What are the top 5 books a novice should read before embarking on buying stocks and shares?
Any ideas?

Armchair Tycoon , Malcom Stacey
Winning with Shares , Alvin Hall
Understand Shares In A Day , Ian Bruce
Selecting Shares That Perfom , Richard Koch,,( More advanced ),,Cheers JB..

Rouge Trader - Nick Lesson.

You nutter wilbs.

what about...Investing in Stocks and Shares: A Step-by-step Guide to Making Money on the Stock Market ~John White

The Long Journey Into Night.

m0dulus,

have a look at this link, it will give you some descriptions on the books.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/202-2430115-1582245
wilbs

From a previous thread in the traders room, the following books were recommended by people :

Book Author Votes
Reminiscences of A Stock Operator Edwin Lefevre 4
Swing Trading: A Guide to Profitable Short-term Trading Marc Rivalland 4
Come into My Trading Room: a Complete Guide to Trading Alexander Elder 3
Market wizards Jack Schwager 3
Technical Analysis of Stock Trends Robert D. Edwards, John Magee 3
The master swing trader Alan Farley 3
Trader Vic I & II Victor Sperandeo 3
Trading in the Zone Mark Douglas 3
Disciplined Trader Mark Douglas 2
Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns Thomas Bulkowski 2
Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques Steve Nison 2
The Market Maker's Edge Josh Lukeman 2
The Way to Trade: Discover Your Successful Trading Personality John Piper 2
Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management Alexander Elder 2
Trading Systems and Methods Perry J Kaufman 2
A beginner's guide to short-term trading Toni Turner 1
Aerodynamic trading & TA for the Trading proffesional Constance Brown 1
Bear essentials Simon Cawkwell 1
Big Trends in Trading: Strategies to Master Major Market Moves Price Headley 1
Education of a speculator Victor Niederhoffer 1
Evil's good book of boasts Simon Cawkwell 1
Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the madness of crowds Charles Mackay 1
Fooled by Randomness Nassim Nicholas Taleb 1
Getting Started in Technical Analysis (Getting Started) Jack D. Schwager, Mark Etzkorn 1
Hot Commodities Jim Rogers 1
How I trade for a living Gary Smith 1
How to trade in stocks Jesse Livermore 1
How to win as a stock market speculator Alexander Davidson 1
Into the Upwave: How to Prosper from Slump to Boom Robert Beckman 1
Introduction to Technical Analysis Martin J. Pring 1
New Concepts In Technical trading Systems J Welles Wilder 1
New market wizards Jack Schwager 1
Practical speculation Victor Niederhoffer 1
Secrets for Profit in Bull and Bear Markets Stan Weinstein 1
Secrets of the undergroundtrader Jea Yu, Russell Lockhart 1
Stock market wizards Jack Schwager 1
Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits (Traders Masterclass S.) Richard Schabacker 1
Technical Analysis Explained Martin J. Pring 1
Technical Analysis for Dummies Barbara Rockefeller 1
Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets John J. Murphy 1
Technical Analysis Plain & Simple: Charting the Markets in Your Language Michael Kahn 1
Technical Market Indicators (analysis and performance) Richard J Bauer, Julie R Dahlquist 1
The 21 Irrefutable Truths of Trading John Hayden 1
The Art of the Trade R.E. McMaster 1
The Complete Guide to Options Selling James Cordier & Michael Gross 1
The Downwave: Surviving the Second Great Depression Robert Beckman 1
The four biggest mistakes in Futures Trading Jay Kaeppel 1
The Stock Selector System Michael D. Sheimo 1
The Truth about Markets John Kay 1
Trading Day by Day: Winning the Zero Sum Game of Futures Trading F. H. Chick Goslin 1
Trading in the Zone Ari Kiev 1
What Works On Wall Street James P O Shaughnessy 1
Why smart people make big money mistakes and how to correct them Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich 1

And when you have read all those another good book is ??????




8-) have a good read, but don't believe everything you read!!! If they have time to write books they can't be making enough in the market.

M0dulus,

Any of the books produced by The Motley Fool team are easy to read and give you a good flavour of investing - there is also a workbook which will help to get to grips with accounts and valuation.

"The Armchair Investor" by Bernice Cohen is also a good easily readable intro. book (provided it's been reprinted recently), as are the "Armchair Tycoon" and "Poolside Tycoon" books by Malcolm Stacey - though these provide pointers and tips rather than explaining things in detail.

"How to Figure Out Company Accounts" by Micheal Brett is another easy to read book which explains how company accounts are created and what the figures mean.

Two good reads for words of wisdom on market trading in general and good stories too are:

"Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" by Edwin Lefevre (don't be put off that this was originally written in the 1920's - the lessons to learn still hold true).

"How I made $2,000,000 in the stock market" by Nicholas Darvas.

To understand a bit about charts "Technical Analysis for Dummies" by Barbara Rockefeller is easy to understand. (it's a US book and occasionally refers to the US markets - but when it comes to technical analysis it doesn't matter because the same rules apply to all markets).

Also, good for TA and instructions on how to use TA trigger points when trading is "A beginner's Guide to Short Term Trading" by Toni Turner.

To understand what level 2 is all about and the difference between SETS, SETSmm and SEAQ, what MMs do, the effect of news on shares etc. a must read is the recently published "The UK Trader's Bible" by Dominic Connolly.

As a relatively newcomer to share trading and having read books like Armchair Tycoon by malcolm Stacey i would heavily advise you to avoid them. They are so basic you learn nothing. They contain nonsense like "when the weather is bad people sell their shares" and other useless drivel. Read Buffettology by Mary Buffett. Much deeper and helped me understand what buying shares really meant and how to select a good investment.

captainmerton - horses for courses.

If you believe that you can buy into the next Coca Cola at its inception and then hold your shares for the next 30 years - Buffet's way is a good one. Unfortunately the effect of speed/ease of execution for retail investors combined with derivatives these days means that Buffet's ways could end up losing you money, over what he would class as the "short term" ie. up to 5 years.

Malcolm Stacey's books do include the odd trivial observation such as the one you mention, though also a range of advice from various City professionals he came into contact with as his time as a financial journalist. These books are readable and contain details of how to spot shares that are likely to move and when they're likely to move and the sort of psychological mistakes investors and traders make. Think of them essentially as books on TA without having to read charts - I think I may even read them again and I've been investing and trading in shares for years.

I accept your point Overgrowth. My criticism of Staceys books was maybe a little over the top but they do nothing for me. As for Buffettology i really meant it was a good way to understand investment in general and not just investing like Warren Buffett. The book contains various formulas to assess a company by looking at the fundamentals such as how much money has that company held on to from the EPS over the last 5 years (i.e. that which it hasnt paid out in dividends) and by using the amount it has held on to how successfully has it grown EPS in those 5 years. Allows you to compare similar companies etc. As you say its horses for courses but Staceys books are a little basic for me. Its like saying "I walked into Monsoon and saw it was queued out the door every saturday afternoon so i bought shares in it and low and behold they went up." I dont need Staceys book to tell me things like that and that is the kind of things he covers.

If you look at my list at the top it includes this book , i admit it's very basic, however , the thread did say for a complete novice, the books i read afterwards i chose as they got a little more in depth .

Candlesticks

Candlesticks

If you are a novice and assuming you have only a limited pot to begin with and no previous experience of loosing money in the market. I would suggest the following.


To give a good overlook of the market and how the different individuals and bodies function I would suggest these readable books. Either one or both :-

How to read the Financial Pages
By Michael Brett

Beginners Guide to Investment
By Bernard Gray

I wish I had read these earlier and from experience I should read again and again especially when making money to keep my feet on the ground and when I am loosing to remind me it is possible to make money and limit my losses.
It also warns you about ramping, scams, frauds, greed and has very useful Web page refs. Etc.

How to Win in a Volatile Market
By Alexander Davidson



Another Book already mentioned which might have help me early on and still helped me to reflect

Selecting Shares That Perform:
Ten Ways to Beat the Index (Investor's Guide) (Paperback)
By Richard Koch


Profit from you PC
By David Linton (Founder of Updata Software)

The first book gives you ideas how to set up your own system

If you are a novice and can use a PC this may give you some useful ideas for a small pot, but if you are making money invest in a software package to manage your portfolio and download end of day prices and has charting an and Fundamental Data.

Personal choice for me is Sharescope. But others use different packages. And you can get the coverage of Fundamental and Charting on line and also manage your portfolio. From Comdirect, Barclays, Smile, Etc. but they are a bit clumsy and you have to be on line/

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The last two are to add to your charting abilities looking for the X spot where the gold is buried.

I like both of them (Both mentioned before) although they are American. For me a very sensible approach, readable and not hyped. But use the charts for when to buy and sell, but look at the basic fundamentals before you BUY. Personal opinion. You wont get burnt so often.

The Pring book had a CD to go with the book and is very good. (IMO)

Technical Analysis for Dummies
By Barbara Rockefeller 1

Introduction too Technical Analysis (With CD)
Martin Pring


Good Lick, sorry luck. It can be fun, but don't use money which you may need for more important things.

Kazaa has some interesting manuals on shares.

ariesr,

can you post a link please?

British Bulls

"Profit from you PC
By David Linton (Founder of Updata Software) "

This book changed my life.

Before reading it I thought the way to success was by (a) reading the right journals and (b) having a well informed stock broker.

Reading David's book will show why neither of these are reliable and why the TA route can be (notice I don't say it always automatically is).

Then with a copy of Douglas Trading in the Zone to give you the confidence - not to teach you TA - you'll be well on the way.

For a good book on TA I'd recommend Jeremy du Plessis and his book on Point and Figure due out later this month.

TP