Reading a book or a newspaper might not seem like an activity directly related to financial success, but famed investor Warren Buffett says it could be the key to securing a better financial future. Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), says he reads for about five to six hours every day and credits this habit with helping to shape his investing style and making him billions.

Warren Buffett’s Reading Habit

If it seems like a successful investor would spend most of their day in business meetings, Buffett is an exception. In 2015, he told a group of business students that Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t hold work meetings. Instead, he and longtime business partner Charlie Munger devoted a lot of their time to reading and thinking.

“A good part of our success is that we spend a lot of time thinking,” Buffett said. “I can think of no better way to become more intelligent than sit down and read. In fact, that’s what Charlie and I mostly do.”

Todd Combs, a Berkshire Hathaway investment officer, said when Buffett visited his class at Columbia Business School in the early 2000s and was asked for his secret to business, Buffett pulled out a “giant pile of paper” and said he reads 500 pages a week. “It’s like compound knowledge,” he quoted Buffett saying. “If you start today, it will just build over time.”

That reading habit includes financial documents and regulatory filings, along with news articles and biographies.

“I read five daily newspapers. I read a fair number of magazines. I read 10-Ks. I read annual reports, and I read a lot of other things, too,” Buffett said in 2015.

How Reading Can Help Your Finances

Reading helped shape Buffett’s investment style, and he’s been vocal about which books have been most influential in teaching him how to invest and guiding him toward valuable companies.

• “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham: Buffett has repeatedly recommended this book, emphasizing that people should read chapters eight and 20 in particular. He said he first read the book in 1950 when he was 19. “I thought then that it was by far the best book about investing ever written. I still think it is,” he wrote in a preface to a revised edition published in 2024.
• “Paths to Wealth Through Common Stocks” and “Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits” by Philip Fisher: Buffett is a big fan of Fisher’s first two books, which advise investors to seek out outstanding growth companies using deep qualitative research and hold onto them for the long term.
• “The Money Masters” by John Train: In this book, Train assesses the investment styles of nine of the most successful investors.

“I don’t know anybody who’s wise who doesn’t read a lot,” Munger said in 2004. “On the other hand, that alone won’t do it. You have to have a temperament really, which grabs the correct ideas and does something with those ideas.”

That’s why Buffett says he loves biographies—because they show people putting their ideas into action. “Charlie and I love to read biographies, and what we like to ask is: ‘What makes these people succeed and what makes the ones that fail?'” he said in 2015.

Here are some of the biographies Buffett has called attention to over the years:

• “Jack: Straight from the Gut” by Jack Welch: Buffett recommended this business memoir by longtime General Electric (GE) executive Jack Welch in his 2001 shareholder letter.
• “First a Dream” by Jim Clayton: Intrigued by the story behind the founder of Clayton Homes, which operated in the manufactured housing sector, Buffett ended up buying one of his businesses—a decision based, in part, on reading this book.
• “Shoe Dog” by Phil Knight: Buffett said this memoir by Nike (NKE) co-founder Phil Knight was the best book he read in 2015.

The Bottom Line

One secret to Buffett’s success is the knowledge he has attained by reading throughout his life. The star investor still spends much of his days reading books, financial reports, newspapers, and magazines. He has been open about which books have proved most influential, helping to shape the investment philosophy that has made him billions.