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The author makes a simple and readable, but provocative and compelling, explication of the modern mechanism of wealth creation. Dr. Edmunds' great breadth of experience with the economies of First and Third World countries enriches his analysis and raises it above the purely theoretical. Read this book and contemplate its ramifications for the wealth of nations.

The author eloquently brings together forces that shape today's equity markets; and in an easy to understand way discusses the how's and why's of value creation through ownership of financial assets and how this has affected the population at large. Definitely add to your reading list if you're curious about economics, finance, political policies, world markets, production, how value creation leads to wealth creation through ownership of financial assets.

lays out the mechanics of financial wealth creation piece by piece, with simple examples, showing how the enormous pile of paper wealth has been created, and how it keeps growing so fast. Crisp and elegant prose; the erudite author grabs your attention and demands your respect

A comprehensive, mind filling piece of work for anyone who could not get answers to the typical questions that usually arise when entering the equity market.

Financial Independence The Smart Way shows you how to become your own investment manager. If you're looking for advice and an action plan to help you secure your financial freedom, look no further. I found this investment book to be the best I've seen. The author takes a disciplined, systematic approach to investing, guiding you from your personal objectives to suitable investments for your portfolio. It has helped me to sort through the maze of current offerings and develop a well-designed plan for investing. The book shows how to "invest the smart way" and what it takes to be a successful investor. The author explains why its risky to be out of the market. I liked the strategies he offered to become my own investment manager, to plan for a financially secure retirement, to invest online and to protect my capital.

I read this book in two or three days because I literally could not put it down. It was evident the author has a lot of insight into microcaps and successful strategies for investing in them. A good investment book will provide atleast one or two pearls of wisdom, this book provides many such pearls and it is easily worth many times the book's price

S & P 100 Best Growth Stocks is as good a guide for the beginning Stock picker as it is a confirmation piece for the experienced invester. Specifically, the brief, well-written, easy-to-read Introduction is a valuable perspective refresher to the accustomed invester. It is indispensible to the beginner.

Moreover the stocks selected are on target - and especially suitable to the invester, as distinct from the trader - the presentation was good, with the summary, graphs, and tables very helpful. No onlie invester should be without it.

What should be done? Put in a table of contents so that one could find the stock more easily, revise this book frequently, (I'm on the look out for the revision) and speedily publish a work on 100 Best Tech Stocks and ensure that the practical, no-nonsense character of this masterpiece is preserved in subsequent publications.

The book was okay. However, I thought the author threw in too much unnecessary information in order to keep the book from only being 30 pages long! For instance, do we really need a rehashing of the history of value investing? Also, there are lots and lots of charts, which I think is overkill.

Other than that, the book is fine!

Here is a rarity in value investment literature: a more or less complete system for finding RELATIVELY cheap stocks. And the system described is indeed useful enough that nearly anyone with a value disposition might take at least a portion of it away to incorporate into his or her own approach.

Ostensibly, the heart of Tengler's book is the use of relative dividend yield or relative price to sales ratio (relative to a stock's prior trading history). However, the most useful portion of her method concerns her thoughtful use of a checklist/scoring system to help avoid "value traps" --purchasing stocks with dividend yields which are high for good reason, for example. The described scoring system is at once disciplined and somewhat flexible, two key attributes to wade through a crowded, value-driven market.

The book is exceptionally clear and concise in terms of the general methodology offered by the author. However, the scoring system as modified by Tengler for assessment of bank stocks should have been more clearly defined by way of example, especially since banks are such a large part of the relative dividend investment universe. This is a small quibble as compared to the useful general approach given to the reader.

The best value investment literature offers both a general way to recognize value and practical means to find it. The approach offered here is somewhat novel, very useful, and well-described. The book is one of the more useful works to appear in value investment literature over the past several years, and even if the reader chooses not to embrace the entire approach, he or she will probably find a few useful ideas to discern value.

One of the best and most informative pieces on fundamental investing. A well written, step by step overview of how to look at and analyze a company's future prospects, while not paying too much currently. Following this formula will certainly help readers outperform overall equity indices, over long periods of time. A wonderful strategy for retirement plans, college savings accounts, and any fund with a time horizon of three years or more. What you will learn from this book is how to find those companies that have become fallen angels; once the high flyers, now the value stocks, and how to assess there future prospects.

John Train's slim book The Craft of Investing has a title that might mislead some readers into thinking that it is another one of his well-crafted overviews on investing. A good portion of the text, however, deals with topics that are probably most relevant to high networth individuals, family wealth management professionals and private bankers. Other investors will find chapters such as "Family Capital," "The [Trust] Executor's Job," and "How to Use a Safe-Deposit Box" less than relevant.

There are passages that are of interest to a wider audience. The first portion of the book is a brief, but useful survey of different investment styles. Other passages provide an interesting distillation of Train's tips on what makes a good investor, for instance, his advice about reverse engineering the trades of well-regarded institutional investors ("start by piggybacking on the thinking of the best professionals"); keeping a conservative approach to investing (which he says favors " sober, seasoned, careful older people"), and honing of investment skills to a professional level. "Most points are lost on errors, rather than by forcing shots. Since the investor never has to act, he should focus on not making avoidable mistakes." There is not enough meat on the bone here, though, to rank this book as one of Train's better ones. Instead, readers new to his work are better off starting with The Money Masters and The New Money Masters, two books that rank among the best in the investment field.

Overall this is a great investment book. It covers an extremely broad range of topics and for the most part the reader cannot go too far wrong following the author's advice. The sections on the nature of markets and his advice on commodities alone makes the book worthwhile. Bear in mind that the book was published in 1994 but most of the content is timeless. Another book with much of the same advice is The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias. One additional thing- some of the charts and tables and examples date from the 1970's and are evidently from magazine articles that the author wrote. Just so you know what you are buying. The example are good ones and mostly remain relevant today. The only real limitation of the book is Train's simplistic approach to growth stock picking.

It is impossible to praise this book enough. I have been actively investing for greater than 10 years, and I have read more books than I care to count. You will feel much more confident in your investing and making choices. I finally have a good grip on why do stocks go up and down. But you get insight into other matters as well ,and get to feel the wisdom of a true master,in a well written easy style. Just what we need during this deflating bubble we are in now.

Unlike other numerology books this book focused a lot of attention on the double digit before reducing to the single digit. The information gleaned from this process was very informative and interesting. In fact I felt it was one of the most informative books on the subject that I have read.

The reason for 4 stars instead of 5 is the way numbers are used for prediction. If you were born with a 3 birth path why do you become your birth month + birth date + whatever the year is? In my opinion (and what seems to make more sense) if your path is a 3 (and to stay on that path) you need to add 3 + the current year = peresonal year(x), x + current month = personal month (y), y + the current day = personal day. You are the number you were born with. The date of the year you were born is part of what you are. Why is that left behind when configuring numbers in prediction? It works, try it. I would love to read a book with this type of prediction. Open to recommendations.

I am usually not interested in anything with math. This book
is concise, easy to read, and interesting. I used Nick's method
and found it extremely simple to utilize. My husband has a few
habits that drove me to distraction on occasion. I did his
numbers and found out that habits were part of his pattern. It
has made a HUGE difference in how we relate. I looked at my
numbers, also, and found out my quirks (a nice way to put it).
This makes your actions and reactions make so much more sense.
I would recommend this to any person who wants to improve their
relationships or life in general. I would tell the casual reader
to try it, it's fun!

Newmerology is awesome! I have used this system and found it to be very accurate -- and very revealing. Calculating my numbers using Nick's directions has pinpointed my personality to a tee, and it has also brought to light some of the less obvious trends in my life. For example, I have been drawn to certain personalities (27/9's to be exact), and that is because I am a 43/7. However, for me, I prefer someone with a slightly different compound number to mesh with me! So, now I have the tool to assist me in my relationships, both personal and business wise. All I have to do is figure out the Newmorology Birth Path number for the other person, and I know how the numbers relate to each other and what to expect in the relationship, and how I can best serve that relationship.

I highly recommmend this book to anyone looking for insight into the world in which we live and how to relate to that world in a positive and affirmative way.

Thanks to Nick for bringing New-insight to this world's realm!

This is just an addendum to a review I already wrote; some other reviewers point out that this is not a guide on how to pick stocks, and that is true. I would like to emphasize that the studies of past market behavior described in this book don't seem to point to any reliable method of picking individual stocks, or even evaluating fund managers in any statistically significant manner. This was not a problem for me; the main thrust of the book is that the stock market is the best (only) way to ensure that 'wealth' a) is not gobbled up by inflation and b) has a good chance of appreciating past inflation. With those simple goals in mind, investing in a whole-market index fund with a couple of more focused other index funds doesn't seem like such a bad idea. To really take advantage of the historical perspective offered in this book, it seems very important to keep dollar-cost averaging into these funds even (especially!) during market down times. If your time horizon is long enough, those relatively low-cost purchases will come back in a big way. If you just buy once, you can be sure that after 40 years that purchase will not have lost ground to inflation, but there is no guarantee on the state of the market at the time you need to cash out; to really take advantage of the performance of the market, you must keep buying into it through thick (more or less) but especially thin. In that regard, the secret to financial success is not so much picking x amount of 10-baggers as it is to keep putting money away through all financial conditions that you can manage.

Spend less, save more, and put your savings where they have the best chance to grow.

Siegel's third edition is the best introduction to the traditional assets classes (i.e., stocks and bonds) that I have ever read, hands-down. This book has two strengths: One, it is a rigorous empirical study of historical market returns and their components. Two, it is broad and accessible introduction to various investment theories and styles, economic influences (e.g., inflation, business cycles, economic data) and newer product categories like exchange-traded funds. This is an ambitiously broad anthology chock-full of important topics, so it serves as a great starting point for new students of investment theory. For example, his Chapter on "Gold, the Federal Reserve and Inflation" is a brief, helpful introduction to the history of monetary policy. Another great Chapter is "Market Volatility," which illustrates that market volatility has been remarkably stable over the long run, with some violent exceptions.

What I really love about Siegel is his intent: he wants to educate the average investor and he is not dogmatic. I understand that a handful of negative reviews arise from a credible concern that the stock market could be a lot more hazardous in the future than in the past, but Siegel is not blindly extrapolating into the future. It is pretty unfair to call this "naïve empiricism," by the way. His conclusion is more specific and relative: he believes stocks should outperform bonds, but they will downshift from the long-run historical pattern to outperform bonds by about 2%, give or take.

He reaches this conclusion by showing how the stock market has historically averaged roughly 7% percent in real returns over any long-run stretch. He then presents various alternative valuation models and shares his carefully qualified conclusion: that economic factors justify an modest upward revision in the price-earnings ratio (P-E ratio) to the low 20s, and from that starting point, we might look forward to real equity returns of "4 to 5 percent." Granted, he then goes on to discuss some factors that could well propel returns even higher, and one big unfavorable factor that could send them lower (i.e., the demographic problem of fewer investors in the developed world). But you get to see how his model works, and he serves up each assumption logically and in balanced form so that you can consider the conclusion for yourself. In this vein and offered as a minor critique at the margin, I happen to question his assumption that higher equity valuations per se lead to increased earnings (via cheaper stock offerings and hence cheaper investment capital) because I do not think you can necessarily assume that more capital leads to better investments. Also, he does not address or incorporate the dilution effects of employee stock options.

Similarly, his case for "buy and hold" is balanced. The data in the Chapter on "Stocks and the Business Cycle" could in fact be used to advocate market timing. Siegel shows that successful timing (or more specifically, buying near the bottom) produces impressive returns. He just thinks it is really hard to predict business cycles.

This is the bible of traditional classes, and so I would note that there is no discussion of so-called alternative investments (e.g., hedge fund, private equity, real estates). Also, I missed the lack of an explicit discussion of asset allocation; can we maybe get that in the next edition?

Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel is one of the most credible, most astute stock market analysts in the world. He is not a mindless stock cheerleader; in fact, his March 14, 2000 Wall Street Journal article entitled "Why Big Cap Tech Stocks Are a Sucker's Bet" persuasively pointed out how the high tech stock emperor had no clothes, and helped burst the insanely overvalued tech bubble. This was at a time when the vast majority of Wall Street analysts were inventing new valuation methods to justify insane stock prices, while other more pessimistic analysts had declared an "irrational exuberance" years before the market actually topped.

"Stocks for the Long Run" is Siegel's seminal work (now in its third edition), an excellent introduction to investing for the average investor looking to save for retirement. If the SEC were to choose one book to force people to read before they were allowed to invest their money in the stock market, this book would be it. In fact, the people who lost their retirement money because it was all invested in one stock such as Enron or Worldcom (or a bunch of dot-coms), or who lost a fortune day trading when the market tanked, would have been so much better off if they had just read this book and applied its lessons. They would be better off, the market would be much less volatile, the allocation of capital would be more efficient, the economy would be stronger, and the world would be a better place, if only more people would read this book.

"Stocks for the Long Run" gives you all the knowledge you need to implement a solid investment strategy. Siegel educates and informs (this book will teach you all the basics you need to know to watch CNBC and to understand the market), and he packs his book with as much long-term data and supporting evidence as possible. He is a firm believer in the scientific method and data; he does not posit recommendations unless they are firmly supported by historical evidence.

The good news in the third edition (post 1990s/2000 bubble) is that the case for investing in stocks is still a strong one. Siegel presents extremely persuasive arguments why, long term, stocks hold their value and gain value better than any other type of investment (fundamentally, we must never lose sight of the fact that stocks are claims on real assets and the cash flows generated by enterprises). Surprisingly, stocks are lower risk, long-term, than bonds. Siegel presents some good arguments why stocks now deserve a higher-than-long-term-average P/E, but also shows how index investing (which he still heartily recommends) is distorting the market, and how our expectations for returns from stocks need to come down slightly. He correctly identifies TIPS as the best investment for those seeking short-term safety.

Siegel's main argument is that investors should get into stocks in such a way as to match the overall return of the market, which will provide them with a healthy long-term return on investment. He does show a number of ways to improve on that return and beat the market, such as by recognizing when the market is under and overvalued, thereby buying low and selling high. Thus, I would recommend that a new investor first read, study and apply "Stocks in the Long Run", and then move on to Ben Stein's "Yes You Can Time the Market" as a way to optimize the lessons from "Stocks in the Long Run".

Too simple. Explain simple points in length boring stories. It wastes my money and time.

I generally will not trash a book that is targeted at the novice but this will be an exception. First, I am a novice at options investing so should have been right in the middle of the target market for this book. Fact is, I learned more just searching the Internet while I was waiting for the book to arrive than I learned from the book. It is just too simplistic. All the knowledge contained in this book could have been conveyed in a 20 page pamphlet rather than this 300+ page puff piece with its wide margins and large fonts. A true disappointment.

As an experienced options trader , I am familiar with the concept of writing covered calls to increase your returns. My main objective in buying this book was to be able to write in the money calls to improve my premiums in addition to avoid limiting my profits by mistiming the option sale resulting in the call option being excercised. Although this book explains the covered call concept well and is good for beginners as many reviewers mentioned it does not specifically address the technical indicators needed to assess the trend of a stock to allow a person to choose the right time to take action. My experience has shown that to be successful in writing calls you must be able to spot reversals in the trend of a stock.
Althouh some general aspects of timing are addressed in chapter 13 "timing the market vs time in the market" they are too gneral and not useful in implementing the strategies at the right time.
Many investors do not realize that a covered call strategy by itself would have cost you significant profits during the strong market of the late 90's and it is only good as long as the stock you write calls on does not move up strongly through the strike. A strategy like this without balance in using puts in combination would have resulted in severely limiting profits through the bull market.Although the author intended the book to be just for covered calls showing how a combination of puts and calls can be used together would be useful. Some of the fluff in the book could have been replaced by more meaty chapters.
All in all a good book for beginners.