Following on from our earlier article, here is the second half of a list of the 12 books that we think are so jam-packed full of interesting, important or damn-right cool investment ideas that you just need to know about them. Period. If you can drag yourself away from the cocktail bar this summer, you could do a lot worse than spend a few hours working your way through at least some of these books...

Of course, there's just so much great investing literature that any cut-off point is going to be somewhat arbitrary. What have we missed? Let us know in the comments below.

Coming in at lucky number 7, we have  The Little Book that Builds Wealth (Pat Dorsey - 126 pages)One 55aceff5a1dcaThe_Little_Book_That_Buildsof the things that investors have long admired about Warren Buffett is his ability to spot a truly great and enduring business franchise and ride its stock for the long term.  He likes each business he invests in to display a durable competitive advantage -  an 'economic moat'  that protects the core business -  allowing them the power to raise prices and ward off competitors. 

This excellent book, summarised here and  written by the Director of Equity Research for Morningstar,  provides a simple but comprehensive framework for spotting such companies through both their qualitative aspects (high switching costs, scale advantages and so on) and their quantitative aspects (high sustained margins, free cash-flow and returns on capital). 

At barely over 150 pages investors this book is a real gem and highly recommended.   Investors who take these principles to heart will end up far better judges of business quality and may just be able to weed out a few of the more suspect stocks from their portfolio in favour of the types of companies that may provide longer term sustainable growth. 

55acf0aedc733Smarter_Stock_Picking__Usin8. Smarter Stock Picking: Using Strategies from the Professionals to Improve Your Returns (David Stevenson - 496 pages) - Back on the theme of evidence-based investing, it's worth mentioning this relatively recent book by FT journalist, David Stevenson. The number of really good investment books that have been written for a UK audience could be counted on one hand, and this is one of them. This…

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