The Out of Print Book Hedge Funds Pay Thousands For

As the world's largest network of buyside investment professionals, SumZero has a breadth of data on the hedge fund industry. One of the optional pieces of information that SumZero members can include on their membership profiles is their favorite investment book. We decided to compile our data and tabulate which books were the most popular.

The favorite by an overwhelming majority?: Seth Klarman's 'Margin of Safety'. Klarman published the book in 1991, a few years after taking the reins at the Baupost Group. It flew off the shelves at a $25 cover price, and soon went out of print. The book now sells for $700-$1200 used, and $2500+ new.

Given the industry's focus on hard to find information, it's unsurprising that 'Margin of Safety' took first place. Coming in second and third after 'Margin of Safety' were Ben Graham's classic 'The Intelligent Investor' and Greenblatt's 'You Can Be a Stock Market Genius'.

Title	Author	% of users that listed as favorite
Value Investing	Bruce C. Greenwald	1.96
The Essays of Warren Buffett	Lawrence Cunningham	2.05
Fooling Some of the People All of the Time	David Einhorn	2.31
Poor Charlie's Almanack	Charlie Munger	2.67
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator	Edwin Lefevre	3.03
One Up On Wall Street	Peter Lynch	3.30
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits	Philip Fisher	4.01
Security Analysis	Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd	4.82
The Most Important Thing	Howard Marks	5.44
You Can Be a Stock Market Genius	Joel Greenblatt	6.24
The Intelligent Investor	Benjamin Graham	10.53
Margin of Safety	Seth Klarman	18.29