Read the screenplay: FANNIEGATE — $7 trillion. 17 years. The biggest fraud in American capital markets.

Curated Reading List

Best Investing Books of All Time

Recommended by billionaire investors and a guy from Indiana who bet everything on Fannie Mae preferred stock.

28 investing books • Links are affiliate (details below)

$ Investing

The Intelligent Investor

by Benjamin Graham

5.0
By far the best book on investing ever written.
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$ Investing

Poor Charlie's Almanack

by Charles T. Munger

4.9
Charlie has the best 30-second mind in the world. This book captures his wisdom.
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$ Investing

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

by Edwin Lefevre

4.9
One of the best books ever written about the financial markets. I've read it multiple times.
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$ Investing

The Alchemy of Finance

by George Soros

4.5
The theory of reflexivity is the cornerstone of my approach to markets.
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$ Investing

The Most Important Thing

by Howard Marks

4.8
Second-level thinking is what separates the great investors from the average ones.
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$ Investing

Fooled by Randomness

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

4.6
Taleb brilliantly explains how much of what we attribute to skill is actually luck. Essential reading for investors.
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$ Investing

The Big Short

by Michael Lewis

4.8
Lewis captured the insanity of the subprime mortgage crisis. I lived it — and he got the details right.
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$ Investing

Security Analysis

by Benjamin Graham & David Dodd

4.7
The bible of value investing. If you want to understand intrinsic value, this is where you start.
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$ Investing

The Man Who Solved the Market

by Gregory Zuckerman

4.7
Zuckerman tells our story at Renaissance. I may not agree with every detail, but he captured the essence of what we built.
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$ Investing

Market Wizards

by Jack D. Schwager

4.8
Schwager interviews the greatest traders of our time. I read this before starting Citadel and it shaped my approach to risk.
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$ Investing

Against the Gods

by Peter L. Bernstein

4.6
The history of risk. Bernstein shows how humanity learned to understand and manage uncertainty. Essential for any investor.
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$ Investing

Liar's Poker

by Michael Lewis

4.6
Lewis captures the madness of Wall Street in the '80s. I lived through that era and he nailed the culture.
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$ Investing

When Genius Failed

by Roger Lowenstein

4.7
The LTCM collapse is the ultimate lesson in hubris and leverage. Every hedge fund manager should read this annually.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

100 to 1 in the Stock Market

by Thomas William Phelps

5.0
This is the book that made me understand compounding. Buy right and hold on. Phelps studied every stock that returned 100x from 1932 to 1971. If you read one investing book, make it this one.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

The Either/Or Investor

by Clark Winter

4.5
This confirms several cognitive biases. You can teach these to yourself, but it's a lot easier to learn from examples. Clark does a good job of helping you understand opportunity cost.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett and George Soros

by Mark Tier

4.7
There's no better way to see things than from the perspective of the most successful investors of our time. Soros: find a water spigot and put your bucket under it. Buffett: skate to where the puck is going.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

Margin of Safety

by Seth Klarman

4.9
Read this after you read Buffettology. It's also good alongside Security Analysis by Graham and Dodd. This goes into investment concepts that most people skip.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

The Little Book that Beats the Market

by Joel Greenblatt

4.8
The one book you should read to see if you are even remotely interested in stocks. If this doesn't excite you, nothing will.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

Buffettology

by Mary Buffett

4.9
This is the book I read after working with my mentor to begin to visualize things more like Buffett. I've used his partnership agreements from this book in real life. If you want to understand companies like Buffett does, this is the way.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

How to Find a Home Run Stock

by John Lux

4.7
I met John Lux in person after he sent me his book. I told my dad that if I ever felt the need to write a book, that need has vanished because someone already wrote it for me.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

Fanniegate

by Glen Bradford

5.0
Book 1. The first sound they'll hear is their heads hitting the floor. I was 28 and furious.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

Net Worth Sweep

by Glen Bradford

5.0
Book 2. Government theft of $100B+ of cash money. I documented everything while it was happening.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

Capital Buffer

by Glen Bradford

5.0
Book 3. Any solution will be dependent upon the GSEs being capitalized. I was right.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

$3,542,600

by Glen Bradford

5.0
Book 4. Par value. That's what my position was worth at par. I wrote a whole book about it because I'm that guy.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

Adequately Capitalized

by Glen Bradford

5.0
Book 5. My first second million. Lost it all in Chinese frauds, made it back, then went all in on Fannie.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

Winners Circle

by Glen Bradford

5.0
Book 6. Fanniegate last call. Spoiler: it wasn't actually the last call. There are two more books after this.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

Fanniegate Hero

by Glen Bradford

5.0
Book 7. Heading to the Lamberth trial. I documented the courtroom proceedings in real time. Nobody else did.
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$ InvestingGlen's Pick

Victory Lap

by Glen Bradford

5.0
Book 8. Fanniegate recap and release. The endgame may finally be here. 10 years of writing about the same trade. Talk about conviction.
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Why These Books?

This list is not a generic roundup scraped from the internet. Every book here was either recommended in a public interview, annual letter, or book club by a billionaire investor — or it comes from Glen Bradford's personal reading list, built over 15+ years of concentrated value investing. Whether you are just getting started or looking for the next book that changes how you see the world, this is the list.

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Disclosure: Links on this page go to Amazon and include an affiliate tag. If you buy something, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Book recommendations are sourced from publicly available interviews, annual letters, and book clubs. Attributions may be paraphrased or reflect secondhand reporting — we do our best but can't guarantee perfect accuracy. These attributions do not imply endorsement of this site by any individual listed. This page was compiled with AI assistance.

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