Titles worth your money

At 18, Carlos Leandro Felipe started investing in the stock market. Now 24, he serves as a consultant to an online stock brokerage firm and goes around nationwide to speak about investing in the stock market.

Instead of people working for the money all the time, he wants them, especially the young, to let money work for them through investing.

In his visit to Cebu last Saturday, he shared with SunStar Cebu the top three books he would recommend to new investors or those curious about investing. Although not all of them particularly discuss stocks, the books provide guiding principles about life and wealth.

“The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham is what Felipe would described as the Bible of stock investing. This would best fit “value investors,” as he calls them, or those who invest not just to earn, but those who genuinely see value in the company they have invested in.

“The Richest Man in Babylon” by George Clason presents an allegory from ancient Babylon that contains financial advice. By effectively using parables, Felipe said, the author encourages readers to reflect on the financial wisdom that the book imparts.

“The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb helps readers understand the extreme impact of certain kinds of rare and unpredictable events and our all-too-human tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events in retrospect. Felipe sees the book as a tool that helped him see and reflect on small things that have the greatest impact.