Today I’m sharing the best books for financial advisors.
Two years ago, Corey Hoffstein asked the #FinTwit community for the top three books they would recommend to a financial advisor:
Asking for a friend who just finished @danielcrosby’s Behavioral Investor and is looking for more.
I recommended @brianportnoy’s Geometry of Wealth, but he wants top 3.
So what’re the top 3 best books an advisor can read?
— Corey Hoffstein (@choffstein) July 16, 2019
Not surprisingly, his post generated dozens of responses from finance nerds around the world.
And since I’ve had this question more than once in my career, I thought I would consolidate the responses so I could easily reference and share with advisors in the future.
(Note: I’ve recently updated this post in 2021 and will continue to add new books as they are published.)
The Best Books for Financial Advisors in 2021
Multiple Mentions:
The Behavior Gap by Carl Richards (x4)
Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth by Nick Murray (x4)
Behavioral Investment Counseling by Nick Murray (x4)
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini (x3)
Your Money and Your Brain by Jason Zweig (x3)
I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi (x2)
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (x2)
Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (x2)
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke (x2)
What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan (x2)
Finance & Economics:
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
The Geometry of Wealth by Brian Portnoy
The Behavioral Investor by Daniel Crosby
The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason
The Index Card by Helaine Olen and Harold Pollack
What Works on Wall Street by James P. O’Shaughnessy
Mind over Money by Brad Klontz
Facilitating Financial Health by Brad Klontz
How to Think about Money by Jonathan Clements
A Wealth of Common Sense by Ben Carlson
Irrational Exuberance by Robert Shiller
Big Mistakes by Michael Batnick
Simple Money by Tim Maurer
Wealth, Actually: Intelligent Decision-Making for the 1% by Frazer Rice
Cryptoassets by Chris Burniske
The Joys of Compounding by Gautam Baid
The Wisdom of Finance by Mihir Desai
Rigged Money by Lee Munson
Extraordinary Popular Delusion and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay and Russell Napier
The Psychology of Human Misjudgement by Charlie Munger
Phishing for Phools by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller
Risk Savvy by Gerd Gigerenzer
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis
The Influential Mind by Tali Sharot
Your Complete Guide to Factor-Based Investing by Andrew L. Berkin and Larry E. Swedroe
The Ivy Portfolio by Meb Faber and Eric Richardson
The Seven Stages Of Money Maturity by George Kinder
The One Page Financial Plan by Carl Richards
Smarter Investing by Tim Hale
The Big Short by Michael Lewis
The Future for Investors by Jeremy Siegel
Technical Financial Planning:
Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits by Natalie Choate
Marketing:
Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
Crushing It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland
This Is Marketing by Seth Godin
Practice Management:
The Excellent Investment Advisor by Nick Murray
Around the Year by Nick Murray
The Game of Numbers Nick Murray
Tested in the Trenches by Ron Carson and Steve Sanduski
The Supernova Advisor by Rob Knapp
Wealth Management: The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Investing and Managing Client Assets by Harold Evensky
The Ensemble Practice by P. Palaveev
Succession Planning for Financial Advisors by David Grau
Adapt or Die by Robert Sofia
Wealth Management Unwrapped by Charlotte B. Beyer
The Advisor Breakthrough: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Building a Million-Dollar Practice by Shawn Sparks
Business/Other:
Who Not How by Dan Sullivan
The 4- Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
Setting the Table by Danny Meyer
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
Willpower by Roy F. Baumeister
Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
Understanding Variation by Donald J. Wheeler
You are Not So Smart by David McRaney
The Person and the Situation by Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett
Start with Why by Simon Sinek
Essentialism by Greg McKeown