[_odey]

The book that provided me with the proper knowledge about investing in the stock market would be:

The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing: Morningstar's Guide to Building Wealth and Winning in the Market

The reason I recommend this is because it teaches you how to read IFRS Financial Reports and calculate Discounted Free Cash Flow, with practical examples.

Fun fact: many people have asked me over the years what my secret to investing was, and I've always pointed them to the book, and told them it's basically just about reading and understanding each line the financial reports. It takes a lot of time to do this, and you have to do it every quarter, for all stocks you own, want to own, and keep an eye on. With time you will learn what sections to skip and it gets faster, easier. But you have to get your information from the reports themselves. To this day not even one of those people has followed my advice and read the book. I guess the thought of putting in effort scared them away as they were also asking me if they can find the reports summarized on some website and use that as their source if information, or if they can pay for some service to calculate discounted free cash flow for them. To me, having the summary and calculation alone is pointless, and it's also the fastest part of the process. What's important is to understand the reason behind the data in the report, something which the summary eliminates. I have not yet attended a Shareholders Meeting for any company, but this also helps with understanding the reasons behind the data.

[te]

I was put off by the title of this book, but after reviewing the Table of Contents, I'm quite intrigued and I'll be picking up a copy. Thanks for the recommendation -- I probably wouldn't have gotten past it's title without it.

[_odey]

My pleasure!

Yes, to be fair I was skeptical at first as well, the title does look like click-bait. But it was recommended to me by somebody that I trust knew what he was talking about, after that person gave us a talk about the stock market's financial reports and shareholders meetings. I guess the down-votes I got were because of a similar reaction from others, I'll have to keep in mind to write a disclaimer next time I recommend it.

By the way, if you get around to reading it, please drop me an email if you'd like to discuss about the content or need extra clarification on certain topics, or more practical examples (you'll find your way to my email from my user profile). I know I needed in the beginning and couldn't find anybody to talk to since I was the only one in the group that read it, and I was too embarrassed to ask the "mentor" such trivial questions.