Customer Reviews

The 100 Best Stocks You Can Buy

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I actually consider this guide better for choosing industries to invest in rather than individual stocks. Daily market conditions, even intraday, change so rapidly that I think it is impossible for anyone to choose stocks for the next year, even the best and most experienced portfolio managers. Books detailing tried and true selection strategies applicable to any market condition are better buys. But if you have already purchased this book, use the information with caution and consult other sources before making final investment decision.

I didn't even make it past the Preface before I started developing serious reservations about what I was reading. Among author John Slatter's nine "fundamental truths" listed therein: As investments, anything else besides common stock is "inferior," "Don't buy mutual funds," and "Don't ask anyone for advice." As an investment professional, I would see danger ahead for many who choose to follow such investing tenets. I should add that, on the subject of advice, Mr. Slatter DOES encourage contacting his firm (phone number provided) in the event that you have at least $250,000 and you happen to disobey the thing about advice mentioned above. In case you don't fit in with the author's target [investing] audience, take a couple grains of salt right there.

The remainder of Part I contains basic terminology, some palatable commentary about analysis, information sources, etc., and a "defense" of Mr. Slatter's strategy of holding mostly common stocks with the remainder in money markets. Many might take exception (I do) to the recommendations against asset allocation as well as the author's abhorrence of mutual funds and bonds. In my opinion, these are questionable premises, especially for the beginning investor.

Part II, the latter 90% of the book, has very good write-ups on what the author feels are the 100 best companies in which to own stock. I would suggest using this part ONLY for familiarizing yourself with specific market sectors and general business trends, with the understanding that much of the year 2000 had NOT yet occurred when this was written, thus rendering the historical information--and company-specific prognostications--largely obsolete. More grains of salt.

It should be understood that the investment viewpoint held in this book is just one of many; there are good arguments for investment strategies that run contrary to the author's philosophy. On the subject of picking stocks, I'd recommend using Value Line or another publication which updates stock selection data/advice far more frequently. If it weren't for the good company profiles in this book, I'd skip it altogether.

For an inexperienced investor, unlike myself, this book provides some useful hints and tips to help evaluate which stocks to buy and sell. The introductory section provides some useful quick checks to help a novice evaluate which stock to buy from a particular sector.

The main part of this book contains information on 100 companies that John Slatter recommends to watch in 2000. They are elegant categorized according to what the aims of your investments are (e.g. Agressive Growth or Income). For each company there are a number of reasons to buy, but also the author points out possible shortcomings in the stock. Coverage for the companies is fairly comprehensive and Slatter also states company investor contacts, so further information can be requested. However, the information the book contains is outdated, with Company accounts dating from 1998. The book is very useful, but only if you in consultation with the latest financial information.

I recommend this book to anyone who is new to investing in American markets, as it gives the reader a brief introduction to a whole host of companies across a broad range of sectors. Not a book you can read cover to cover, but a useful reference tool.

I enjoy this book and use it as a reference. I try to keep a 20 stock portfolio and use this book to stay diversified. It doesnt contain many smaller companies. These are all large dividend paying companies. I think that it would be nice if it contained portfolios for folks of different ages and risk assumption.

After perusing about 30-40 books that deal with the topic, I purchased one book, The 100 Best Stocks You Can Buy in 2003. I am convinced I made the right choice. Mr. Slatter's book is excellent--insightful, readable, thorough--and full of useful bits of information the novice will overlook.

John Slatter's strategies to some may be archaic, to others nonsensical. But really, when it comes to investing, everyone has their own strategy anyway, so what is the fuss all about? Slatter's statement about stocks is really in reference to the "bond craze" that some people get, the real estate markets and commodities. People who don't understand those particular markets should stay away from them as they have a good potential to get burned if they are ignorant about their moves within it. More people understand stocks, he knows that, so he is going to speak to these people. The definitions of market lingo are great and very clear. The company profiles are great and give pretty good insight into each company and what makes them valuable. Updated information? Why try and find that in a book anyway? The internet will do for updated information. Afterall, the author is only giving an opinion as to what makes those particular stocks valuable. He is definately not writing a stock atlas or performance history. Good read, thought through all the way.

This is a great place to start if you are looking for stocks to buy. It gives a great breakdown of a stocks 8 year history of:
>Revenue
>Net Income
>Earnings per share
>Dividends per Share
>Highest and Lowest stock price for each year
It gives you the basic profile of the company,the shortcomings to bear in mind,and reasons to buy.
It is great for ideas on companies to buy with a great overview of the stocks history. It divides stocks into its industry, sector, and category. This book will be useful to use to understand and create a diversified portfolio of individual stocks.
But be warned of three things:
1). Use this book as a history book not a newspaper, go to Quotes/Yahoo or marketcenter.com for up to date information.
2). These are all large cap stocks, this book is not for investors looking for small cap stocks.
3)/ This is a basic beginners book, great for them, but an experienced investor will already have this information from other periodicals.

Mr. Slatter has a good idea in trying to narrow the universe of companies to invest in down to 100. He writes up a couple page profile on each company which tells you the pros and cons and some background history. He provides you with the web address which would be a good next step. All of the companies in the book are quite substantial and on average probably solid long term investments. It is always interesting to read his commentary at the beginning of the book, even if you do not agree with everything. He also does a good job of gathering significant reporting that has occurred in various publications into one place from the past year. THat is a time saver. Think of this book as an annual newsletter. It is a lot cheaper than most newsletters you can buy.

At my school's bookstore I saw this beauty. I opened it up and it looked like it was full of basic company rundowns; full of simple, easy to evaluate fundamentals. After purchase I read the forward/intro and realized that this part of the book was junk. What this book is good at and helps you do is analyze the core businesses behind these 100 behemoth companies. Once you get a feel of what they do and where they plan to go you can go do the more nitty gritty and required readings of the 10k's, q's and annual reports later. This is a basics book for people who are looking for good companies to invest in. Take all the evidence in it though with a grain of salt because it's all based on 2001, not 2002. And again, do yourself a favor and just skip the first 34 pages(with the possible exception of the "terminology" section).

The main strength of this book is the 100 detailed company profiles, which give the rundown on the company's core businesses, their history of profitability, product and market area dominance, quality of management, and so on. What use is this, you might ask? Well, Peter Lynch once said that you should be able to tell at least a two-minute story about each stock you buy. Well, the coverage here amounts to a ten-minute story for each of the 100 stocks. Most of these were familiar to me, but some weren't, and so I learned something there. Perhaps the best stock I learned about was good ol' MMM, Minnesota Manufacturing and Mining. It has a 20-year record of 20 percent return on equity (ROE), and amazingly, 30 percent return on capital. You could do worse than buy this stock and just hold it. (By the way, it's up several points over the last few trading days in the market, and Proctor and Gamble has done pretty well also, another recommended stock). Anyway, for those wishing to follow a conservative, large-cap investment program, this book is packed with useful information. Anybody who buys the top dozen stocks in this book, distributing them among at least half a dozen sectors, should do pretty well over the long term. Remember, although 90 percent of all mutual fund managers don't beat the broad indexes, it's only necessary to match the market's performance over the long haul to become very well off financially and secure your retirement. This book will help you do that by concentrating on the fairly conservative strategy of buying and holding quality large-cap stocks.