Discount-securities

This third edition of Scrooge Investing, titled The New Scrooge Investing, is a great update of a very valuable resource that I have been using for years. I was delighted to see that all of the things that I look for in other investing books (like to to get free investment advice, reliable hot stock tips, free trades, and cut taxes) are all covered in detail in this book.

Mark Skousen has a great sense of humor, and you'll love his references to Uncle Scrooge, the Disney character (his inspiration for this book). In fact, I have the same collectible set of Uncle Scrooge materials that he refers to in this book.

I feel like I am a knowledgeable investor, but I found new ideas worth tens of thousands of dollars to me in the next year in the 150 tips in this book. You will certainly be repaid for your investment in the book and the time you spend with it.

I have been a subscriber to Forecasts and Strategies for many years, and found that this book is a wonderful summary of the advice I have been paying for over that time. I suspect that I can cancel my subscription now and save even more money!

Here are a few areas where you can quiz yourself:

(1) How should you choose a discount broker?

(2) Why is a discount broker often a poor idea when you buy bonds?

(3) Why should you be looking at closed-end country mutual funds?

(4) How can you use the recent rise in interest rates to increase your income and your capital gains?

(5) How can you get into hot IPOs with discount on-line brokers?

(6) What are the best ways to buy rare art?

(7) How should you sell items on on-line auctions?

(8) How can you acquire foreign currency inexpensively?

(9) How should you approach day-trading on-line?

If any of these questions are ones that interest you, be sure to check this book out.

I have to admit I was a little surprised at the usefulness of the tips in this book. It covers so many areas with intelligent tips it really has changed my perspective about how to manage money. Thanks Mark! A book of this type can't cover incredible DEPTH on the various topics that are presented, but it does manage to get you thinking along the lines that can save you a lot of money. Some tips are common sense to people with a lot of experience, but there are surprising gems even for an expert. Some things were a little out of my league (I haven't started any offshore investment programs) but other things really hit home (some of the online/Internet information, for example). My experience is more Internet-related, and I can see that Mark can't cover EVERY red flag to watch out for, but he leads you down a path of figuring things out for yourself. Even for an experienced online user like me, he brought up some VERY good points, which I appreciate greatly. Overall, I think people of all levels of financial expertise will benefit to some degree with this book -- easily covering the cost of the book itself many, many times over! 5 stars!

I thought this book was excellent. Skousen, editor of the financial letter Forecasts & Strategies, shows you the easiest and most effective way to increase your investment returns: lower your costs. He also points out how you can save money on insurance, collectibles, even art. I agree with Skousen. The internet and other changes taking place in the financial industry are allowing investors to control their financial destiny at a fraction of the former cost. This book is a virtual user's manual on how to do it. Well worth reading.

Dear Author!

Just bought two books from Amazon, Put option writing and covered call writing. Thanks, your books are very useful, I will recommend to some of my friends about these wonderful books

Thanks again,

Readers
Kenny

I would highly recommend this book to any stock investor who is looking for some new ideas to earn back the money they've lost in the bear market. Who ever heard of being paid immediate cash to wait to buy stocks at a lower price? That's what this book taught me to how to do. It sounds too good to be true, but I know it works because I've done it after reading the book. I wanted to buy the Nasdaq 100 Trust (QQQ) at a lower price. Instead of just waiting to see if it went lower, I wrote put contracts on the QQQ at my buy price using what I learned in the book. I collected $485 in cash in my brokerage account the next day. The stock didn't hit my price, so I didn't buy it the first month, but I got to keep the $485, which was a 24% return on an annual basis. The next month I did the same thing (collected $625 this time). My price was hit and I bought the QQQ shares for 15% less than the price when I started this. In the meantime I collected $1,110 while I waited to buy my shares for 15% less. This is explained so well that anyone can do it. Nobody I know seems to know about this. It's all in this book.

The book by Bodie et al is unquestionably, the best introduction to Investment Theory available today. Please note that there is an emphasis on the word introduction, because there is much that can be covered after the book ends. This book provides a springboard from which the student can take off in different directions viz. Derivatives, Risk Management, Portfolio Management etc.

The language is simple, and there are no mathematical demons in the book. The Concept Check questions are extremely valuable and should be attempted before the reader delves into the equally challenging exercises at the end of the chapters. The book starts with an introduction to the different types of markets and financial instruments present today, and then moves into investments, risk etc. The book touches upon a number of topics including bonds, financial statement analysis, security valuation, derivatives and hedging. Like other multipurpose book, it does not go in-depth into any of these, but provides the reader a brief introduction to each of them for help in further studies. It does dwell a lot on portfolio theories which are described in detail, with numerous examples. The chapter-ending exercises are graded with easier questions in the beginning, and extremely challenging ones in the end.

All in all, a great book!

I am a lecturer in Finance for a university in the UK. I evaluated this book for use in an Executive MBA course in portfolio management after previously using "Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management" by Reilly and Brown. The Reilly book takes a more quantitative approach to the valuation of various assets and is more comprehensive than "Investments" in terms of its coverage of securities and markets but I ultimately opted for "Investments" due to its clarity, organization, and quality writing style. The authors do an excellent job of communicating fairly complex concepts to a student with little or no background in finance.

If you are studying for the CFA or need a more advanced text, I can recommmend the Reilly book. If you are a practitioner or looking for a very mathematically rigorous text in portfolio management, I can recommend "Active Portfolio Management" by Grinold. But for an undergraduate or graduate student looking for an excellent primer on stocks, bonds, options, futures and the workings of the markets they are traded on, look no further than "Investments".

One note: we were able to obtain a paperback copy of the text at much reduced cost.

Anyone embarking upon a study of investments should begin with this book. From an explanation of market structure to intuitive analyses of all core concepts in investments (like Markowitz Theory, CAPM, Black-Scholes, Fixed Income concepts), this book has everything. Newer editions of the book also have very good instructions on how to implement the tools in MS-Excel. Obviously, this book is not meant for those pursuing a PhD. Rather it is meant for MBAs and aspiring CFAs who want to learn and implement investment tools and analysis.

If you think you pay too much for your lazy broker, you should keep this book as your new broker. You can get an idea from beginning to ending process of stock, bonf and mutual fund investments through an internet, It's Great!

I am a college student that has recently started armchair investing. This book really made the process understandable allowing me to open an account at an online brokerage firm. I however fell short of giving the book five stars for the writers political comments ei. His distaste for Merill Lynch for their boycott of investing in South Africa during apartheid.

This book is widely used in finance courses in my university, a puzzling fact because books should rarely sell if they're hard to read. The bookfs authors introduce a broad array of investment theories and discoveries. Thatfs a plus. But their wordy sentences, which grow wordier and harder to follow as they delve into each chapterfs key concepts, offset the plus. The authorsf inconsistent use of terminology is another drawback. As I move on to later chapters, I feel as if the authors were growing more verbose. That benefits no readers, given the later chapters discussing higher-level concepts.
When they revise this book for the next edition, they should hire proofreaders, journalists if possible. They care about readers and can help rewrite the entire book into a readable piece that helps students instead of confusing them.

I studied the entire book for my Investment Management course at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and found it very complete from the point of view of the "novice" investor and/or student. The book is not written for the intermediate or expert investor, but for an introductory course in Investment management it did the trick.

This is a clearly written book with excellent visual aids. I especially liked the concept checks and the current events boxes. The sample questions from CFA exams were particularly helpful. On whole the book does an exceptional job of explaining difficult subject matter. I'd even recommend this book to the 'lay' reader.

I think that there are a lot of other ideas on how to get involved in Drips using the company and your own savvy of computors and go online to save money or build a portfolio with out the high costs. I personally would like to see such a book.

Investing requires research and WORK. Free Lunch on Wall Street is not a free lunch. It still requires WORK on your part. You get out of your investments exactly what you put into them. You can read Free Lunch on Wall Street, but I don't think it's worth $14.95. Sure, you may get a free lunch at the shareholders meeting, but is it worth the other expenses just to get there

While the book suggests not buying stocks based upon the "freebies" given, we've been able to make up some nice gift baskets for family and friends - based upon the companies' holiday offerings. If that weren't enough, we've made a nice profit on the stocks to boot!