Here are 100 books that The Behavior Gap fans have personally recommended if you like
The Behavior Gap.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
When I was growing up, I saw family members and friends, who were otherwise smart people who could master other aspects of their lives, have difficulty with personal finance decisions and investing. When my dad was laid off during a recession, he had some retirement money distributed to him, and I got interested in investing as he researched and tried with difficulty to handle this money himself. In my young adult years, I was a sponge to learn as much as I could about personal finance.
I first read this book as required reading for a college course, and it greatly changed how I thought about investing.
Over the years, I’ve read updated editions, and it never gets stale and always includes new information and insights. But the foundational issues have stood the test of time and remain in the newest edition.
I also love this book because it introduced me at a young age to mutual funds and Vanguard.
Today's stock market is not for the faint hearted. At a time of frightening volatility, the answer is to turn to Burton G. Malkiel's advice in his reassuring, authoritative, gimmick-free and perennially best-selling guide to investing. Long established as the first book to purchase before starting a portfolio, A Random Walk Down Wall Street now features new material on "tax-loss harvesting"; the current bitcoin bubble and automated investment advisers; as well as a brand-new chapter on factor investing and risk parity. And as always, Malkiel's core insights-on stocks and bonds, as well as investment trusts, home ownership and tangible assets…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I’ve spent my career studying the paradox that low-risk investing can lead to high returns. As an author and a multi-billion-dollar fund manager, I’ve seen firsthand how markets reward patience, discipline, and avoiding unnecessary risks. These books shaped my thinking—challenging conventional wisdom, deepening my understanding of risk, and reinforcing why defensive investing works. I love uncovering ideas that go against the grain, especially when they’re backed by data. Whether you’re an investor or just fascinated by how we make decisions under uncertainty, these books will change the way you see markets—and maybe even the way you invest.
Bogle’s philosophy is simple yet powerful: focus on the long term, keep costs low, and let compounding do the heavy lifting. I’ve always believed that great investing is about avoiding unnecessary risks and staying disciplined, and Bogle’s book distills that wisdom better than anyone else.
While I take a different approach than pure indexing, his principles of cost efficiency and long-term thinking are universal. Every investor—whether a stock picker or a passive indexer—should read this book at least once.
The best-selling index investing "bible" offers new information and is updated to reflect the latest market data The Little Book of Common Sense Investing is the classic guide to getting smart about the market. Legendary mutual fund veteran John C. Bogle reveals his key to getting more out of investing: low-cost index funds. Bogle describes the simplest and most effective investment strategy for building wealth over the long term: buy and hold, at very low cost, a mutual fund that tracks the S&P 500 Stock Index. Such an index portfolio is the only investment that guarantees your fair share of…
I collected coins a kid. I went to college and studied econ. I worked in a bank. I later became a financial journalist. And later, a professional money manager. I’ve always been fascinated by money…the way it moves around the world, the enormous role it plays in peoples’ lives, the power it gives a select few, the good it can do, and the way it grows. As a fee-only financial planner running my own shop, I'm only peripherally involved with Wall Street. That frees me to step back and look at the key players, the shenanigans, the sometimes awful greed. The books I’ve selected were instrumental in helping others make their money work for them.
I’ve bumped into Richard “Rick” Ferri at a few financial conferences. He’s easy to recognize as the guy getting hate stares from across the room. Ferri thinks most financial professionals charge too much – way too much – and he isn’t shy about saying so. One of the reasons he loves passive (index) investing, as I do, is that it can be done at very little cost. If you think you want to be an index investor, but you aren’t sure where to start, I highly recommend this book. It will serve as an excellent pair of training wheels, explaining the whys and the hows of proper index investing. I’d also love to see many financial professionals read it, for they’d become better money managers if they did. Yeah, I’m talking about those guys I see in the back of the room giving Ferri the evil eye!
A practical guide to passive investing Time and again, individual investors discover, all too late, that actively picking stocks is a loser's game. The alternative lies with index funds. This passive form of investing allows you to participate in the markets relatively cheaply while prospering all the more because the money saved on investment expenses stays in your pocket. In his latest book, investment expert Richard Ferri shows you how easy and accessible index investing is. Along the way, he highlights how successful you can be by using this passive approach to allocate funds to stocks, bonds, and other prudent…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
I collected coins a kid. I went to college and studied econ. I worked in a bank. I later became a financial journalist. And later, a professional money manager. I’ve always been fascinated by money…the way it moves around the world, the enormous role it plays in peoples’ lives, the power it gives a select few, the good it can do, and the way it grows. As a fee-only financial planner running my own shop, I'm only peripherally involved with Wall Street. That frees me to step back and look at the key players, the shenanigans, the sometimes awful greed. The books I’ve selected were instrumental in helping others make their money work for them.
Bernstein presents a compact (200-page) but stunningly accurate overview of the financial markets and what makes them tick. He provides solid tips – lots of them – for the little guy trying to navigate the swift and often dangerous waters of Wall Street. I’ve shared this book with a number of clients over the years to help them understand what I do and why I do it. Investing success, explains Bernstein, and I couldn’t agree more, isn’t about market timing or cherry-picking securities. It is about diversification, low costs, patience, and taking on just the right amount of risk. Bernstein is not only an expert in finance but is also a student of economic history who brings a fresh perspective to everything he covers.
A timeless approach to investing wisely over an investment lifetime With the current market maelstrom as a background, this timely guide describes just how to plan a lifetime of investing, in good times and bad, discussing stocks and bonds as well as the relationship between risk and return. Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, The Investor's Manifesto will help you understand the nuts and bolts of executing a lifetime investment plan, including: how to survive dealing with the investment industry, the practical meaning of market efficiency, how much to save, how to maintain discipline in the face of panics…
I am economist who first started exploring retirement planning for my own personal situation. I became so captivated by the topic that I changed fields and was selected as the Professor of Retirement Income at the American College of Financial Services. I am a past curriculum director for the Retirement Management Analyst designation and past program director for the Retirement Income Certified Professional designation. More recently, I am the co-creator of the Retirement Income Style Awareness and co-host of the Retire with Style podcast. I enjoy learning and teaching about all topics related to retirement.
Stephen Huxley and J. Brent Burns bring the topics of dedicated portfolio theory and asset-liability management to life by discussing how to think about retirement investments in a new manner.
They discuss how bonds can be used to meet upcoming expenses, while stocks and other growth investments are earmarked for longer term expenses. This allows each asset class to perform as it was meant. Bonds provide fixed income rather than being used in an asset allocation model that treats them as less risky versions of stocks.
In 2022, we were all reminded how both stocks and bonds can lose value. But when individual bonds are held to maturity, investors know what they will receive.
This book presents the breakthrough technique that outperforms asset allocation - and takes your portfolio to the next level. Over the past two decades, asset allocation has become the holy grail of investment techniques. Experts championed it, brokers and financial planners sold it, clients bought it, and few questioned the wisdom of trying to squeeze widely varying investors and their financial goals into prefabricated "one size fits all" allocation formulas. Problem is, asset allocation has significant flaws in the way it is used today, especially for personal investors."Asset Dedication" exposes these flaws, corrects them, and propels investors and advisors into…
Investing in the share market appears to be a bewildering, constantly shifting, extremely noisy, and busy world – one best left to the experts. Fortunes can be made but, equally, fortunes can be lost – with devastating results for those on the receiving end. And yet there are a few, simple, timeless principles to investing in the market successfully – and, ironically, those principles – known collectively as index or passive investing – will be more successful than all the noisy, busy stuff put out by the industry. In writing our book, this is what we would like as many people as possible to know. It’s not about being smart.
This is a slim, to-the-point, easily understood book based on the same principles as the well-known book on writing, The Elements of Style. With its five chapters, it is the opposite of the highly complex, bewildering, we-know-more-than-you communication put out on a daily basis by the investment industry. Its wisdom is timeless. It’s all that a first-time investor needs to know.
Seize control of your financial future with rock-solid advice from two of the world's leading investment experts
Investors today are bombarded with conflicting advice about how to handle the increasingly volatile stock market. From pronouncements of the "death of diversification" to the supposed virtues of crypto, investors can be forgiven for being thoroughly confused.
It's time to return to the basics. In the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Elements of Investing: Easy Lessons for Every Investor, investment legends Burton G. Malkiel and Charles D. Ellis deliver straightforward, digestible lessons in the investment rules and principles you need to follow to…
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
I’m a money manager for high-net-worth individuals. During my Wall Street years, I was ranked number one in my category in the Institutional Investor All America Research Survey for nine consecutive years. The CFA Society New York presented me its Ben Graham Award in 2017. I’ve served as a governor of the CFA Institute and consultant to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. My writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, the Financial Times, and various scholarly journals. I live in New York City with my wife, musicologist Elaine Sisman. We have two children and five grandchildren.
As head of the Yale University endowment fund, the late David Swensen was one of the foremost innovators and most successful practitioners of institutional investing. Remarkably, he also wrote one of the best books ever for individual investors. Unconventional Success shows why on average, mutual fund investors significantly underperform the funds they own: They trade excessively, buying at the highs and selling at the lows, creating tax inefficiencies in the process. Swensen also valuably details hazards to avoid in fund selection.
In UNCONVENTIONAL SUCCESS, investment legend David Swensen reveals why the for-profit mutual fund industry consistently fails the average investor, from its excessive management and incentive fees to the frequent 'churning' of portfolios that forces investors to pay higher taxes. Perhaps most destructive of all are flagrant schemes designed to thwart regulators and further erode portfolios, limiting investor choice and reducing returns. Swensen's solution? A 'contrarian' investment alternative that creates more diversified, equity-oriented, 'market-mimicking' portfolios that minimize loss and reward the investor with the courage to stay the course. Swensen backs up his unconventional proposal with well-documented evidence supporting not-for-profit investment…
I am the author of The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing and The 3% Signal, among other financial books, and editor of The Kelly Letter. Despite having been ranked by CXO Advisory as one of the best stock-market forecasters, I gave up the practice in favor of price reaction. I realized that nobody knows where stocks are headed, myself included, and set out to find ways to beat the market without forecasting—and succeeded. My readers and I are now much happier and wealthier.
I liked this book enough to write a blurb for it, as follows: “Any plan that would have led investors to Amazon, Apple, and Google is fine by me—and this one would have. Edward Ryan has created a systematic framework for owning what you know, a tried-and-true tactic.” No less a luminary than Peter Lynch endorses the idea, and in this book you’ll learn five steps to systematize it: list your life activities, extract stock ideas from them, rank those stocks, invest, and manage the portfolio. The second step is the most interesting to me; it’s where you consider which products and services in your life are most likely to keep a stock moving higher.
Professional investors on Wall Street have the best education, the deepest knowledge of company accounts, the latest technology, and teams of analysts at their disposal to help them identify the best stock investments. That is their edge. As a part-time, individual investor, you cannot compete on their turf.
What can you do? This is where The World's Simplest Stock Picking Strategy comes in.
As you go about your life, there are companies you interact with regularly as a consumer. Some companies will stand out to you as having remarkable products or services, which you use…
Almost 20 years ago, I committed to investing all of my money–starting with my cash–in ways that align with my values. It’s been a long and arduous journey, even with the help of financial advisors. When I retired, I took control of my money and realized investing this way does not have to be that hard. Moreover, most women want to invest in their values, but no one is helping them. So, I wrote a book to share the knowledge I’ve gained over 40 years as an investor. Later, I co-founded Invest for Better, a non-profit that puts women into investment clubs to help them become confident, values-aligned investors.
It is great to see women stepping up to write investment books that go beyond the status quo–a financial system developed primarily by men for men. Rather, they help us to think–and act–differently.
Unlike other books about investing for impact, this book leads with stories. Although the book addresses practical questions like: Do I need a financial advisor? How do I start as a 401(k) or DIY investor? How do I want to define risk and return?–it also tells the stories of women (and a few men) who are paving a new way of investing for others to follow, inspiring you to join them.
Whether you have $100 or $100 million in your bank account, you have the power to change the world for the better.
Having lived through recessions and pandemics, we all recognize the importance of financial well-being. But we are also living in a time of uncertainty, marked by injustice, climate crisis, and social change. How do we reconcile these two things--our financial well-being and our desire to advocate for a more just and equitable world? Perhaps you already donate to causes you care about, or you're looking to start, but the world of finance and investment feels intimidating, especially if…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
We first met about 10 years ago at Sheffield Hallam University, bonding as work colleagues over a love of enabling students to understand wealth management and finance in a way that we hoped they would find interesting and accessible. The books we chose mix our love of storytelling and making finance accessible by using real-world experiences. They do this in a unique way, challenging the reader to think about their understanding and perspective, something we try to do every day. It has been lovely to reread these books before writing the reviews, reminding us of what makes us tick. We hope they help you to find your tick too.
We enjoyed this book for its innovative approach, which involves a very specific and defined focus, and its appropriateness for a broad spectrum of investors. The method empowers investors to utilise selected criteria in their investment choices to create a successful investment strategy. It provides “tried and tested” principles for “stock pickers,” focusing on the author’s growth investing specialism.
The book is written in a style that is easy to digest but makes some complex investment methods seem obvious, just what I like in books. It is concise but each chapter allows the reader to reflect on their understanding. This represents a good investment for an investor looking to broaden their knowledge and develop their own investment approach.
Jim Slater's classic text brought back into print Jim Slater makes available to the investor - whether the owner of only a few shares or an experienced investment manager with a large portfolio - the secrets of his success. Central to his strategy is "The Zulu Principle", the benefits of homing in on a relatively narrow area. Deftly blending anecdote and analysis, Jim Slater gives valuable selective criteria for buying dynamic growth shares, turnarounds, cyclicals, shells and leading shares. He also covers many other vitally relevant aspects of investment such as creative accounting, portfolio management, overseas markets and the investor's…
