The 20 Best Investment Audiobooks to Trade Like a Pro

The key words in this title are common sense—this is not a selection for expert traders, for whom the advice may seem elementary. However, for those needing an accessible entry into the field of investing that offers a cut-and-dry, well-explained strategy for maximizing long-term savings, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing is largely unmatched. And though its explanations may be to-the-point, L.J. Ganser skillfully maintains an upbeat tone that makes it easy to stay engaged. For listeners looking for practical, no-frills advice, this is a great place to start.

Robert T. Kiyosaki is this title’s Rich Dad, an author whose claim to fame is a series of personal finance guides organized around the premise that financial knowledge rarely crosses class boundaries, since it’s largely passed down from parent to child and, therefore, only rich kids get advice from rich adults. In this entry in the series, he focuses on investing, drawing a clear differentiation between the skill of managing money versus the skill of growing it. Kiyosaki’s overall approach is refreshingly well-explained, free of jargon, and—thanks to Tim Wheeler, who narrates all of Kiyosaki’s published works—feels less like a lecture and more like a private conversation with a particularly generous, wise uncle. Additionally, the author weaves his financial philosophies into the narrative, which helps ground the lessons firmly in context.

Investment is one genre that can be slightly difficult to absorb in longer, traditional formats, which is why The Art of Investing is such a stellar entry in the canon. Instead of a traditional series of chapters, John M. Longo has assembled over 30 half-hour lectures on different history-making investors, each of which highlights the arc of the person’s career as well as the lessons to be drawn from their trading experiences. For those who thrive in a classroom setting, Longo’s professorial style will definitely resonate, and the accompanying outline feels delightfully like a syllabus for your favorite economics course.

The Intelligent Investor is a comprehensive primer on a conservative financial strategy called value investing. In other words, this is not an audiobook for thrill-seeking day traders looking to build a meteoric fortune. Benjamin Graham’s balanced, well-rounded advice offers an uncomplicated and accessible path to relatively stress-free investing that will pay dividends in the long term. Hall of Fame narrator Luke Daniels brings his background in classical theater to his performance, keeping the narration dynamic and helping Graham’s takeaways resonate with the listener.

If you’ve been operating under the belief that a seven-figure savings is unattainable, Thomas Stanley and William Danko’s The Millionaire Next Door is the audiobook designed to disabuse you of that mindset—and offer advice on how to join the ranks of the mega-earners that live among us. Narrator Cotter Smith is well-known in the audiobook industry for his work in historical nonfiction, and his practiced skill in enhancing education to entertainment is on full display as he narrates the authors’ unveiling of the wealthy’s most well-kept financial secrets. Basing their writings on thorough research and informative interviews, Stanley and Danko drill down quickly to the practical advice at the center of the secrets of America’s rich, teaching listeners how to emulate the behaviors of those millionaires who weren’t born into wealth, but achieved it nonetheless.

If Hall of Fame narrator George Guidall’s name alone isn’t enough to sell you on this selection (the three-time Audie Award winner is among the best in the industry, with listens like Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Stephen King’s Dark Tower series among the countless titles on resume), rest assured that Burton Malkiel’s flawlessly researched advice for investing is every bit as high caliber as the narrator who performs it. Malkiel’s strategy centers on the random walk hypothesis, which posits that, though various stocks’ peaks and valleys may seem extreme, the average pattern of the stock market is no more unpredictable than the steps of a random walk. Backed by ample research, with real examples pulled from history, Malkiel explains how the average person can make solid investment decisions based on this theory, making this an excellent choice for listeners looking for help developing a moderately conservative long-range investment strategy.

Thanks to gender differences in how financial education and conversations are communicated in the culture, women can face unique challenges when it comes to money, such as anxiety and lack of confidence. With this direct, tactical guide to investing from Clever Girl Finance founder Bola Sokunbi, you can overcome these systemic hurdles and maximize your money-making potential. Read by the author in a clear, motivating style, this short but powerful listen breaks down how investing and the stock market work—and can work for you—while helping you conquer negative thought patterns and learn from real-life tips from wealth experts around the world.

In the saturated genre of investment wisdom, it’s difficult to write something truly unique, but Oaktree Capital Management chairman and cofounder Howard Marks manages to do just that by displaying the real day-to-day thoughts and considerations derived from a long career in investment. Bolstered by the performance of narrator John FitzGibbon, Marks encourages listeners to be contrarian, finding opportunities to think innovatively and being willing to switch tactics to stay ahead of the pack. His takes are as functionally useful as they are off-the-beaten-path, making this a great choice for those just starting out as well as long-time investment listeners looking to switch things up.

As its title indicates, this is the later, greater version of Joel Greenblatt’s 2005 best seller The Little Book That Beats the Market. That original work has remained popular throughout the years, but its sequel, narrated with crisp confidence by Adam Grupper, makes necessary updates to incorporate over a decade of economic events and the lessons they impart. Not only is Greenblatt’s style incredibly simple to understand, this audiobook is also relatively short by genre standards—at just under four hours, The Little Book makes it possible to get a start on one’s investment career in just an afternoon. But don’t be fooled: the plain language and overall brevity of Greenblatt’s work does not make it any less useful for getting a comprehensive understanding of investment basics.

This fast-paced, fascinating narrative traces the replacement of Wall Street’s old guard—the risk-taking, go-big-or-go-home fat cats who dominated the trading floors of the ‘80s and ‘90s—with a new, data-driven breed of investment mathematicians called quants. But the quants’s arrival on the scene occurs just as the clouds are gathering around the coming subprime lending storm. Mike Chamberlain, the narrative voice behind a swath of nonfiction bestsellers, provides the perfect balance of sharp intelligence and taut thrills for this fascinating tale. Wall Street Journal reporter Scott Patterson expertly illustrates how the quants’s most powerful asset quickly becomes their Achilles’s heel, blinding them to the signs of the coming disaster. Though it’s undeniably educational, for those with a true enthusiasm for economics, The Quants packs enough fast-paced action and high stakes to certify as a bonafide financial thriller.

This incredibly original work is author Michael Lewis’s scathing, skewering explanation of what happened leading up to the stock market crash of 2007. The very fact that this work of financial nonfiction was easily converted into a character-driven blockbuster hit in 2015 is an excellent indicator of how refreshingly action-filled The Big Short is, and narrator Jesse Boggs performs the story with as much enthusiasm and genuine connection to the story as the actors in the film. You may recognize Michael Lewis’s name from the similar smash hit Moneyball, and The Big Short again demonstrates Lewis’s talent for picking apart a complicated mathematical concept and laying it bare in a way that listeners can follow.

Jordan Belfort’s The Wolf of Wall Street provides an accurate snapshot of exactly what life on Wall Street was like before the quants changed the game. Adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film in 2013, Belfort’s original story is just as hard-partying and unbelievable thanks, in part, to narrator Eric Meyers, who specializes in action-filled thrillers.The audiobook goes a step further, including all of the nitty-gritty details that the screenwriters left out. The result is an audiobook that’s at times jarring, at times shocking, but always engaging.

Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise isn’t an investment how-to so much as a predictive guide—but, since the basis of successful investing is the ability to make accurate predictions, Silver’s insight is definitely worth exploring. Though Silver does not narrate the work himself, reviewers have confessed to mistaking Mike Chamberlain’s authentic tone and performance for that of the author, since much of the audiobook discusses Silver’s own personal forecasts and relates strategies for mimicking his success. One particularly excellent feature of the audiobook, especially for those listeners whose libraries are already filled with investment-themed content, is the fact that it’s drawn from many non-economic areas of the world like meteorology, climatology, and political elections. But as fascinating as these asides may be, it’s never hard to see how Silver’s wisdom relates back to investment.

This Great Course is taught by Professor Ramon P. DeGennaro, a banking and finance expert whose natural enthusiasm for the topic keeps his explanations effortlessly engaging, even for relative newcomers to the field of investment. Especially for those who find themselves automatically wary of financial planners or market managers, How the Stock Market Works provides enough of a basis to allow anyone to approach investment feeling reasonably well-educated and empowered to make solid decisions.

Originally published in 1989, One Up on Wall Street remains on virtually every list of top investment resources...and with good reason: its advice holds up. Not only that, but Lynch’s angle has remained relatively unique, in a genre populated by what can often feel like repetitions of the same basic advice. The subtitle of this audiobook is How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market, and therein lies its brilliance: rather than assuming the listener wants to become more like a professional investor, Lynch explains how each person’s individual experiences can offer them an edge in investment that could even help them out-earn the pros.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is a lightly fictionalized account of a real stock trader named Jesse Livermore’s career. Livermore is remembered in the industry as one of the first to introduce day trading as a style of investment, and his career was full of the types of high highs and low lows that are characteristic of the day trading lifestyle. Brought to life by Audie-winner Rick Rohan, Lefevre’s narrative offers listeners insight into the life of a day trader at the turn of the 20th century, a rare perspective that presents plenty of learning opportunities for the investment-minded listener.

While many of the authors on this list are considered influential in the investment space, Ray Dalio has been among TIME’s most influential people in the world. As the founder of Bridgewater Associates, Dalio’s is perhaps one of the most valuable perspectives on investing in existence. In Principles, he distills his life’s worth of learning into actionable lessons that anyone can apply to their own portfolio. In his own voice, Dalio couches his teachings in stories of his own rise and the formation of Bridgewater that keep the story as entertaining as it is educational.

No matter how valuable various guides and narratives may be, there is no replacement for firsthand interviews with those who have been where you hope to go. In Market Wizards, narrator DJ Holte performs the questions and answers posed to investors like Chairman of CAM Capital Bruce Kovner, Tudor Investment Corporation founder Paul Tudor Jones, commodities investor Richard Dennis, and more. The very first recording of this audiobook unfortunately had flawed audio, but the 16 interviews were so valuable that they were re-recorded to save for posterity—and it’s lucky that they were.

Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Acclaimed author Morgan Housel uses 19 real-life examples to explore the myriad ways people think about money—and explains how listeners can think more effectively. Rather than focusing on the financials, Housel's psychological approach cuts to the core of our feelings regarding money, aversion to loss and preparing for our futures. This title is a must listen for those looking to understand their relationship to money.

Touting itself as a "road map to financial freedom," this title is not a get-rich-quick plan. Rather, it focuses on long term, stable, and approachable methods to investing one's capital for gains down the road. Pulling from the findings of Anderson Advisors' highly successful investment program, author Toby Mathis cuts through all of the noise to deliver honest, consistent and dependable tips regarding personal finance. This title may not be as flashy as some others, but with such a stable view on the relevant issues, it is one of the most surefire ways to see real results.