51–60 of 71 posts
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Looks like a great book, and generally good advice. Thanks!
you must read "The Dollar Crisis" before you invest in anything - trust me this will help for the rest of your life !!!
#1 for me would be The Intelligent Investor , by Benjamin Graham. Also read all of Warren Buffett's Letters from the Chairman - they're all up on the Berkshire Hathaway website. Peter Lynch's books are good too. I see a lot of people here recommending A Random Walk Down Wall Street , which is a good book, but you're going to finish it and say "This investing stuff is too complicated for me. I think I'll just put my m…
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I completely agree. The conventional wisdom of buy and hold a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds or index funds is simply bad advise right now. While stocks do tend to out-perform over the "long-term" there have been multiple 10 year periods when stocks lost big in terms of real inflation adjusted returns. (e.g. 1929-1960, 1971-1983, 2000-present) As a primer on the current financial crisis, I recommend firing…
I agree that the next 12 months will be an education in itself. I wasn't old enough to remember the 91-92 recession so this will be my first. Things don't look good. But, I'm curious, why would you not recommend investing in stocks/bonds/funds, even if the economy was going down? I mean, where else would you put your money besides 3% savings accounts? Sure, if your investments return 5% and inflation is 7% you are te…
In bear markets the bias is down, up, and sideways at times - but mostly down. Most investors do not participate on the downside and so are biased against the trend.
There are exceptions though and there are more options available to individual investors than ever before. One simple way to play both sides of the market is synthetic ETF index funds such as those available through ProShares and others. (no formal affiliation, but I do have ProShares funds in my portfolio) With that disclaimer, here's a link: http://www.proshares.com/funds
These funds let you participate in either the short or long side of specific market indices, market sectors, or geographic regions. In some cases they even offer 2:1 leverage allowing you to say, gain 2% for every 1% drop in the DOW. This sort of investment timing generally is not recommended for an average investor. It is very risky stuff.
For the average investor, my advice is to buy gold (gld,xau), silver (slv,slw), and other scarce commodities. Over the past 5 years alone, the US dollar has already lost 65% of it's purchasing power as measured in gold (http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/au1825nyb.gif)
Highly recommend Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. also http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm
I have read many of the recommend books. Here are my two pence. Books on Wealth 1. "Rich Dad Poor Dad" and find out exactly why someone becomes rich. (if you like this one, at some point you may also want to quickly scan through "Cashflow Quadrant Rich Dad's Guide to Financial Freedom".) 2. Also "chapter 6 - How to make wealth" from "Hackers and Painters's chapter 6 - " 3. "The Way to Wealth by Benjamin Franklin" Inv…
"Rich Dad, Poor Dad is one of the dumbest financial advice books I have ever read. It contains many factual errors and numerous extremely unlikely accounts of events that supposedly occurred. Kiyosaki is a salesman and a motivational speaker. He has no financial expertise and won’t disclose his supposed real estate or other investment success. Rich Dad, Poor Dad contains much wrong advice, much bad advice, some dange…
- the explanation of how the rich earn passive income by acquiring assets rather than making a direct trade of time for money. It may seem obvious if you know it, but it's a basic and powerful concept.
- he recommends learning to read balance sheets and becoming financially literate which is, again, basic but important
- his advice to consider the importance of taxes and learn to structure your income to where you pay taxes but no more than you have to.
A lot of it's pretty obvious advice, but there is one thing he does well which is to motivate people to take control and become interested in learning to improve their financial situation. I think that generally outweighs the "bad" and "dangerous" advice in the book.
There are better books out there, but I think that the (unfortunately named) Rich Dad series takes more flak than it deserves.
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"Rich Dad, Poor Dad is one of the dumbest financial advice books I have ever read. It contains many factual errors and numerous extremely unlikely accounts of events that supposedly occurred. Kiyosaki is a salesman and a motivational speaker. He has no financial expertise and won’t disclose his supposed real estate or other investment success. Rich Dad, Poor Dad contains much wrong advice, much bad advice, some dange…
There is some good to Rich Dad. For example: - the explanation of how the rich earn passive income by acquiring assets rather than making a direct trade of time for money. It may seem obvious if you know it, but it's a basic and powerful concept. - he recommends learning to read balance sheets and becoming financially literate which is, again, basic but important - his advice to consider the importance of taxes and l…
The first and best book on investing that you should read: A Random Walk Down Wall Street ( http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/039306... ). This book has great investing advice; is funny, interesting, and well-written; and clearly explains what's going on behind different investment approaches. In other words, it doesn't just answer the "what" question, it answers "why" and "how". As for specific a…
Index fund is the way to go for many people. In fact, it is the suggestion William Sharpe gave to (pre-IPO) Google employees. http://www.sanfranmag.com/print/node/3368
I would also consider buying Berkshire Hathaway stock. Expensive, B-series at about 4K, but worth it, again, long term. Slightly better returns too.
Even better, do not listen to me (IANA financier), but read Phill Greenspan's excellent investing advice [2].
[1] https://personal.vanguard.com/us/FundsIndexOnly [2] http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/money
