wall Street and he pretty much goes through the machine of the finance industry showing us that it's just into there to generate fees take commissions and most of the time retail investors lose money by trying
to beat the market and even the professionals can't do it consistently again it also comes back to the subject of mindset and how important that is that time and time again we end up chasing the hot stock of the day or fast money but that doesn't really exist and where it does very few people come out on top a big shout out as well to this book I should have really mentioned this one earlier but John bogle's Little Red Book here on Common Sense investing is such a good read it's great to really get you
up to speed on index funds because you don't understand what they are and why they're so important to investors you are missing out anyway I've missed so much out here there's loads of other books I've been reading I'll definitely do some more videos on the topic if you're interested so please do let me know Down Below in that com M section I'd love to hear your recommendations too as to what I should read next let me leave you with this thought then going back to that Dunning Krueger curve I'm probably somewhere in this deep crevice
not sure what side I'm on yet but one thing I've realized from all of this reading is that there are no shortcuts of success when it comes to investing or building a business good things come to those who wait and if there was a secret formula we'd all be doing it which would then end up defeating the whole thing anyway as much as I feel much more comfortable looking at financial statements and some of the numbers behind a company even the best in vors still get it wrong a lot of the time and so much
is outside of our control investing is an art not a science but you can tilt the brush in your favor by stopping yourself interfering too much and taking your emotions out of it which is always much easier said than done anyway leave a like on the way out subscribe for more as always happy investing
