This is the reading list I provide when asked (though technically I wasn't asked

). It will very likely be of no interest whatsoever to most of the people who post to threads like this, but there it is:
General Semantics of Wall Street
by John Magee
This is the book I would recommend to anyone interested in trying his hand at the stock market.
It is not, however, exciting, by any stretch of the imagination. Nor is it a book to read over the weekend. Magee takes his time, and the reader would do well to take his time also.
This is a book to think long thoughts about. It is not at all difficult. It is, in fact, very easy. But the concepts which it addresses are fundamental, in the deepest sense of the word, to an understanding of what markets are, how they work, and what one can expect to earn from them.
The Nature of Risk/How to Buy/When to Sell
by Justin Mamis
Once you understand the basic concepts explored in Magee's book, these three will tell you most everything else you need to know to be a successful trader/investor. These are classics, which to some people means "old" or "out of date".
How to Buy and
When to Sell were, in fact, out of print for a while, but reader demand brought them back, which is always a nice endorsement.
Following are the reviews I wrote for
The Nature of Risk:
It's been four years [now 15] since I first reviewed this book [next review]
, and I still consider it to be absolutely essential for anyone considering any sort of involvement in the financial markets. In fact, it's probably essential for anyone who is considering anything at all that entails more than minimum risk.
The amateurs miss the point. This is not about the best stochastic settings or how to massage the bid and the ask. This is about facing up to the very real risks inherent in the financial markets, including the very real risk of financial ruin. Amateurs don't see the risk; therefore, they don't bother to grapple with it. Instead, they would rather blow up and disappear. If one wants to last, he must come to terms with the nature of risk, his own tolerance for risk, an understanding of how to manage risk. Without that, he's doomed.
-----
The Nature of Risk is a seminal work for anyone who understands that self-knowledge is key for success in the financial markets, particularly at market extremes. Rather than babble about risk in general, Mamis takes this engine apart and examines its parts, among which are information risk and price risk. He explains that as one's tolerance for information risk increases (the need to know why the stock is doing whatever it's doing), one's price risk diminishes (one is better able to jump in and take advantage of whatever opportunities for picking up cheaper shares present themselves). On the other hand, if one has no tolerance for information risk and must know everything about a stock's movement, his price risk will be that much greater because the price will likely, by then, have risen to an over-extended level. Therefore, having identified these components of risk (time risk is another), one must then balance them out in order to approach the markets rationally and unemotionally.
An extremely important work, particularly for the investor who is plagued by doubt, confusion, and anxiety.
The Nature of Risk and
When to Sell were "updated" in 1999 and
How to Buy in "2001", largely because they hadn't been updated in years. And while most novices want whatever is hot off the presses, the concepts presented in these books are timeless and require no "updating" whatsoever.
What did and does require updating were the "indicators" which Mamis used for helping him get a feel for what was going on underneath the market, and by "indicators" I don't mean mathematically-derived appliances like RSI and MACD and CCI, I mean indicators of breadth and sentiment and so on, such as those which Zweig has used for so many years, e.g., specialist short-selling, odd lot sales, new highs/new lows, etc.
Unfortunately, what with the dominance of funds, hedging, arbitrage, and online short-term trading, most of these indicators are no longer of much use, leaving advancing and declining volume pretty much alone as a guide to underlying sentiment.
Studying these three will enable you to obtain much of what is covered in Wyckoff's books and to skip Weinstein entirely.
(cont'd)