Planning Wealth

In Investment Psychology Explained Martin J. Pring, one of the most respected independent investment advisors in the world, argues that in the revisionist ’90s there are no quick, magical paths to market success. Rather, he emphasizes the timeless values of hard work, patience, and self-discipline—and much more. Drawing on the wisdom of creative investors such as Jesse Livermore, Humphrey Neill, and Barnard Baruch, as well as his own experience, Pring shows how to:

• Overcome emotional and psychological impediments that distort decision making
• Map out an independent investment plan—and stick to it
• Know when to buck herd opinion—and “go contrarian”
• Dispense with the myths and delusions that drag down other investors
• Resist the fads and so-called experts whose siren call to success can lead to disaster
• Exploit fast-breaking news events that rock the market
• Deal skillfully with brokers and money managers
• Learn and understand the rules that separate the truly great investors and traders from the rest

Reading Investment Psychology Explained will give you a renewed appreciation of the classic trading principles that, through bull and bear markets, have worked time and again. You’ll see, with the help of numerous illustrative examples, what goes into making an effective investor—and how you can work toward achieving that successful profile.

This groundbreaking book is the first to both identify the wide range of political risks that global firms face and show investors how to effectively manage them. Written by two of the world’s leading figures in political risk management, it reveals that while the world remains exceedingly risky for businesses, it is by no means incomprehensible. Political risk is unpredictable, but it is easier to analyze and manage than most people think. Applying the lessons of world history, Bremmer and Keat survey a vast range of contemporary risky situations, from stable markets like the United States or Japan, where politically driven regulation can still dramatically effect business, to more precarious places like Iran, China, Russia, Turkey, Mexico, and Nigeria, where private property is less secure and energy politics sparks constant volatility. The book sheds light on a wide array of political risks–risks that stem from great power rivalries, terrorist groups, government takeover of private property, weak leaders and internal strife, and even the “black swans” that defy prediction. But more importantly, the authors provide a wealth of unique methods, tools, and concepts to help corporations, money managers, and policy makers understand political risk, showing when and how political risk analysis works–and when it does not.

Authored by Ian Bremmer (author of the bestselling The J-Curve) and Preston Keat, the president and research director (respectively) of Eurasia Group, the world’s leading political risk consultancy firm, The Fat Tail is an indispensable guide for anyone involved in the international economy.

This reliable resource provides you with the tools to help you understand and analyze opportunities within today’s global Consumer Staples sector. With this book as your guide, you can quickly become familiar with how the Consumer Staples sector is segmented by industries, their respective macroeconomic drivers, and the challenges facing companies in this sector. Additionally, there are chapters dedicated to explaining many of the unique aspects of Consumer Staples products in emerging markets and security analysis techniques focused on Consumer Staples firms.

You don’t have to be a professional to learn to better invest in the Consumer Staples sector—but you do need to be prepared. Fisher Investments on Consumer Staples can help get you up to speed in this area and help you make better decisions through any market conditions.

For more information visit www. consumerstaples.fisherinvestments.com

Using the dot-com crash as an object lesson in how not to manage your portfolio, here is the best-selling, gimmick-free, irreverent, vastly informative guide to navigating the turbulence of the market and managing investments with confidence.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street is well established as a staple of the business shelf, the first book any investor should read before taking the plunge and starting a portfolio. With its life-cycle guide to investing, it matches the needs of investors at any age bracket. Burton G. Malkiel shows how to analyze the potential returns, not only for stocks and bonds but also for the full range of investment opportunities, from money market accounts and real estate investment trusts to insurance, home ownership, and tangible assets like gold and collectibles.

Whether you want to verse yourself in the ways of the market before talking to a broker or follow Malkiel’s easy steps to managing your own portfolio, this book remains the best investing guide money can buy.

Amazon.com Review

It’s unlikely that you’ll spot many dog-eared copies of A Random Walk floating amongst the Wall Street set (although bookshelves at home may prove otherwise). After all, a “random walk”–in market terms–suggests that a “blindfolded monkey” would have as much luck selecting a portfolio as a pro. But Burton Malkiel’s classic investment book is anything but random. Since stock prices cannot be predicted in the short term, argues Malkiel, individual investors are better off buying and holding onto index funds than meddling with securities or actively managing mutual funds. Not only will a broad range of index funds outperform a professionally managed portfolio in the long run, but investors can avoid expense charges and trading costs, which decrease returns.

First published in 1973, this seventh printing of a A Random Walk looks forward and does so broadly, examining a new range of investment choices facing the turn-of-the-century investor: money-market accounts, tax-exempt funds, Roth IRAs, and equity REITs, as well as the potential benefits and pitfalls of the emerging global economy. In his updated “life-cycle guide to investing,” Malkiel offers age-related investment strategies that consider one’s capacity for risk. (A 30-year-old who can depend on wages to offset investment losses has a different risk capacity from a 60-year-old.) In his assessment of rocketing Internet stocks, Malkiel defends his “random” position well, explaining how “the market eventually corrects any irrationality–albeit in its own slow, inexorable fashion. Anomalies can crop up, markets can get irrationally optimistic, and often they attract unwary investors. But eventually, true value is recognized by the market, and this is the main lesson investors must heed.” Written for the financial layperson but bolstered by 30 years of research, A Random Walk will help individual investors take charge of their financial future. Recommended. –Rob McDonald

Venture Capital Due Diligence provides a clear and complete explanation of the venture capital (VC) due diligence process and shows you how to use it to assess investment opportunities, make smart investment decisions, and increase the return on your overall venture capital portfolio.

This comprehensive guide offers a full explanation of the VC due diligence process, from using screening mechanisms that sort out potential opportunities, to assessing the management qualities, business models, legal issues, and even intangibles of target companies. Structured around a number of carefully crafted questions that venture capitalists often ask when performing due diligence, this book puts you–the reader–in the position of a VC conducting due diligence on a particular company.

In-depth discussions of these questions and their possible answers pull together opinions from many of the major players in today’s venture capital industry, including . . .

• Richard Testa of Testa Hurwitz & Thibeault
• Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
• John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• Craig Johnson of the Venture Law Group
• Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital
• Kevin Fong of the Mayfield Fund

. . . and many others who are qualified to comment on the proper methods of performing VC due diligence and making VC investment decisions.

An essential guide for anyone involved in venture capital investing, Venture Capital Due Diligence helps you uncover potential problems, while showing you where to look and what to look for when conducting VC due diligence.

This book will change the way you invest. . .and it’s about time!

If your main concern is getting the most out of your money without sacrificing financial security, Dan Solin tells you how to take control of your finances and end up in the top 5% of all professionally managed money.

Solin provides a clear, simple, easy-to-follow road map that will show you exactly how your assets should be invested, using trusted, brand-name funds. He explains how to assess risk and how to allocate assets so that your portfolio is tailored precisely for you.

Most important, Solin’s four-step plan will give you a portfolio that consistently outperforms the professionals (without the fees and without the worry.)

You can avoid the biggest mistakes most investors make:

• Falling for “dumb money” solutions that give your hard-earned cash over to hyperactive brokers and investment advisors.
• Buying into the hype that stock picking and market timing are anything but a fool’s errand.
• Giving too much credence to the media and self-styled gurus who peddle “financial pornography.”

Best of all, the vast majority of investors can implement Solin’s plan in ninety minutes or less per year, without any broker or adviser.

Read by Craig Wollman

Amazon.com Review

If you had to summarize Fail-Safe Investing in three words, it would probably be these: Embrace the obvious. Look at your job, Browne advises. You get ahead because of your experience, education, and common sense. Your job is the reason you have money to invest in the first place. So the first of Browne’s 17 rules is, “Build Your Wealth upon Your Career.” Don’t jeopardize your career; it’s going to take many years of smart investing before your earnings will surpass what you earn at your day job–if they ever do.

The other rules aren’t quite as obvious, but equally simple. Browne explains the difference between investing (making a long-term plan and sticking with it) and speculating (betting that you can beat the overall market during a specific period). He shows how life savings are easily lost when you borrow money to invest rather than investing only the money you already have. Browne also suggests a portfolio that he says is the simplest and safest possible for continual, steady returns above inflation: an equal division among stocks, bonds, gold, and cash. That covers an investor in times of prosperity (stocks), inflation (gold), deflation (bonds), and recession (cash). While many investment analysts would undoubtedly gag if you presented them with a portfolio that consisted of a 50 percent investment in gold and cash, Browne nonetheless makes a compelling argument that such an allocation makes it easier to sleep at night. And common sense tells you there are worse things than a good night’s sleep. –Lou Schuler

In Rule the Freakin’ Markets, Parness uses visual aids and practice exercises to show online traders and investors how to:

- Practice responsible trading techniques that maximize reward and limit risk
- Avoid the “Seven Deadly Sins Plus Fear” that block success in the market
- Protect investments no matter what the market does
- Understand how market technology drives daily and cyclical market moves
- Avoid the pitfalls of trading in cyberspace
- Recover and learn from significant losses
- Strategize and anticipate, rather than overreact or freeze, when change occurs
- And finally, live full and satisfying lives as traders

With its lively tone and refreshing approach to trading and investing, Rule the Freakin’ Markets is an essential guide to profiting from today’s turbulent market.

Amazon.com Review

Those who can ignore the rather garish cover on this book will find a solid, straightforward guide to making winning trades in even the most bearish of markets. The author, who millions of insomniacs know through his middle-of-the-night infomercials, writes with a highly personal voice that some may find a bit grating, but his rags-to-riches story is compelling and needs to be told.

In a nutshell, Michael Parness went from living on a park bench in Brooklyn to a summa cum laude degree from Hunter College in New York City to founding a successful sports memorabilia company. After making $150,000 in that business, he followed his broker’s advice in 1998 and ended up losing virtually his entire nest egg. Since then, he has invested carefully after studying media reports and understanding “market psychology.” Now a broker-averse multimillionaire, he shares with readers a number of strategies that have worked for him in both bull and bear markets.

Augmented with exercises that truly help readers determine their own level of risk aversion, this guide shows online traders and, particularly, investment clubs exactly how market psychology drives daily and cyclical market moves. As Parness says, “I’m not mechanical, and I’m not good at figuring out technical stuff like computers or plumbing or chain saws, but I can figure out how things measure up in terms of probability. And probability is what trading is all about.”

A few too many ka-chingos and wowsas mar an otherwise informed writing style, but nevertheless the book offers some excellent insight into how the market actually works, and how one can make money using that insight. Those looking for a serious study of economic trends and forecasts may want to look elsewhere, but readers interested in a breezy, anecdotal read about market bubbles and bursts will be entertained and more than likely enlightened. –Charles Decker

Charles J. Givens’ Wealth Without Risk has become a classic in the field of financial self-help books for one simple reason: it works. His safe, legal, and proven approach has already started millions of Americans on the road to accumulating wealth through better strategies for personal finance, tax reduction, and investment. More Wealth Without Risk keeps you at the cutting edge of practical, easy-to-use financial techniques. Givens delivers more than 350 low-risk financial strategies — with special sections on protecting your credit and keeping the IRS’s hands out of your wallet — including how and why to:

* Get your next raise totally tax-free
* Make your vacations and trips tax-deductible
* Get your retirement-plan money tax- and penalty-free before age 59 1/2
* Use high-powered, little-known strategies for getting out of debt and rebuilding credit
* Get next year’s tax refund this year

And much, much more!

A revised and updated edition of an investment classic, The Only Guide to a Winning Investment Strategy You’ll Ever Need remains clear, understandable, and effective. This edition contains a new chapter comparing index funds, ETFs, and passive asset class funds, an expanded section on portfolio care and maintenance, the addition of Swedroe’s 15 Rules of Prudent Investing, and much more.

In clear language, Swedroe shows how the newer index mutual funds out-earn, out-perform, and out-compound the older funds, and how to select a balance “passive” portfolio for the long hail that will repay you many times over. This indispensable book also provides you with valuable information about:

- The efficiency of markets today
- The five factors that determine expected returns of a balanced equity and fixed income portfolio
- Important facts about volatility, return, and risk
- Six steps to building a diversified portfolio using Modern Portfolio Theory
- Implementing the winning strategy
- and more.

Praise for The Perfect Portfolio

“Today’s markets are rife with challenges that confound novice and professional investors alike. Thankfully, The Perfect Portfolio provides the type of ‘outside the box’ thinking that can enable individual investors to not only cope with these challenges but also to view them as profit-making opportunities.”
—Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, The Money Coach (from the Foreword)

To achieve long-term success in today’s market, you can’t place your faith totally in financial “experts” who are far too often salespeople first and objective advisers second. You must take personal control of your hard-earned savings and build a portfolio that gives you a realistic chance of earning returns that enable you to meet the investing goals you really want to achieve in life.

That’s why Leland Hevner—President of the National Association of Online Investors (naoi.org) and a longtime educator in the financial field—has created The Perfect Portfolio. This reliable resource outlines Hevner’s proven investment approach, known as the Perfect Portfolio Methodology (PPM), and shows you how to use it to thrive in today’s challenging market conditions.

Divided into three comprehensive parts, The Perfect Portfolio will enable you to:

• Build a powerful and efficient portfolio using nine asset classes instead of the traditional three

• Completely avoid the complexities of analyzing individual stocks and mutual funds

• Virtually eliminate company risk from your portfolio

• Use amazing new Web-based tools to enhance and automate your trading activities

• Easily design a portfolio that matches your investing style and thrives in any market condition

• And much more

This is not the stuff of your average investing book. The author is not simply putting a new “spin” on the outdated investing concepts being taught today. He is providing nothing less than a dramatically new portfolio design model and a revolutionary approach to the entire field of personal investing. And this bold challenge to the status quo is long overdue!

With The Perfect Portfolio as your guide, you will realize that investing does not need to be as complicated as the financial services industry would like you to believe. You will learn a simple methodology for building a portfolio that can produce incredible returns with minimal risk. You will be empowered to take personal control of your investments. It’s time to start your new life as a confident investor.

Like the sayings of the ancient Chinese philospher Lao-tzu, Warren Buffett’s worldly wisdom is deceptively simple and enormously powerful in application. In The Tao of Warren Buffett, Mary Buffett — author of three books on Warren Buffett’s investment methods — joins noted Buffettologist and international lecturer David Clark to bring you Warren Buffett’s smartest, funniest, and most memorable sayings with an eye toward revealing the life philosophy and the investment strategies that have made Warren Buffett, and the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, so enormously wealthy.

Warren Buffett’s investment achievements are unparalleled. He owes his success to hard work, integrity, and that most elusive commodity of all, common sense. The quotations in this book exemplify Warren’s practical strategies and provide useful illustrations for every investor — large or small — and models everyone can follow. The quotes are culled from a variety of sources, including personal conversations, corporate reports, profiles, and interviews. The authors provide short explanations for each quote and use examples from Buffett’s own business transactions whenever possible to illustrate his words at work.

As Warren says:

“You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will.”

“With enough inside information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year.”

“No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

“Our method is very simple. We just try to buy businesses with good-to-superb underlying economics run by honest and able people and buy them at sensible prices. That’s all I’m trying to do.”

The Tao of Warren Buffett inspires, amuses, sharpens the mind, and offers priceless investment savvy that anyone can take to the bank. This irresistibly browsable and entertaining book is destined to become a classic.

Now, in Bollinger on Bollinger Bands, Bollinger himself explains how to use this extraordinary technique to compare price and indicator action and make sound, sensible, and profitable trading decisions.

Concise, straightforward, and filled with instructive charts and graphs, this remarkable book will be essential reading for all serious traders, regardless of market. Bollinger includes his simple system for implementation, and techniques for combining bands and indicators.

With the proliferation of financial instruments, new areas of instability, and innovative capital market strategies, many economists and investors have lost sight of the fundamentals of the financial system—its strengths as well as its weaknesses. A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold takes you back to the beginning and sorts out all the pieces.

Peter Bernstein skillfully addresses how and why commercial banks lend and invest, where money comes from, how it moves from hand to hand, and the critical role of interest rates. He explores the Federal Reserve System and the consequences of the Fed’s actions on the overall economy. But this book is not just about the past. Bernstein’s novel perspective on gold and the dollar is critical for today’s decision makers, as he provides extensive views on the future of money, banking, and gold in the world economy.

This illuminating story about the heart of our economic system is essential reading at a time when developments in finance are more important than ever.

Inflated profits . . . Suspicious write-offs . . . Shifted expenses . . . These and other dubious financial maneuvers have taken on a contemporary twist as companies pull out the stops in seeking to satisfy Wall Street. Financial Shenanigans pulls back the curtain on the current climate of accounting fraud. It presents tools that anyone who is potentially affected by misleading business valuations­­from investors and lenders to managers and auditors­­can use to research and read financial reports, and to identify early warning signs of a company’s problems. A bestseller in its first edition, Financial Shenanigans has been thoroughly updated for today’s marketplace. New chapters, data, and research reveal contemporary “shenanigans” that have been known to fool even veteran researchers.

More than one million hardcovers sold
Now available for the first time in paperback!

The Classic Text Annotated to Update Graham’s Timeless Wisdom for Today’s Market Conditions

The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham’s philosophy of “value investing” — which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies — has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949.

Over the years, market developments have proven the wisdom of Graham’s strategies. While preserving the integrity of Graham’s original text, this revised edition includes updated commentary by noted financial journalist Jason Zweig, whose perspective incorporates the realities of today’s market, draws parallels between Graham’s examples and today’s financial headlines, and gives readers a more thorough understanding of how to apply Graham’s principles.

Vital and indispensable, this HarperBusiness Essentials edition of The Intelligent Investor is the most important book you will ever read on how to reach your financial goals.