When it comes to investing in the stock market, investors have plenty of options: 1. They can do it themselves. Trillions of dollars areinvested this way. (Of course, the only problem here is that most people have no ideahow to analyze and choose individual stocks. Well, not reallythe only problem. Most investors have no idea how toconstruct a stock portfolio, most have no idea when to buy andsell, and most have no idea how much to invest in the firstplace.) 2. They can give it to professionals to invest. Trillions of dollars are invested this way. (Unfortunately most professionals actually underperform the market averages over time. In fact,it may be even harderto pick good professional managers than it is to pick goodindividual stocks.) 3. They can invest in traditional index funds. Trillions of dollars are also invested this way.(The problem isthat investing this way is seriously flawed--and almost a guaranteeof subpar investment returns over time.) 4. They can read The Big Secret for the
Making sound investments is tough enough without having toworry about unscrupulous financial advisers and outright frauds.But recently strengthened laws aren't enough to stop the"professionals" intent on profiting from - or just plain stealing -your money. As an Enforcement Branch Chief at the Securities andExchange Commission, Pat Huddleston witnessed countless people losetheir life savings to reckless stockbrokers and fraudulent schemes.Now an SEC-recommended Receiver and CEO of a securities andinvestment fraud investigation agency, Huddleston has intimateknowledge of how scam artists and bad brokers operate. In TheVigilant Investor, he explains WHY we fall for investment scams,HOW con artists play on our emotions, and WHAT we can do to protectourselves from predators. With its unique look into the science offinancial decision making, the book blows up the popular myths andsimplistic "do's and don'ts" of investing while sharing techniquesanyone can use to perform due diligence even better than the"experts.
The Heretics of Finance provides extraordinary insight intoboth the art of technical analysis and the character of thesuccessful trader. Distinguished MIT professor Andrew W. Lo andresearcher Jasmina Hasahodzic interviewed thirteen highlysuccessful, award-winning market professionals who credit theirsubstantial achievements to technical analysis.The result is thestory of technical analysis in the words of the people who know itbest; the lively and candid interviews with these gurus oftechnical analysis. The first half of the book focuses on the technicians'careers: How and why they learned technical analysis What market conditions increase their chances of makingmistakes What their average workday is like To what extent trading controls their lives Whether they work on their own or with a team How their style of technical analysis is unique The second half concentrates on technical analysis andaddresses questions such as these: Did th
This book was written to offer encouragement and basicinformation to the individual investor. Who knew it would gothrough thirty printings and sell more than one million copies? Asthis latest edition appears eleven years beyond the first, I'mconvinced that the same principles that helped me perform well atthe Fidelity Magellan Fund still apply to investing in stockstoday. It's been a remarkable stretch since One Up on Wall Street hit thebookstores in 1989. I left Magellan in May, 1990, and pundits saidit was a brilliant move. They congratulated me for getting out atthe right time -- just before the collapse of the great bullmarket. For the moment, the pessimists looked smart. The country'smajor banks flirted with insolvency, and a few went belly up. Byearly fall, war was brewing in Iraq. Stocks suffered one of theirworst declines in recent memory. But then the war was won, thebanking system survived, and stocks rebounded. Some rebound! The Dow is up more than fourfold since October, 1990,from the 2,400 lev
By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night hespent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and internationalglobe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht,crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to thewife and kids who waited for him at home, and the fast-talking,hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did hisbidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of theill-fated genius they called… In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notoriousinvestment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamousnames in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper wholed his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Streetand into a massive office on Long Island. Now, in this astoundingand hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story ofgreed, power, and excess no one could invent. Reputedly the prototype for the film Boiler Room, StrattonOakmont turned microcap investing into a wi
"This is a modern classic." —Paul A. Samuelson, First AmericanNobel Prize Winner in Economics "The best book there is about the stock market and all that goeswith it." — The New York Times Book Review "Anyone whose orientation is toward where the action is, where thehappenings happen, should buy a copy of The Money Game andread it with due diligence." — Book World " 'Adam Smith' is a veteran observer and commentator on the eventsand people of Wall Street.... His thorough knowledge of financialaffairs gives his observations a great degree of authenticity. Butthe joy of reading this book comes from his delightful sense ofhumor. He is a lively and ingeniously witty writer who never stoopsto acerbity. None of the solemn, sacred cows of Wall Street escapesdebunking." — Library Journal