FOOL SCHOOL
Investing Books For Beginners

March 11, 2002

If you're new to investing, you may feel overwhelmed by all the information available nowadays online. Don't bemoan this surfeit though. Until recently private investors had a very poor deal compared with City professionals, having to make do with drips and drabs that percolated down eventually. The Internet ended this dearth of information, allowing individuals as much access to breaking news and views as the pros.

Once you get used to these information flows you'll be able to handle them easily enough. First of all though, before conducting your own research into specific investment opportunities, you may be better off ploughing through an investment primer offline, introducing you to some concepts that will help you along the investment trail.

Why not browse around the Motley Fool bookshop? Here you will find all eight Foolish titles published in the UK so far. Perhaps the most useful introduction to choosing investments is the UK Investment Workbook. This will show you how to sort out your personal finances, decide on your investment objectives and of course analyse a company's accounts.

You might find the Guide to Online Investing useful as well. This shows you how to get the best out of the web when investing. If you want a more advanced look at investment theories and techniques, as practised by the Gardner brothers who founded the Motley Fool, then think about picking up their Rule Breakers, Rule Makers tome.

Some other investment books you might like are listed here. These include Philip Fisher's Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits. This is one of the seminal books to have inspired investors in the past fifty years. One fan is Warren Buffet, the legendary US investor. His Essays are worth reading as well.

A good way of learning about investment is by joining an investment club. You can read the Fool's Guide in book form here or in a shortened electronic version here.

Elsewhere on the site, this page will introduce you to the ideas and principles behind building your won share portfolio. This will not only show you the whys and wherefores but also the how's and how to's!