stock-investing Books

The information in this book got me out of the market in 2007. Didn't lose a penny to the bear market that followed. I don't know of any other book that called the downturn starting in 2007, but this one did. There is another date that it calls in the future. Let's see if it can get 2 in a row.

I enjoyed this book and the book taught me something. I learned a few things that I didn't know before. For me there was too much information about Canada and it's demographics. Don't get me wrong, I love Canada but I am more interested in the future demographics of the United States. As a former Oil Worker and current Peak Oil Researcher, I think demographics is the most important factor in Peak Oil. While everyone will focus on Oil Production and declining barrels, they most often never consider national or global demographis. Who will build our new energy world? You can't replace 78 million boomers with 48 million Gen Xer's. The Gen Xer's will already have careers and will be taking care of old parents and their young teen kids, or grandkids. It's my understanding that the generation after the Gen Xer's are about the same size or maybe a little smaller? What will happen when more than half of the country starts to retire? Who will replace the millions in the Oil & Gas Industry? Millions in Federal, State and Local Government? The Utility Industry? Nursing? This book is a good book but didn't answer these questions for me. Regards, Keith Renick, Peachtree City, Ga.

Every once in a while, someone writes a book that radically alters our perspective about our life, our history, our beliefs and ourselves. This is one of those rare occasions. The author documents how each baby boom in the last 200 years, and he shows that there were five, has followed a similar set of activities. There are several examples that are currently unfolding before my eyes. The first is the high stock market volatility and a credit crunch that has moved beyond the borders of the U.S. and has so far affected French, German and Australian banks, just when the baby boomers are beginning to retire. It makes me wonder where this is all going to end up. Another is in 1944 religious education became a legislated requirement in the schools of Ontario. The Conservative government was re-elected by a landslide for backing the issue. In 1969 the Mackay Committee recommended that religious education be removed from schools because it did not reflect the principles of modern education. Some sixty years later, in the coming election of Oct. 2007, the Conservative Party of Ontario will be taking the platform of funding religious schools again. Oh - those rappers - like Sean Kingston - they've announced that they are not going to cuss anymore in their music. Is this eerily reminiscent of the past - or the future?

Very good book on the unique concepts of biotech investing. It covers all areas and would be useful for beginners or advanced investors.

Tom Abate has been covered the Biotech industry for the San Francisco Chronicle for years. It shows. He brings a strong dose of reality to this hype driven sector.

Who this book is for:
-Independent investors willing to spend a lot of time doing research
-People looking for a current industry overview
-Job seekers

The Good:
-Extremely well written
-Up to Date (as of spring 2003)
-Knowledgeable - several small tidbits of data pay for the book by themselves

The Bad:
-Will quickly go out of date. For example the Appendix contains a list of firm websites and market caps; Market Caps change - companies disappear.
-Not enough FDA information. This should have been a separate chapter covering the FDA approval process in detail as well as other countries' processes.
-Too much basic investment advice: firm valuation/free cash flow/ portfolio theory / investor risk profile. Other books do a better, more thorough job of this.
-No bibliography

I gave it 5 stars because if you are going to invest in biotech the book will more than pay for itself.

An excellent introduction to biotech investing.

Tom Abate is a good writer and knows his subject. I thought this book was written in a guarded, pragmatic way that suits the reader's purpose (presumably investment). The dustjacket shouts of a 'coming boom' but the author can be forgiven for what is basically puffery. Abate is clearly arguing for a period of drawn out growth fuelled by demographics and accelerating technical progress - not an imminent goldrush.

I gained a number of insights I consider valuable:
-An understanding of the mechanism of FDA approval and how companies manage themselves around it.
-The fluid business models of existing companies.
-The way in which institutional fund managers seem to advocate active trading over a 'buy and hold' approach to biotech portfolios (this surprised me).

Timely, relevant and convincingly argued. I'd probably buy another book by this author.

Well conceived and organized with keen insight into how some of the best investors attained their success through intelligent financial investments.

Krass' style creates an easy to follow, easy to understand narrative of some of the best business minds and their approach to financial investing.

An exceptional collection of essays by 46 great names business such as Pickens, Baruch, Moody, Buffet, Lynch, Forbes, Soros, and Trump. Key themes include: basic of analysis; attitude and philosophy; strategy; cycles; views from the inside; and more. Each essay includes a biographical sketch of the writer.

This collection of essays proves to be interesting, entertaining, and filled with informative thoughts. This is not a 'how to get-rich-quick in the stock market book'; it is more of a solid, conservative investment for your reading portfolio. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, Stern & Associates, author of Stern's Sourcefinder The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and the Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.

I bought the book after reading the other 5 star reviews.

The author describes various items about financial statements. What's really missing is good comprehensive test cases - where he can walk us through applying what was being explained.
It was way too much money for what is being offered. I learned much more from MorningStar Classic "The five rules of successful stock investing" for a fraction of price.

Decoding Financial Statements has a rare combination of wisdom, pertinent, interesting, real world examples, and tips/tricks that are not normally available to the retail investor. Any analyst, portfolio manager and individual investor will learn about a tremendous wealth of current and historical case study examples that illustrate how financial information (reports and press releases) drive stock market prices and valuations.

The big bonus is that this book is NOT written by a CPA, but has a humorous, tongue-in-cheek tone. This makes it entertaining and informative, regardless of your level of knowledge or interest in financial statements, per se.

I am a corporate securities attorney in Los Angeles and a former CPA. I found this book to be the perfect guide for any business attorney, accountant or anyone involved in running a public company. The book is easy to read and understand and is well organized as a go to reference guide.

If you are looking for a this book in Spanish, this is not it. This book is in English and published in those countries. It is not in their language.

This is a slightly technical (you can skip to the good stuff) explanation of the hightly rated Elliott Wave Theory for predicting direction and breaks in the stock market. Even if you are not into stocks the book is a good read to show how mathematical theory applies in everyday life. While researching a lecture to be given to gifted students back in the 90's I found a book published in 1964 that laughed at the theory outlined here. The '64 book dedicated a small paragraph to the theory and tossed out the statement to the effect, if one believed this theory, the stock market would have to be at a certain incredible level in the early 90's. A quick check of the market confirmed that it was!

This book is awesome, it teaches you a way of technical analysis that nobody else can even imagine. It implies that the markets are patterned, and that those patterns repeat themselves in all time frames, from 1 day to even 5 years or more.

Elliott Wave consists of 13 basic patterns. These patterns are formed by waves and/or market movements. If you can learned to recognize this patterns you can make a lot of money by been able to identify the next move.

Elliott wave analysis has rules and guidelines that will help you to know where to place your stop, how to recognize these patterns, how to make the correct wave count within these patterns, will give you the tools to predict price objectives and time frames for those price objectives, and a stop or a limit that will negate the whole thing if been wrong. The result is method that offers high probability trades that works the majority of the time if you are a discipline investor.

This book alone won't be enough to make you a great trader, but it would improve your trading dramatically. One tip, you need to learn to validate those wave counts and/or patterns by using several technical indicators that should show certain divergences in certain faces of those patterns and/or waves. The combination of Elliott Wave analysis with traditional Technical Analysis beats any other form of analysis you can possibly imagine.

In longer time frames, you need to combine those two with economic cycle theory. I like the Princeton Model. And see the charts and technical indicators in weekly or even monthly basis, and probably in logarithmic scale.

Some said that Robert Pretcher was wrong by calling the market top in 2000. Well he wasn't, neither the S&P 500, nor the Nasdaq has regained their 2000 highs, in more than 7 years. And in real terms, as well as in gold terms, the DJIA is still below its 2000 highs.

But indeed that doesn't matter to me, I am a position trader, an options position trader, I buy calls and puts, and create spreads, with time frames of two to four months. And believe me, the only way to win with options these way consistently, or at least, most of the time, and grow your money fast and quickly is by using Elliott Wave analisys. If you don't dominate this technique, stay away form options. If you do, be discipline, and trade only deep in the money options.

Appling it in for real is a little more difficult than understanding it, and it could probably take several months to learn to do it correctly and to obtain good results consistently, that is assuming you are already a fairly good market technician and have several years of experience investing in the market.

Well, it works for me, so I hope it would work for you too.

Good luck.

From this book,I can have interest in Market psychology.And I get to learn more about this. Please let me know about the seminar held by Tony Plummer !

Tony Plummer's recent visit to New York and his speech at the Princeton Club had prompted me to reread his book. In his quiet, understated, very British way, but with a tremendous clarity and style this professional money manager reveals mass psychology is behind market moves. If the markets drive you crazy with their seemingly irrational swings, read this book to see the logic behind disorder. Tony Plummer illuminates market movements for you in a way that will impact your understanding for as long as you trade. Then he shares some of his analytic techniques. This book belongs on the desk of every serious technical analyst and trader!

This book has a beautiful starting and amazing ending.In the begining of the book Mr. Plummer talks about how the psycology of investors as a whole can effect the financial market. At the end he talks about few strategies to adopt as an investor. The middle of the book explains different concepts of technical anaysis which is not very impressive. It is a good book but their are better books available on technical analysis. Well i had time and read the whole book on the train while going to work every morning.

This book definitely provides a lot of information regarding futures. It is the best reference book on futures that I have ever read.

Please note: This review refers to the 1991 edition.

It is a good book, but this edition is plagued with typos, and mistakes in at least one chart. Don't make the same mistake I did; buy the last edition (I bought mine on the store with very little time ...) I haven't had the chance to check out the latest version (Starting Out in Futures Trading), my guess is that it's corrected and updated.

About his writing, I like the fact that he mixes personal experience with academic and corporate studies about the market. I think the book becomes very useful that way.

For the price this is a great book to learn and help understand the specifics that make up all the basics in trading commodity-futures. After reading this book, I felt as if I had taken a formal college course on the subject of Futures and understood it much better from various angles now. There's no "hype" in the book, no agendas, no further products or services to buy being pitched to you, just plain vanilla (ok, french vanilla) basics being laid out for you in textbook fashion for you to digest in your own terms. I like that - it's refreshing in a way. It is probably like this because it was really written 20+ years ago (don't worry, it's been revised many times to be modernized - 5th edition, 1993). The book was originally written and printed in "Commodities" magazine as a popular mini-course series (before the magazine changed it's name to the modern "Futures" magazine we know it as today). Even though I knew much of the content from personal experience (the most costly way) or from other readings, my CTA, etc, I did not always understand the "why" behind the rules I was following & how the markets work the way they do from both a technical and fundmental perspective (dynamics). Of the some 28 chapters, I really took interest in almost every one. I can't say that about most of the other trading books I've read. Put it this way... if I could keep only 5 trading books, this would be one of them. You'll likely dump more than that on the commissions for 1 trade - or, worse yet, even more than that on 1 bad trade. ** Beginners, I recommend the following: If your goal is to have deeper pockets from trading - then you must first go deeper in your understanding of futures markets & trading them (i.e. Read the book).

This book is great for a novice. He outlines techniques in technical analysis and even a little fundamental analysis. From there, the reader can choose which method to expand on through further reading.

Great combination of broad overview, and specific analytical techniques. I powered through this book in a few days...partly to quench my newfound thirst for daytrading education, and partly because it is so well written and easy to read.
It wasn't dumbed down and it wasn't too technical. Good for beginner to intermediate trader. This is NOT a complete trading guide by any means, but it is a wonderful overview. If you want a lot of theory, this is not the book. The author recommends books on certain topics if you want to expand your knowledge (apparently there is an entire book devoted to candlestick charts).

This book is a great introduction to trading and technical analysis. The author explains the technical analysis patterns, and more importantly, the financial psychology behind those patterns. He explains how supply and demand, and the human behavior of greed and fear create those patterns.

The only shortcoming is that there isn't much material on the other important aspects of trading like money management, position sizing, risk management, system testing / validation. For that, you would still need a book like Van K. Tharp's "Trade your Way to Financial Freedom" or Marcel Link's "High Probability Trading". I would have rated this 4 and 1/2 stars if there was such a rating. Worth more than 4 stars, but not quite 5 stars.

Overall, this book is a great primer, and would still be a very good value at twice the price.

I really didn't know much of anything about the stock market. Chris put it all in perspective for me and took out the scare factor. I now feel very confident when I pick stocks and know that my money is protected because of the tactics that I learned from this book.

I agree with the other reviewers that this book is an outstanding essay for those who want to learn how to select stocks for a value portfolio. Where we differ is that for the typical investor he does not have the resources to build a properly diversified portfolio- either financial or mental resources. Value stocks do provide returns in excess of broad market returns but in order to have adequate diversification you must assemble several hundred issues well beyond the resources of the average investor. Further one must have the time and skill to evaluate several thousand issues.

I can offer a solution to this problem. I want to recommend for you a book titled How to Make Money in the Stock Market-Buy 2,500 different stocks for $1000 - Pay no Commission This book is a must for those wanting to find out about indexing (passive investing) and why it is the superior method for the small investor (and big one too). This book is an outstanding guide to personal investing. It will be useful to all investors from novices to highly the highly experienced. This book prepares the reader to approach investing from the standpoint of the underlying science. It is the antithesis of a 'get rich quick scheme'.

All aspects of Modern Portfolio Theory and passive (index) investing are explained in a through and easily understood manner. The aspect I like most is that as well as a solid theoretical foundation the book is very practical and shows the reader how to create (and more importantly) and manage over time a successful portfolio. This is a great book- for the beginning investor, it's a great place to start and for the experienced investor there are many valuable suggestions.

It's a shame to think of how much money investors have lost "investing" in the stock market over the years. I wish I had read this little book years ago. The chapter on automatic investing recommends a number of portfolios that follow modern portfolio theory and adjust risk as you age without any effort on the part of the reader at all. Had this book been written years ago and had I followed its directions I would be rich today of that I am certain. Nevertheless I will pursue one of the portfolios recommended and stick to my chosen asset plan.
Piscaqua Research in a study covering the period 1987-96 found that only 10 out of 145 major pension funds, or just seven percent, out performed a portfolio consisting of a simple 605/405 mix of the S&P 500 index and the Lehman Bond index respectively.

Os it logical I ask for you to believe that you can predict which actively managed funds will out perform, or are you overconfident of your skills? If you are trying to find the great fund managers who will out perform in the future ask yourself: what am I going to do differently in terms of identifying the future winning fund managers, than did the pension plans and their advisors? And if you are not going to something different what logic is there in playing a game at which others with superior resources have consistently failed?
If you a really serious in finding an investment technique that will provide you with reasonable return with less risk I suggest the following little book.I wrote this book
Just click on the title to find the book. How to Make Money in the Stock Market-Buy 2,500 Different Stocks-Pay no Commission

Most people are afraid of what they don't know and they don't understand the Stock Market and so they don't invest. Though people express a desire to make money in the stock market. If this describes you, you want to read Chris's book. It will take the fear our of the unknown and create the confidence you need to begin learning about the stock market and how you can make money with it.
In his book, Chris explains stock market terminology in easy to understand terms, he gives you step by step procedures you can put into place to practice buying and selling without spending any real money until you are confident, how to open a brokerage account and much more.
He offers resources and information on measuring how profitable your investements are and how to protect them.
If you can't decide if you want to make money with the stock market, pick up this book to help you decide and see how easy it really can be.

This book successfully navigates potential investors safely through a very large, and largely unknown, South American market: Brazil. For serious investors looking to diversify their volatile portfolios outside of the U.S., Brazil serves up some good opportunities, and the author very methodically gives his opinions on a wide variety of stocks.

I became interested in the gospel according to Fred Fuld III over the past year or so, as his advice pretty much outperformed the world, while most traditional analysts posted significant losses, Mr. Fuld's recommendations were up substantially, even higher than most analysts posted during the good old pre-2000 days.

The author's overall knowledge validated the information he was passing along on the stocks in Brazil, and with his advice, that portion of my portfolio has significantly outperformed the main stream North American holdings.

I'm hoping he'll do other books for some other parts of the world; clearly, we are a part of a global economy, and it would behoove us to gain as much information as possible on what's going on around the rest of the world. His analysis of Brazil was very astute and most appreciated, especially in light of the dismal bear market we're currently suffering through.

I've been reading and seeing increased articles and tv programs about the phenomenal investment opportunities emerging out of Brazil. Until Investing In Brazil Stocks there has not been a single resource for those of us interested in the investment potential in Brazil to compare companies. This book offers a quick, easily understood and complete source to research these companies and a unique opportunity to drill down into all of the Brazillian hoopla.

There are so many global and country-specific pieces of information as well as little nuggets of gold "tid-bits" that really focus on what makes each stock significant. If you are considering any Brazillian stock for your portfolio, you should read this book!

This book is a compact encyclopedia of Brazil's best companies. Reading it made me want to travil down south to see what all the excitement is about!
You can use this book as a starter kit for investing in Brazil that provides you with lots of fundamental data and helpful history. Hopefully, in future editions or publications, Fuld will also give us some more direct investing advice to help us distinguish between the good and the GREAT Brazilian companies.