Product Description
Becoming An Investor: Building Wealth By Investing In Stocks, Bonds, And Mutual Funds gives you practical knowledge and insight that will help you protect and grow your investment portfolio.

By reading Becoming An Investor you will learn:
* The Difference Between Active and Passive Portfolio Management
* The Power of Compounding and How It Applies To Building Wealth
* The Concept of Margin of Safety
* The Importance of Diversification
* Ratio Analysis
* Professional Company Valuation Using Dividend Discount Calculations
* How To Measure Rates of Return And Know How Your Investments Are Really Doing
* How To Preserve Principal
* How To Avoid Making Bad Investment Decisions That Lose Money
* How To Select Mutual Funds
* How To Select And Invest In Turnaround Companies
* How To Select And Invest In Growth Companies
* How To Evaluate Company Risk
* How To Invest For Income
* How To Know If You're Saving Enough For Your Retirement ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A good place to begin learning how to manage your money
Hupalo gives you simple (good) advice to manage your money.

The book is very balanced and it is aimed mainly to the educated general public. You will need only some simple algebra to understand his few valuation formulas.

He writes basically about common stocks and has a chapter discussing bonds. But do not expect market timing methods. It is more directed to Investing than to Trading.

Conclusion: A good place to begin learning how to manage your money. To good sense people.

Proven Way to Sound, Successful, Long-Term Investing
This excellent book is highly commended to anyone who is truly serious about investing. Peter Hupalo is a consultant and frequent columnist on money and entrepreneurship matters. With clear and convincing data to support him, Mr. Hupalo debunks many of the myths Wall Street pushes on the investing public. Author demonstrates the futility of trying to "beat the market", whether through stock picking and market timing or by following mutual funds that have shown high levels of performance in the past. After he makes a convincing case for trying to meet, rather than beat the market. Thus, Mr. Hupalo advocates investing in a diversified basket of mutual funds. The chapter on investing during retirement is particularly insightful.

Whether or not one ultimately agrees with Mr. Hupalo's point of view, "Becoming An Investor: Building Wealth By Investing In Stocks, Bonds, And Mutual Funds" is a book, which deserves attention. Anyone wishing to base his/her investment decisions on solid methodology needs to read this book. You will have a much clearer understanding of markets, and your investment decisions will be firmly rooted in proven soil.

I highly recommend this book for everyone.

Alexander Petrochenkov

A diamond in the rough!
Only available in paperback, no fancy artwork on the cover, no glowing reviews by a big time newspaper publisher, no forward by a prestigious luminary, even the editing is second rate.In a word, this is a rough book.

However, when it comes to content, this book is loaded as the author does not include a lot of fluff or selfish stories about himself.However, the author is obviously very well read, because he includes numerous references to plently of other investing books.Some may conclude it's a value investing book, but growth investing is covered as well.

So, what this book presents is a careful and comprehensive distillation of just about everything commonly available on the subject of investing.Also included are numerous clever stories which illustrate important investment truths and strategies and a recognition that a lot of what the mass media presents is almost worthless for somebody wishing to become an investor.

Make the most of risk-calculated investment
Becoming An Investor: Building Wealth By Investing In Stocks, Bonds, And Mutual Funds is a straightforward primer to the basics of conservative financial investment specifically written for the novice investor seeking to establish a profitable portfolio. From evaluating risks and ratios to diversifying to improve one's margin of safety, just about everything a beginning investor must know is included. For anyone considering putting their money to work for them, Becoming An Investor is urgently recommended, essential reading for participants in today's volatile stock and bond markets in order to help them to make the most of their risk-calculated investment activities. ... Read more

Product Description
By learning to read the direction and strengths of the market, even novice mutual fund investors can outperform the best stock pickers. That's because up to 90 percent of a stock's price movement is determined by trends in the market or the industry-not in the qualities of the company.By using point-and-figure charting techniques, Power Investing With Sector Funds supplies a simple and effective way to gauge the ebb-and-flow of the stock market, and ways to invest in the best-performing sectors at the right time, both in the U.S. and abroad.With the help of four technical tools-charting, trend lines, 20-week moving averages and relative strength-Power Investing With Sector Funds takes a step-by-step process to completely cover the principles of diversification, asset allocation, and sector investing to apply the technique for a successful investment program. Best of all, the system outlined in the book takes just 15 minutes a day! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

The method from this book does not work
I bought this book in August 1999. I read it for many times and tried to invest with its "great concept", but I failed. I tried to get some help from the Author's web site, but it was constantly "Under Construction" and finally disappeared. Then I got some help from Mr. Thomas J. Dorsey's company. Mr. Dorsey is the Author of a famous book Point & Figure Charting. His web site did use the same idea as Mr. Madlem's for mutual funds. However, this did not help me to implement the "great concept" either. At that time, Japanese funds were the best funds, but I was instructed not to invest in that fund, because it was overbought from the point & figure charting. I waited almost half a year and bought Fidelity Japan Small Cap Funds. However, the bad time for Japanese funds just started, thus I lost a lot of money. According to the methods of this book, I chose several technology funds to invest at the beginning of 2000. As everybody knows we had a huge correction that year, the results I had were just loss of money.

This book applies "Point and Figure" charting to mutual funds. I think it might be correct. However, there is a large space for discussion for the ideas such as the portfolio management presented in this book. This is because when you want to actually implement them, there are lot of difficulties and conflicts.

If you want to get information for mutual fund timing and allocation strategies, I think this book can only give you bad results. The author said in his book that this book is from his experience, but now I doubt.

All Hat, No Cattle
I received this book for Christmas, 1999.I read it at the time and thought, "What a great concept!".Had I written this review at that time, I would probably would have rated it **** or *****.At that time Mr. Madlem's web site, which is cited throughout the book, was mostly "Under Construction"; there are numerous references to this site in the book and fully implementing the strategy is very time consuming and cumbersome without it.Because of this, I decided to hold off for awhile.

I recently dusted off the book and read it again, fully intending to implement the process Mr Madlem touts.This time I found that his web site no longer exists, period.I also found that a "read through" of the book is good from a "concepts" perspective, but when one starts to actually implement the strategy, this book is incomplete and filled with many contradictions, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies.This is especially true as related to the numerous charts and Mr. Madlem's accompanying explanations.

After looking for other sources of information on "Point and Figure" charting, I found a lot of good, accurate information in other places on the web.I simply did a web search on "Point and Figure".I know now that very little in Mr. Madlem's book is original; he borrowed virtually all the concepts and techniques from other sources.This book is, as they say in Texas, "All Hat and No Cattle".

The "Point and Figure" charting method has a lot going for it; just don't rely on Mr. Madlem's book as its bible.

Interesting, BUT, hard to follow.
Lots of examples of P&F charting but I found the information and examples hard to follow.I lost interest in the middle of all the examples.I might be able to use it as reference, but it was just too hardto follow and read to the end.

Interesting strategy with lots of potential.
I found the book very interesting and I am certainly going to follow up on Mr. Madlem's strategy. However, trying to use his web site is not possible because most areas are under construction including the opportunity tosubscribe to his website which is supposed to allow one to follow alongwith the strategy first hand. There is a portfolio of his current positionsavailable at the web site.

Very Worthwhile
Presents a very interesting and useful approach to portfolio allocation and a fund selection/rotationstrategy based on relative strength performance. At first the emphasis on point and figure charting did notinterest me, but after studying the techniques, I found a few very helpfulideas for estimating price objectives, etc.

For the active fund trader,the concepts presented will stimulate ideas for system development andmoney management/allocation approaches. ... Read more

Product Description
My intent with this book is to help investors succeed. This book outlines a strategy for equity investing. This book is not a guide on how to set your financial goals or how much money you will need at retirement. This book presents a simple and reliable investment strategy that will outperform 90% of all growth funds over time with less risk. The strategy is designed to preserve your hard-earned cash, and to share in the potential from investing in sector mutual funds. This sector strategy has helped thousands in reaching their financial goals. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

One Star is one too many
A Google search of Schield Management reveals all you need to know about the author's expertise - incrime. Using hindsight analysis, a sector fund timing system described in the book was invented and then peddled to gullible investors who believed they would get similar above average results. Inevitably these systems fail which led Schield to lie to clients about their performance and to SEC investigators who were forced to go to extraordinary lengths to expose his fraud. (See SEC Release No. 2845/24/05 and No. 53201 1/31/6). Thankfully his firm was shut down and Schield permanently barred from acting as an investment advisor or broker-dealer in the future. Buy this book and you join me on his sucker list.

Very easy read with lots of general advice.
This book was a very easy read.It was written for anyone starting or considering sector investing.I will use alot of the general advice in developing my strategies.While some of the examples are several yearsold, all of the concepts and stratgies still apply.

Great read for anyone familiar/curious about sector investng
This book is one of the best sources for sector rotation and investing out to date.It is written and organized well with explanations that the investment professional or layman can easily understand. Good charts and easy to understand graphs with occasional humor. I read the entire book over a weekend. I have been doing my own sector plays for years and even I learned some things. I also checked out the books website, which is very professionally done. ... Read more

Product Description
With its hip style and cutting-edge techniques, The Morningstar Company has positioned itself as the nation's leading authority on fund performance, and this book, aimed at the dynamic Baby Boomer and Generation X crowds that made Motley Fool's Guide to Investing a major success, reveals its secrets for the very first time to show how anyone can win the mutual fund game. National targeted ads/media. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fast Read Investing is a Fast Learning Experience
I found this book to be extremely helpful in explaining (in simple easy-to-understand terms) the basics of stocks, mutual funds and bonds.To get someone up to speed quickly this is the book for you!A lot of valuable information is packed into this inexpensive little book. ... Read more

Product Description
Focused Mutual Funds are investments that all individuals should consider to boost the returns of their portfolios. This investment type enables you to participate in the growth of entire markets such as Energy, Real Estate, Gold, Healthcare, China and others with one easy purchase. And these markets can produce extraordinary returns. In 2006, for example, a Focused Fund containing the top 25 companies in China returned 85%! Certain Real Estate Focused Funds have returned over 30% per year for the last 5 years. But to realize the full potential of this type of investing you must understand how to find target market opportunities, indentify the best Focused Funds for taking advantage of these opportunities and put in place an automated system for monitoring the funds you buy in order to take profits and limit potential losses. "Investing in Focused Mutual Funds" gives you the knowledge, methodology and Web resources needed to perform all of these actions with confidence. Readers will also learn about Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), an exciting new investing vehicle that enables you to buy and sell entire target markets just like trading a stock.

This book has a companion online component that provides interactive tools such as calculators, worksheets, Web links and tests - all essential elements for learning how to effectively invest in Focused Funds. This is more than a book. This is a serious course in target market investing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

I feel newly empowered!
Highly recommended!I was prompted to buy this book because I wanted to add both a Gold and a Real Estate component to my portfolio and was looking for guidance.My advisor wasn't much help and other investing books don't address my specific needs.This book was exactly what I needed.It showed me how to invest in Gold and Real Estate using Exchange Traded Funds that give me the return (and safety) I wanted from these market segments without the hassle or risk of trying to find individual stocks.I learned that I could just buy a group of the best stocks in each market with one easy purchase.Plus it showed me how to do the same for other target markets such as Health Care, Energy, Homeland Security and even China.In addition this is more than simply a book, it's a complete course in target market investing - giving me access to an online component with interactive tools and Web links that gave me the resources necessary to transform knowledge into action.Eventually all investing publications will have to use this format to be competitive.I'm glad I found one that does now. ... Read more

Product Description
A monograph on investing, choosing investments, finding financial information and advisors, tracking and rating funds, and buy-sell guidelenes. ... Read more

Product Description
Investing for Life: The NAIC Mutual Fund Handbook ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Vibrant Life, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2008. The length of the article is 1565 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: An angel in marble: retirement accounts. Stocks. Mutual funds. When it comes to investing for the future, there are many options that can provide for the health of both the community and the individual. Recently my family and I took the scenic route to what we called "active investing.".(Spiritual BALANCE)
Author: Helen Lepp Friesen
Publication: Vibrant Life (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2008
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 24Issue: 1Page: 16(3)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more