“Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!”
—
John Bogle

Books are among the best sources of information, in whose pages there is gathered valuable knowledge and advice that would be of great help to us – both in our personal lives and at work. Regardless of which field we want to develop in, it is always a good idea to add books as part of the path of growth, personal self-improvement and the key “weapons” that would launch us to the top of our career.

And if we choose to immerse ourselves in the world of finance, when it comes to understanding it, rest assured that few solutions are easier, cheaper or more impactful than educating ourselves with the help of a great investing book. Money affects everything we do, so learning how to invest properly early on can make a huge difference in your ultimate success.

It’s important to learn investment terminology. You’ll want to understand the difference between a stock and a bond, how cryptocurrency works, how inflation affects investments, the role of risk tolerance, and how tax efficiency can increase portfolio returns.

Equally important is understanding what money does and doesn’t do for a person seeking to maximize their wealth for future life events. This includes how we interact with money, how family experiences can shape our investment outlook, and how significant debt can be a barrier to achieving our life goals.

Today, we’ll look at a list of the TOP 5 books on investing to read right now.

“The Intelligent Investor”
Author: Benjamin Graham

Originally published in 1949, The Intelligent Investor was long considered the only book you should read to learn the principles of investing. Topics in the book include the concepts of long-term investing and Graham’s philosophy of value investing, giving it a place on every serious investor’s bookshelf. Graham is known not only for his status as the father of value investing, but also for his guidance to the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Warren Buffett, who used Graham’s principles to become arguably the best investor of all time.

“Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger”
Author: Charles T. Munger

Charles Munger, better known as Charlie Munger, may not be familiar to most investors, but his longtime friend and business partner Warren Buffett should be. For decades, Munger was Buffett’s right-hand man, running the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate and holding company. Considered one of the sharpest business minds of the 20th and 21st centuries. This book is based on 11 lectures Munger gave between 1986 and 2007.

“The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns”
Author: John C. Bogle

Bogle was the late founder of The Vanguard Group and creator of the first index mutual fund. He is known for his principle of investing with purpose, maintaining a long-term goal and reducing internal fees as much as possible. He was also a proponent of dollar cost averaging, a method of consistent and patient investing. Through his book, the reader will understand the differences between prudent investing and speculation. It should come as no surprise that one of the overarching conclusions is that low-cost index funds – Vanguard’s specialty – are a sensible move for most investors.

“A Beginner’s Guide to the Stock Market: Everything You Need to Start Making Money Today”
Author: Matthew R. Kratter

Released in 2019, this book provides a guide for those embarking on their investment journey. Delve into the process of setting up a brokerage account and making your inaugural investment. Authored by Kratter, a former hedge fund manager with firsthand experience of the 2008 market crash. The book equips readers with insights crucial for navigating contemporary market turbulence. It particularly shines in illuminating common pitfalls encountered by beginners.

“Rich Dad Poor Dad”
Author: Robert T. Kiyosaki

For over 25 years, “Rich Dad Poor Dad” has dominated the bestseller lists, narrating Robert Kiyosaki’s personal journey with his two father figures: his own father, portrayed as the “poor dad,” and his friend’s father, the “rich dad.” Through these contrasting experiences, Kiyosaki elucidates strategies for wealth accumulation. The book emphasizes the notion that wealth isn’t solely about affluence but rather about making your money work effectively for you, regardless of your starting point.

If you found this article interesting, stay tuned on Thursday when we will present PART TWO of the best books on investing.

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On December 30 last year, MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, posted a video on X to announce that his latest video was available on YouTube.

Donaldson had uploaded a 20-minute video to YouTube describing how he spent a week in solitary confinement. Similar videos in which Donaldson challenges himself or some person to an extreme task are the culprits he has gained worldwide fame.

MrBeast earned around $82 million in 2023 and has over 225 million subscribers on his main channel, making him the biggest name on the platform.

It’s no secret that Musk has been trying to get users interested in videos on the platform for quite some time now.

His attempts included a media partnership with Paris Hilton – which has since been terminated, as well as streaming shows from people like former Fox star Tucker Carlson.

Elon Musk, in collaboration with CEO Linda Iaccarino, aims to enhance revenue by introducing premium subscription services on the platform. These services, among other features, grant users the ability to display a “verified” status and send direct messages to other accounts.

These measures were implemented in response to the departure of several advertisers from the platform due to concerns about their brands being associated with unregulated content.

In an effort to include MrBeast’s content on the platform, Musk’s proposal, not limited to exclusivity, was turned down by the creator. Donaldson responded courteously to Musk, explaining that his videos require significant investment, and even if they were to garner a billion views on X, it wouldn’t cover a fraction of the production costs. However, he expressed a willingness to explore options once monetization proves to be successful.

This gracious response stands in contrast to Donaldson’s previous keen interest in Twitter. Interestingly, his bio still identifies him as the “X Super Official CEO,” a nod to earlier speculation about who would assume the day-to-day management of the platform amid Musk’s busy schedule.

Fintech valuations boomed in 2020 and 2021, but are now recovering amid a tightening of capital investment.

Augmentum, which backs UK challenger bank Monese, UK SME lender Iwoca and German technology rental platform Grover, said the value of its top 10 investments rose from £182m to £199m in the six months to the end of September.

Tim Levene, chief executive of Augmentum Fintech, said Augmentum had not invested in new start-ups during the period as the cost of investment was too high.

Augmentum increased its investment in Zopa, raising its stake from £30 million to £34 million,
and in Tide, from £36 million to £41 million. However, the value of its stake in Grover was reduced from £43 million to £41 million.

Augmentum’s Chairman, Levene, noted that the company refrained from making new investments in startups during the period due to elevated pricing.

He characterized 2023 as a “tale of two halves,” with the first half experiencing lower deal activity, but the second half witnessing an uptick with the emergence of higher-quality companies in the market.

Levene painted a cautiously upbeat picture moving forward but said that 2024 and 2025 could be “really strong vintages” for venture funds that get it right.

“AI is slated to unlock nearly $16 trillion in productivity by 2030. With the launch of the IBM Enterprise AI Venture Fund, we’re opening another channel to harness the enormous potential of the AI revolution into tangible, positive outcomes for IBM and the companies we invest in. This fund is yet another way we’re doubling down on our commitment to responsible AI innovation through watsonx and helping organizations put this transformational technology to work”, said Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President, Software and Chief Commercial Officer, IBM.

IBM says its Enterprise AI Venture Fund approach is unique because it combines IBM’s domain expertise and a dedicated portfolio development team to invest in AI companies that are making a significant impact in the business world.

The fund will offer startups the chance to form partnerships with IBM, receive operational guidance, and enhance their product and engineering strategies. IBM, with its established history in enterprise AI, is leveraging its expertise and the latest generative AI innovations to expand its AI partnerships and create value for AI leaders and clients, both new and existing.

The startup is receiving $214 million from investors – just a fraction of the billions in private and government cash earmarked for creating better batteries that are essential for electric vehicles and renewable energy, company officials said. Other investors include Oman’s sovereign wealth fund and the climate fund backed by private equity firm Lightrock. Microsoft declined to disclose the size of its investment.

Group14 recently received a $100 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy through last year’s Infrastructure Act. Earlier this year, it raised $400 million from investors including Porsche, Riverstone Holdings and a joint venture between BlackRock and Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings. The latest funding round values Group14 at more than $3 billion.

“The industry realizes this is happening and can either participate or watch it happen without it.”

Group14 CEO Rick Lubbe said in an interview.

Many companies and investors are putting money into the sector and hoping to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which tied tax breaks for electric vehicles to how much of the materials come from local sources or trading partners.

Brandon Middaugh, director of Microsoft’s climate fund, said the company looked at about 30-40 investments in the sector before putting money into Group14.

The VMware University Research Fund has committed to awarding a U.S. $1.5 million grant to attract top researchers and scientists to the faculty, in support of the 10-year plan signed by ETH Zurich, EPFL, and the Bulgarian government. This founding grant aims to establish and develop the INSAIT faculty, as well as attract Ph.D. & MSc students for research in in diverse areas of computer science and systems engineering, including AI, security, storage and networking.

The strategic partnership aims to attract high calibre talent to the world-class faculty and train the next generation of technology researchers and engineers

Diana Stefanova, VMware VP of Regional Site Strategy says:

“For VMware, this is an investment in new technologies research, consistent with our innovation strategy. It is also a unique opportunity to increase the pool of key talent in Central and Eastern Europe.”

In addition to the financial support, VMware’s more than 1800 engineers in Bulgaria are uniquely positioned to help support the institute with hands-on experience in cloud, networking, computing, and security. The collaboration of renowned scientists with PhD and Masters students, supported by big tech capabilities, has the potential to lead to groundbreaking findings in critical areas, such as private trustworthy AI, programmable networks and the data economy.

Raghu Raghuram, CEO, VMware, commented:

“There is an intrinsic link between innovation and talent. As an organization that has a culture of innovation, we have seen first-hand how important it is to invest and nurture great minds and ideas. This relationship with INSAIT is another example of our global commitment to developing tech talent. It is especially relevant to VMware in Bulgaria given our world-class R&D operations there, which we are keen to keep well supplied with the best minds in technology.”

The focus of the relationship is to invest in developing world-class talent. Establishing unique technological facilities helps contribute to new collaborative research, for the benefit of the entire technology ecosystem.

Prof. Martin Vechev, Chair of INSAIT Supervisory Board said:

“As a global technological leader VMware understands the importance of investing in talent and promoting inclusive economic growth and recovery. Attracting and nurturing the top minds in turn helps with the democratization of science and solving some of the hardest challenges.”

For more than 15 years the VMware Academic Program has been supporting the advancement of academic research and teaching in universities and institutions in the United States and around the world. This extension of close collaboration with institutes such as INSAIT aims to increase the diversity of systems research people, ideas, and advances across the globe.

In this latest endeavour, VMware and INSAIT will continue to drive the program’s goals of attracting high-quality and diverse talent and creating state of the art educational programs. In this way, providing attractive career perspectives and globally competitive salaries in a flourishing industry encourages top young talent and improves local economic and social opportunities.

“We are excited to add BitGlobal to the growing number of exchanges that will list DIGau, making the token readily available to investors and institutions across the globe who value verified gold reserve-backed investments.”

He added:

“The DIGau token is a revolutionary, regulation-forward security that will be linked to actual mined metals, as well as a complementary investment fund where token holders can share in profits with dividends.”

Dignity Corp. is concurrently engaged in issuing DIGau tokens in private placements to certain investors under exemptions from the registration requirements of the Securities Act provided by Rule 506(c) of Regulation D and Regulation S of the Securities Act. These tokens are “restricted securities” as defined in Rule 144 of the Securities Act.

Due to various factors, including the restrictions imposed by securities rules, the tokens issued in Regulation S private placements will not be eligible to trade on Bit Global unless and until certain restrictions are lifted and tokens issued in Regulation D private placements will not be eligible to trade on Bit Global.

The fund struggled in the final two months. In November and December the company dropped 8% and 10.7%, respectively. That erased a 13% gain that it had built through the first 10 months of the year.

It’s just the third annual loss in the hedge fund’s two-decade history. It declined 15% in 2016 and 26% in 2008.

Last month, Tiger Global told clients in a letter that it’s opening up both funds to a limited amount of capital from existing investors to bolster positions in stocks that underperformed. The firm said in the letter:

“We are excited by the opportunities we see today and intend to continue playing offense.”

The funds started accepting fresh cash at the beginning of January after being closed to new money for years.

One of the stocks that probably hurt results is Beijing-based retail giant JD.com Inc. It tumbled 20% last year amid a regulatory crackdown in China. The stock was Tiger Global’s second-biggest US equity position as of Sept. 30.

Another top holding, DocuSign Inc., plunged 31%. Last month, the e-signature company provided a revenue forecast that missed Wall Street estimates. It stoked concerns that growth will slow after a pandemic-fueled surge in demand.

The company is based in San Francisco and it sells geospatial data and analytics software to businesses and government agencies. Ashley Johnosn, who is a Chief Financial Officer, announced that the company expects approximately $600 million, which is supposed to be used to raise from its public offering for that.

Planet Labs plans to close on the merger with SPAC dMY Technology Group Inc. IV – a company which is based in Las Vegas. After that, its hopes are to debut on the New York Stock Exchange under a new name which might be – Planet Labs Public Benefit Corp., shortly after December 3 shareholder vote in that deal. SPACs are shell companies that issue shares to raise capital to buy a business and bring it public.

The company announced that Planet Labs has raised more than $450 million in venture-capital funding, most recently $168 million in a Series D round in 2018 from Google and venture-capital firms Threshold Ventures and DCVC Management Co. The bigger part of all these funds went toward building out Planet Labs’ fleet of satellites, 450 of which it has launched since its founding in 2010.

By going public via a SPAC, the company will be given better access to capital and allows executives to engage more with investors than in a traditional IPO, particularly through the PIPE-raising process.  Ms. Johnson commented:

“Now we’re putting the capital behind scaling our commercial infrastructure,” .

She  joined the company last year from robo financial advisory firm Wealthfront Corp., where she was CFO and chief operating officer.

According to Ms. Johnson, soon after it becomes public, it will invest in marketing and expand its software offerings. One of the company’s aims is to strengthen its ability to offer time-stamped data that companies and data analysts can incorporate in their systems for modeling and data mining. Earlier this month, the company agreed to acquire VanderSat B.V., a Haarlem, Netherlands-based earth-data provider, for roughly $28 million.

“That type of analytic capability on top of our data opens up more market opportunities to us and more wallet share with our existing customers.”

Ms. Johnson also said that the company has about 700 customers that are concentrated in industries such as agriculture and mapping.

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which is one of the world’s biggest institutional investors, has invested in Planet Labs, partly because the company has collected a wealth of imaging data and generates more revenue than some competitors. This was announced by Caitlin Walsh who is a managing director for the pension fund.

More than 4% to as high as $66,170 jumped Bitcoin, approaching the unprecedented $67,016.50 level reached on Oct. 20.  Meanwhile ether – which underpins the Еthereum network – sat at a record top of $4,768.07.

Kyle Rodda, analyst at broker IG Markets said Reuters:

“Falling real yields, as traders brace for inflation, adds to the attractiveness of assets such as gold and cryptocurrencies which do not pay a coupon. The mood in the sector has also been good.”

Ether is up around 59% since the start of October and bitcoin about 51% as investors have cheered last month’s launch of a U.S. futures-based bitcoin exchange-traded fund and sought exposure to an asset class sometimes regarded as an inflation hedge.