Planning Wealth

THE bestselling guide to Getting Started in Stocks

Thinking of getting your feet wet in the stock market, but don’t know where to begin? Perhaps you’ve already taken the plunge but would like to know more about the stock and mutual fund investments you’ve made? Tens of thousands of investors already know the place to start is this best-selling guide by Alvin D. Hall, whose dynamic style of teaching investment professionals has earned him the moniker, the “Professor of Wall Street.” Packed with new material on mutual funds, dozens of new real-life examples, and up-to-the-minute information, this thoroughly updated edition will help you:

• Set clear financial goals
• Determine the level of risk you can afford to take
• Evaluate stocks and securities for risks and rewards
• Track market trends for solid, informed choices
• Use mutual funds to diversify and cut risk
• Determine the right proportion of stocks for your portfolio
• Fully exploit international market opportunities

Basic enough for novice traders–yet with enough detail for the most demanding market veterans–Bernstein’s book gives day traders the tools they need to succeed in this fast-paced, relentless market. Special attention is given to:
• Day trading the technology sector
• Risk management and diversification
• Little-known nuances of order placement Jake Bernstein (Northbrook, IL) publishes MBH Weekly, a newsletter covering the commodities and futures markets. Author of The Compleat Day Trader and Strategies for the Electronic Futures Trader, Bernstein is a popular speaker at trading seminars and regularly appears on radio and television.

“Fischer provides an intriguing and thorough look at blending the Fibonacci series, candlesticks, and 3-point chart patterns to trade securities. Backed by explicit trading rules and numerous examples and illustrations, this book is an invaluable tool for the serious investor. Read it.”
–Thomas N. Bulkowski author of Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns and Trading Classic Chart Patterns

In this groundbreaking new book, Fibonacci expert Robert Fischer and coauthor Dr. Jens Fischer successfully merge Fibonacci applications with candlestick charting to create an innovative trading strategy that will help you enhance profits and reduce risk.

Filled with in-depth insights, helpful charts and graphs, and practical real-world examples, Candlesticks, Fibonacci, and Chart Pattern Trading Tools reveals how correctly combining these different strategies can give you a noticeable edge in challenging market times–regardless of whether you are a short-term or long-term trader–and improve your chances of success under a variety of market conditions.

You’ll be introduced to the critical aspects of this synergistic approach through in-depth analysis and detailed explanations of:

• Core combinations of Fibonacci trading tools with candlesticks and regular 3-point chart patterns
• The magic figure “three” and its relevance in pattern recognition
• Fibonacci-related trading strategies, selected candlestick chart patterns, and regular 3-point chart patterns
• Applications of these trading strategies–double tops, Fibonacci price extensions, PHI-channel applications
• PHI-ellipses as trading tools
• And much more

Along with the computer technology of the WINPHI charting program included on the companion CD-ROM, Candlesticks, Fibonacci, and Chart Pattern Trading Tools will help you understand and implement this profitable trading strategy to the best of your ability.

“A legendary S&P floor trader has written a powerful, brutally honest chronicle of his determined rise to the top of his profession. Touching and insightful, this riveting account is one of the best trading memoirs ever.”–—NELSON FREEBURG, PUBLISHER, FORMULA RESEARCH

“The Day Trader provides a rare look into the events that shaped the extraordinary character of one of the most unique people to ever put on a trading jacket . . . it comes as no surprise that Borsellino places himself at the center of the maelstrom surrounding electronic trading versus open outcry and provides a truly balanced, intelligent, and unemotional view of the momentous transformation occurring in the financial markets. It is imperative that anyone involved in trading the markets–—either traditionally or electronically–—read this story and benefit from the insights of one of the great traders of our lifetime.”–—MARIO ALBERICO, FORMER SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ELECTRONIC TRADING, CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE

“The Day Trader is must reading for anyone in the market. Lewis Borsellino is an Italian American hero who climbed the mountain with guts and honor. The neighborhood kid will always remember where he came from.”–—DOMINIC DI FRISCO, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, JOINT CIVIC COMMITTEE OF ITALIAN AMERICANS

Amazon.com Review

The subtitle of The Day Trader, From the Pit to the PC, indicates the evolution of the trader from floor jockey to computer cowboy. But this is less an account of the trader’s changing arena than the story of Lewis Borsellino, a fist-shaking Italian American from Chicago’s West Side whose grit and determination helped him become one of the top traders in the Standard & Poor futures pit. “When the world around me goes nuts, I become more sane. The wilder the market gets, the more disciplined I become.” He credits this focus to his tough but compassionate Italian American father, a truck driver with a penchant for lightening the loads of his deliveries. “I do what I do so you don’t have to,” says the elder Borsellino, prior to getting busted by the feds for hijacking a million-dollar shipment of silver.

Shedding his father’s mobster ties, Borsellino quickly moves up the trading ranks, establishing a position–literally–on the second step of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. For 18 years, he doesn’t budge, sometimes using his fists to ward off aggressive traders, and gaining a “sixth sense” that helps him determine which way the market is headed. Although Borsellino provides a good deal of technical reasoning behind his many successes and failures, he repeatedly returns to this intangible quality, stressing its importance and describing how it’s made him millions.

The Day Trader concludes with some thoughts on the pit’s computerized future. Since writing the book, Borsellino has left the S&P to become a fund manager. He relies on computers now more than ever, but wonders how digital day traders without floor experience will get their sense of market flow, timing, and price patterns. Borsellino’s The Day Trader is a good place to start. –Rob McDonald

* Offers a broad overview of this growing field
* Discusses all the main types of credit derivatives
* Provides back-of-the-book summary of statistics and fixed-income mathematics

Target the Super Stocks that deliver huge returns

One of the most successful investing books ever published, Super Stocks showed investors how to use innovative techniques and fundamental analysis for valuing stocks and predicting future profit margins.

You’ll gain valuable insight into Fisher’s original thinkin for valuing stocks and predicting future profit margins. A pioneer in the use of the Price Sales Ratio-a powerful analytical tool-Fisher regales readers with instructive tales of the businesses he invested in and profited from.

Super Stocks gives a historical perspective on how Fisher successfully researched companies and stocks—who he saw and what he asked—to get a better read on profitable returns.

“As rich in investment war stories as it is in knowledge.”-The Motley Fool

Larry Swedro has long maintained that investor and fund managers have had no sustainable success when chasing hot individual stocks. They say that it is much wiser to buy “baskets” of stocks from prominent indexes – always selected from a variety of major well-run companies. Inevitable market rises and dips, followed by further market rises, plus the miracle of compounding, will build, over a minimum of two decades, real wealth.

This book brings together fourteen truths for index investing and discusses why careful and patient investing will capture many of today’s big-company stock valuations that will be seen over time to have been tremendous buys.

In traveling the shifting terrain of the financial world, one is often met with confusing and even contradictory directions. In the search for a reliable path, there’s nothing like a personal guide-one who can show you the most direct route to your goal. In Just One Thing, author John Mauldin offers an incomparable shortcut to prosperity: the personal guidance of an outstanding group of recognized financial experts, each offering the single most useful piece of advice garnered from years of investing.

Never before has such an esteemed assembly of financial gurus offered their most valued insights in such a succinct manner-and in a single volume. In marvelously readable essays of uncommon clarity, each contributor presents the most precious kernel of advice-just one thing-that he would pass on to his own children and his children’s children. And now these gems of investment wisdom can be yours.

What is the most important piece of investment advice you can find? Let these twelve investment gurus share with you the “Just One Thing” each of them has learned:
* Rob Arnott
* Bill Bonner
* Ed Easterling
* Mark Finn
* Dennis Gartman
* George Gilder
* Andy Kessler
* Michael Masterson
* John Mauldin
* James Montier
* Richard Russell
* A. Gary Shilling

Amazon.com Review

Whether from business-focused cable TV channels, newspapers, magazines, Web sites, or friends and family, investment advice comes these days from every corner. The nagging question for conscientious investors remains, though: how to separate good advice from bad? In a world of squawking television commentators and garish headlines, who and what should we trust? With Just One Thing, veteran investment writer John Mauldin offers his answer: take just the best advice, from the best investors, and discard everything else. Mauldin has solicited 12 leading investors for what each considers his most valuable insight or lesson over a long and illustrious investment career–the “one thing” he considers most important to investing–and gathered the tips for future generations of investors to learn.

The lessons which Mauldin has compiled in this thin, readable volume range widely. Some readers may enjoy the folksier tone of hedge fund manager Andy Kessler’s piece, which analogizes investing to a hike up New England’s Mt. Washington, on a foggy day. Other may prefer the approach of bond investor Gary Shilling, who argues for finding and developing a consistent and long-term narrative (or “story” about a market) around which to build investment picks. Yet others may find it most comforting to go with financial analyst Rob Arnott, who runs a multi-billion dollar fund for Pimco and who anchors his market analysis in deep skepticism and extensive quantitative analytics.

As with the larger market, Mauldin’s group of 12 expert investors brings its own mix of philosophies, tactics, and personalities to investing, and in his notes between each selection, Mauldin is careful not to tip his hand favoring one or the other. Instead, quality for Mauldin rests in the survey of the masters, and the restriction of those masters to “just one thing” each. Mauldin should know: as the author of Bull’s Eye Investing: Targeting Real Returns in a Smoke and Mirrors Market, as well as a weekly investment newsletter with readership over one million, he has seen his share of both charlatans and geniuses.

Mauldin’s work can be taken a couple of different ways. For younger investors, it may provide a valuable survey of different investment philosophies, and the opportunity to learn just enough to undertake further research elsewhere. For more experienced investors it can provide the possibility of a new idea gleaned here or there, some new concept that may have been overlooked previously. Either way, both audiences will benefit from the diversity of perspectives included in this book. In an increasingly chaotic and noise-filled world, trusted sources which give such sure-handed perspective on the business of investments deserve high praise. –Peter Han

Crucially, the authors analyze total returns, including reinvested income. They show that some historical indexes overstate long-term performance because they are contaminated by survivorship bias and that long-term stock returns are in most countries seriously overestimated, due to a focus on periods that with hindsight are known to have been successful.

The book also provides the first comprehensive evidence on the long-term equity risk premium–the reward for bearing the risk of common stocks. The authors reveal whether the United States and United Kingdom have had unusually high stock market returns compared to other countries. The book covers the U.S., the U.K., Japan, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Ireland, Denmark, and South Africa.

Triumph of the Optimists is required reading for investment professionals, financial economists, and investors. It will be the definitive reference in the field and consulted for years to come.

Hedge funds and hedge fund trading strategies have long been popular in the financial community because of their flexibility, aggressiveness, and creativity. Trade Like a Hedge Fund capitalizes on this phenomenon and builds on it by bringing fresh and practical ideas to the trading table. This book shares 20 uncorrelated trading strategies and techniques that will enable readers to trade and invest like never before. With detailed examples and up-to-the-minute trading advice, Trade Like a Hedge Fund is a unique book that will help readers increase the value of their portfolios, while decreasing risk.

James Altucher (New York, NY) is a partner at Subway Capital, a hedge fund focused on special arbitrage situations, and short-term statistically based strategies. Previously, he was a partner with technology venture capital firm 212 Ventures and was CEO and founder of Vaultus, a wireless and software company.

• Finance theory in the stock valuation process
• Short-term stock price versus long-term value
• Use of valuation models to uncover misstatements and outright fraud