Investing Books - Page 2

Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse (Lynn Sonberg Books)

Peter D. Schiff, John Downes

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 233 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The economic tipping point for the United States is no longer theoretical. It is a reality today. The country has gone from the world's largest creditor to its greatest debtor; the value of the dollar is sinking; domestic manufacturing is winding down - and these trends don't seem to be slowing. Peter Schiff casts a sharp, clear-sighted eye on these factors and explains what the possible effects may be and how investors can protect themselves. For more than a decade, Schiff has not only observed the U.S. economy, but also helped his clients reposition their portfolios to reflect his outlook. What he sees is a nation facing an economic storm brought on by growing federal, personal, and corporate debt, too-little savings, a declining dollar, and lack of domestic manufacturing.
Crash-Proof is an informed and informative warning of a looming period marked by sizeable tax hikes, loss of retirement benefits, double digit inflation, even - as happened recently in Argentina - the possible collapse of the middle class. However, Schiff does have a survival plan that can provide the protection that readers will need in the coming years.

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management

Roger Lowenstein

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 208 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

On September 23, 1998, the boardroom of the New York Fed was a tense place. Around the table sat the heads of every major Wall Street bank, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, and representatives from numerous European banks, each of whom had been summoned to discuss a highly unusual prospect: rescuing what had, until then, been the envy of them all, the extraordinarily successful bond-trading firm of Long-Term Capital Management. Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed is the gripping story of the Fed's unprecedented move, the incredible heights reached by LTCM, and the firm's eventual dramatic demise.

Lowenstein, a financial journalist and author of Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, examines the personalities, academic experts, and professional relationships at LTCM and uncovers the layers of numbers behind its roller-coaster ride with the precision of a skilled surgeon. The fund's enigmatic founder, John Meriwether, spent almost 20 years at Salomon Brothers, where he formed its renowned Arbitrage Group by hiring academia's top financial economists. Though Meriwether left Salomon under a cloud of the SEC's wrath, he leapt into his next venture with ease and enticed most of his former Salomon hires--and eventually even David Mullins, the former vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve--to join him in starting a hedge fund that would beat all hedge funds.

LTCM began trading in 1994, after completing a road show that, despite the Ph.D.-touting partners' lack of social skills and their disdainful condescension of potential investors who couldn't rise to their intellectual level, netted a whopping $1.25 billion. The fund would seek to earn a tiny spread on thousands of trades, "as if it were vacuuming nickels that others couldn't see," in the words of one of its Nobel laureate partners, Myron Scholes. And nickels it found. In its first two years, LTCM earned $1.6 billion, profits that exceeded 40 percent even after the partners' hefty cuts. By the spring of 1996, it was holding $140 billion in assets. But the end was soon in sight, and Lowenstein's detailed account of each successively worse month of 1998, culminating in a disastrous August and the partners' subsequent panicked moves, is riveting.

The arbitrageur's world is a complicated one, and it might have served Lowenstein well to slow down and explain in greater detail the complex terms of the more exotic species of investment flora that cram the book's pages. However, much of the intrigue of the Long-Term story lies in its dizzying pace (not to mention the dizzying amounts of money won and lost in the fund's short lifespan). Lowenstein's smooth, conversational but equally urgent tone carries it along well. The book is a compelling read for those who've always wondered what lay behind the Fed's controversial involvement with the LTCM hedge-fund debacle. --S. Ketchum

Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer)

James J. Cramer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Jim Cramer, bestselling author and host of CNBC's Mad Money, has written the ultimate guide to lifetime investing for readers of any age.

Whether you're a recent college grad trying to figure out how to start investing, a young parent struggling to decide where and how to put away money, or someone well into middle age and worried about whether you've saved enough for retirement, Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life has the answers. Cramer covers all the essentials: how to save, where to invest, which pitfalls to avoid. He offers valuable advice on everything from mortgages to college tuition. He explains what professional money managers do right that amateur investors do wrong. Because there is always a bull market somewhere, Cramer tells readers where to find the bull markets of the future, and for those willing to do the homework, he chooses twenty stocks that could be long-term moneymakers. For those who don't have the time or the temperament to invest in stocks, he identifies the mutual funds that are proven winners. He's investigated these funds by using his own twenty-five years' experience managing money for himself and dozens of America's wealthiest families. Throughout, in addition to his own enormously successful experience, Cramer draws on rigorous research to back up his advice.

Jim Cramer is America's #1 financial guru. Every day he advises investors on how to get ahead of the markets and stay ahead on his daily television show, Mad Money; in his online columns and commentary at TheStreet.com; in his popular "Bottom Line" column in New York magazine, and on television programs from early morning to late night. His books have all been national bestsellers and have helped educate hundreds of thousands of investors about the perils and promises of the financial markets. USA Today called him "the media's most electrifying market pundit"; and his legions of fans agree. Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life is the definitive money book, a practical, concrete, insightful book of invaluable financial advice that is a joy to read.

Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World

James J. Cramer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 269 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

How do we find hot stocks without getting burned? How do we fatten our portfolios and stay financially healthy? Former hedge-fund manager and longtime Wall Street commentator Jim Cramer explains how to invest wisely in chaotic times, and he does so in plain English in a style that is as much fun as investing is -- or should be, when it's done right.

For starters, Cramer recommends devoting a portion of your assets to speculation. Everyone wants to find the big winners that can bring outsized gains, and Cramer explains how to allocate your portfolio so that you can afford to take this kind of risk wisely. He explains why "buy and hold" is a losing philosophy: For Cramer, it's "buy and homework." If you can't spend an hour a week researching each of your stocks, then you should hand off your portfolio to a mutual fund -- and Cramer identifies the very few mutual funds that he'd recommend.

Cramer reveals his Ten Commandments of Trading (Commandment #5: Tips are for waiters). He explains why he's not afraid to compare investing to gambling (and tells you which book on gambling you should read to become a better investor). He discloses his Twenty-Five Rules of Investing (Rule #4: Look for broken stocks, not broken companies).

Cramer shows how to compare stock prices in a way that you can understand, how to spot market tops and bottoms, how to know when to sell, how to rotate among cyclical stocks to catch the big moves, and much more. Jim Cramer's Real Money is filled with insider advice that really works, information that Cramer himself used to make millions during his fourteen-year career on Wall Street.

Written in Cramer's distinctive turbocharged style, this is every investor's guide to what you really must know to make big money in the stock market.

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 380 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

If the prescriptions for getting rich that are outlined in books such as The Millionaire Next Door and Rich Dad Poor Dad are successful enough to make the books bestsellers, then one must ask, Why aren't there more millionaires? In Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a professional trader and mathematics professor, examines what randomness means in business and in life and why human beings are so prone to mistake dumb luck for consummate skill. This eccentric and highly personal exploration of the nature of randomness meanders from the court of Croesus and trading rooms in New York and London to Russian roulette, Monte Carlo engines, and the philosophy of Karl Popper. Part of what makes this book so good is Taleb's ability to make seemingly arcane mathematical concepts (at least to this reviewer) entirely relevant in evaluating and understanding everything from the stock market to the success of those millionaires cited in the aforementioned bestsellers. Here's an articulate, wise, and humorous meditation on the nature of success and failure that anyone who wants a little more of the former would do well to consider. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards

Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives with Derivagem CD (7th Edition) (Prentice Hall Series in Finance)

JOHN C HULL

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 67 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Not (quite) a place to start 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

If you are a total beginner, like I was 6 months ago, then you might want to tear your hair out when reading this book. I found the description of interest rates quite confusing. I would suggest you start with The Wall Street Journal Complete Money and Investing Guidebook (The Wall Street Journal Guidebooks) and then move to All About Derivatives (All About) and Investment Science. From then on it's quite a good book, but the mathematics is very cavalier (and would you trust someone who tells you that Pi is 3.14162?). Now that I have read a lot of these primers, I actually like Hull's book and find that his treatment of the Ito calculus, while lightweight is a good place to start before going on to a solid foundation.
I can't say anything about the numerical methods because it's not my field yet.

Editorial Review:

KEY BENEFIT: Updated and revised to reflect the most current information, this introduction to futures and options markets is ideal for those with a limited background in mathematics.

KEY TOPICS: Based on Hull's Options, Futures and Other Derivatives, one of the best-selling books on Wall Street, this book presents an accessible overview of the topic without the use of calculus. Packed with numerical samples and accounts of real-life situations, the Fifth Edition effectively guides readers through the material while providing them with a host of tangible examples.

MARKET: For professionals with a career in futures and options markets, financial engineering and/or risk management.

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Books. Big Profits)

John C. Bogle

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Total reviews: 76 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Investing is all about common sense. Owning a diversified portfolio of stocks and holding it for the long term is a winner’s game. Trying to beat the stock market is theoretically a zero-sum game (for every winner, there must be a loser), but after the substantial costs of investing are deducted, it becomes a loser’s game. Common sense tells us—and history confirms—that the simplest and most efficient investment strategy is to buy and hold all of the nation’s publicly held businesses at very low cost. The classic index fund that owns this market portfolio is the only investment that guarantees you with your fair share of stock market returns.

To learn how to make index investing work for you, there’s no better mentor than legendary mutual fund industry veteran John C. Bogle. Over the course of his long career, Bogle—founder of the Vanguard Group and creator of the world’s first index mutual fund—has relied primarily on index investing to help Vanguard’s clients build substantial wealth. Now, with The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, he wants to help you do the same.

Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing will show you how to incorporate this proven investment strategy into your portfolio. It will also change the very way you think about investing. Successful investing is not easy. (It requires discipline and patience.) But it is simple. For it’s all about common sense.

With The Little Book of Common Sense Investing as your guide, you’ll discover how to make investing a winner’s game:

• Why business reality—dividend yields and earnings growth—is more important than market expectations
• How to overcome the powerful impact of investment costs, taxes, and inflation
• How the magic of compounding returns is overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs
• What expert investors and brilliant academics—from Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham to Paul Samuelson and Burton Malkiel—have to say about index investing
• And much more

You’ll also find warnings about investment fads and fashions, including the recent stampede into exchange traded funds and the rise of indexing gimmickry. The real formula for investment success is to own the entire market, while significantly minimizing the costs of financial intermediation. That’s what index investing is all about. And that’s what this book is all about.

JOHN C. BOGLE is founder of the Vanguard Group, Inc., and President of its Bogle Financial Markets Research Center. He created Vanguard in 1974 and served as chairman and chief executive officer until 1996 and senior chairman until 2000. In 1999, Fortune magazine named Mr. Bogle as one of the four "Investment Giants" of the twentieth century; in 2004, Time named him one of the world’s 100 most powerful and influential people, and Institutional Investor presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story

David Einhorn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good writer, Great Investor, Superb Revisionist Historian 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

David Einhorn's book contains quite a lot of good advice, but its subtitle "A Long Short Story", says it all; this book does not need to be 350 pages long. In fact, I can give you a good portion of its wisdom here: 1) Avoid losing positions, as it takes winners to offset them just to get back to even; 2) Avoid "evolving hypotheses", which means that if you buy a stock for a reason, the catalyst occurs, and the stock doesn't respond as you wanted, don't sit around and create a new reason to own it; rather, sell it and move on. 3) A company's paying of a dividend does not necessarily signal financial strength..in fact in the case of Allied Capital they frequently raised capital in the equity markets in order to pay the dividend (which Einhorn accurately likens to a Ponzi Scheme).

Where the book falls apart is the many dealings that Einhorn claims to have had with various agencies, most of which Einhorn claims wronged him. The reality is that only Einhorn and the counter-parties know for sure whether these dealings truly happened as he portrays, but there are strong signals that his book is a self-serving diatribe; for example, when Harvard Business School wrote a case about the Einhorn/Allied Capital issue, Einhorn says that the case was biased in favor of Allied, and that he wasn't offered the chance to comment on the case as was customary because of his conspiracy theory that the research assistant had formerly worked at Capital Research, which owned Allied Capital stock. Futhermore, he implicates esteemed Harvard Business School professor Andre Perold in his revisionist history account, claiming that Greenlight was denied the right to offer input in the case. That, I can state with great confidence, is factually incorrect. The fact that the one claim in the book that I chose to attempt to verify proved untrue makes me quite suspicious about the balance of its contents.

In sum, there is some good financial advice from a great investor, but the book is twice as long as it should be, and there are too many self-serving stories of questionable veracity.

Editorial Review:

Fooling Some of the People All of the Time is the gripping chronicle of the ongoing saga between author David Einhorn’s hedg fund, Greenlight Capital, and Allied Capital, a leader in the private finance industry. Page by page, it delves deep inside Wall Street, showing why the $6 billion hedge fund decided to short shares of Allied Capital and how Allied responded with a Washington, D.C.-style spin-job—attacking Einhorn and disseminating half-truths and outright lies.

Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis

Paul Muolo, Mathew Padilla

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Well written story of the mortgage crisis 4 out of 5 stars.
10 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Do your eyes glaze over when commentators try to describe the financial products that were at the heart of the recent real estate boom? The mortgage boom? This book described the instruments clearly--and gives the reader a great sense of what was fundamentally wrong with the whole process. The title is "Chain of Blame," but there is plenty of blame to go around.

The book is well written and lucid. Nonspecialists can understand it well. I heard talking heads on TV and radio described tranches, REITs, "liar loans," "warehouse line of credit," and so on. The authors describe these terms--and others--clearly and in such a way that the reader can begin to see what had happened--and why the meltdown in the mortgage world should not be seen as so surprising.

It is also the story of clever businessmen and women, who could develop new tools for investment from subprime loans. Subprime loans, simply, are (Page 325): "A loan originated by a lender that is A- to D in quality. Consumers with the best credit ratings. . .are considered 'A' credit quality." In short, loans are being made to purchasers who carry some to a lot of risk. If they can't keep paying their mortgages, the house of cards can fall down. And that is, in short, what happened (although the story is quite a bit more complex than that).

Among the innovators were pioneers such as Roland Arnall (of Ameriquest and Argent) and Bill Dallas (of Ownit Mortgage Solutions). Then, those who adopted practices of the innovators, such as Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide.

The book makes pretty clear that a number of factors contributed to the mortgage problem. Regulators didn't get involved; Wall Street firms ignored the volatile nature of subprime loans in a desire to realize enormous profits; banks bought into the profitable business.

Anyway, if the reader wants a well written, if not overly deep, analysis of the mortgage crisis, this is not a bad place to start.

Editorial Review:

In the summer of 2007, the subprime empire that Wall Street had built all came crashing down. On average, fifty lenders a month were going bust-and the people responsible for the crisis included not just unregulated loan brokers andcon artists, but also investment bankers and home loan institutions traditionally perceived as completely trustworthy.

Chain of Blame chronicles this incredible disaster, with a specific focus on the players who participated in such a fundamentally flawed fiasco. Authors Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla, well-regarded journalists for National Mortgage News and the Orange County Register respectively, reveal the truth behind how this crisis occurred, what individuals and institutions-from lenders and brokers to some of the biggest investment banks in the world-were doing during this critical time, and who is ultimately responsible for what happened.

Rich Dad's Advisors®: The ABC's of Real Estate Investing: The Secrets of Finding Hidden Profits Most Investors Miss (Rich Dad's Advisors)

Ken McElroy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Wasted my time...don't waste yours. 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Rich Dad Poor Dad was great...this is not.

The title of this book is totally misrepresentative of the contents. This book is about buying huge apartment buildings all over the US. Not what I would call ABC's of real estate investing. Furthermore, if you are buying apartment buildings then you are probably too advanced for this book anyway.

The book is very basic and is easy to read. If you just want to get excited about the idea of real estate investing jump in.

If you want something to actually teach you about real estate investing grab a book like "Investing in Real Estate" by McLean and Eldred. Also check out the podcast "Get Real, Real Estate Investing for the Rest of Us".

The ABC's of Real Estate Investing 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The book was very clear from beginning to end on how to invest in Apartment Complex's! It was step by step and logical. I would feel very comfortable using this book as my sole reference in evaluating and purchasing apartment complexes!!

REAL ESTATE INVESTING 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you are serious about investing in real estate and/or making money at it, then you must read this book. Anything associated with Robert Kyosaki is worth reading.