While it is important to invest early, it is more important to invest wisely. In this books review, we present five classic investing books. They can provide indispensable business and finance insights for independent investors - and are highly recommended for new and young investors.
Legendary investor Rogers co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1970, retired at the age of 37 in 1980, and spent a number of years traveling through China and six continents by motorcycle.
He recently fathered two daughters in his sixties and wrote this small memoir to share with them some of the insights that he has garnered from his experiences. He advises to make your own decisions in life rather than listening to others, to figure out what you love to do and focus on that rather than what is expected of you, and to have a dream and to live your dream.
In the area of finances, he says to save and invest early on rather than spending frivolously, so that you will be able to afford the important things in life later, and to do your own research, draw your own conclusions, and look to the future - not the past - for great ideas. These and other nuggets of wisdom from this self-made man are worth reading several times over. -- David Siegfried
If the twentieth century was the American century, then the twenty-first century belongs to China. According to the one and only Jim Rogers, who's been tracking the Chinese economy since he first went to China in 1984, any investor can get in on the ground floor of "the greatest economic boom since England's Industrial Revolution." But the time to act is now.
In A Bull in China, you'll learn which industries offer the newest and best opportunities, from power, energy, and agriculture to tourism, water, and infrastructure. Rogers demystifies the state policies that are driving earnings and innovation, takes the intimidation factor out of the A-shares, B-shares, and ADRs of Chinese offerings, and profiles "Red Chip" companies, such as Yantai Changyu, China's largest winemaker, which sells a "Healthy Liquor" line mixed with herbal medicines. Plus, if you want to export something to China yourself - or even buy land there - Rogers tells you the steps you need to take.
No other book - and no other author - can better help you benefit from the new Chinese revolution. Jim Rogers shows you how to make the "amazing energy, potential, and entrepreneurial spirit of a billion people" work for you.
The definitive work concerning Warren Buffett and intelligent investment philosophy, this is a collection of Buffett's letters to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway written over the past few decades that together furnish an enormously valuable informal education. The letters distill in plain words all the basic principles of sound business practices. They are arranged and introduced by a leading apostle of the 'value' school and noted scholar, Lawrence Cunningham.
Here in one place are the priceless pearls of business and investment wisdom, woven into a delightful narrative on the major topics concerning both managers and investors. These timeless lessons are useful to members of a wide range of professions, including law, accounting, finance and management, and provide rich teaching materials for courses in those fields.
Among the library of investment books promising no-fail strategies for riches, Benjamin Graham's classic, The Intelligent Investor, offers no guarantees or gimmicks but overflows with the wisdom at the core of all good portfolio management.
The hallmark of Graham's philosophy is not profit maximization but loss minimization. In this respect, The Intelligent Investor is a book for true investors, not speculators or day traders. He provides, "in a form suitable for the laymen, guidance in adoption and execution of an investment policy".
This policy is inherently for the longer term and requires a commitment of effort. Where the speculator follows market trends, the investor uses discipline, research, and his analytical ability to make unpopular but sound investments in bargains relative to current asset value. Graham coaches the investor to develop a rational plan for buying stocks and bonds, and he argues that this plan must be a bulwark against emotional behavior that will always be tempting during abrupt bull and bear markets.
Lynch is the master stock picker who led Magellan (until May 1990) to its position as America's biggest mutual fund. In One Up on Wall Street (Simon & Schuster, 1989), also written with Rothchild, he described his winning methods. Here, he provides a few more elaborations and 21 "Peter's principles."
Some are overly clever, e.g., being first in line is a great idea except on the edge of a cliff. Lynch takes three chapters to explain how he "done it good" at Magellan. One valuable chapter details methods for picking a mutual fund from the thousands available, but most of the book is devoted to demonstrating his research into picking the 21 stocks he recommended in the January 1992 Barron's roundtable.
Still, since the average investor will not get to talk to the CEO or visit the company in person, maybe we should all just buy Lynch's recommendations each year. A tossup.
