Customer Reviews

Beyond Wall Street - The Art of Investing (4-Video Set) [VHS]

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I disagree with the viewer who wrote that Jane and I are morons, but do agree with him that, at least for most people interested in investing, this is 8 hours worth watching (I found the investors we interviewed fascinating) but not ordinarily worth spending a hundred bucks to own.

While this series does contain some informative interviews with some very interesting people (Foster Friess, John Neff, Peter Bernstein, and others), the whole thing feels like a late night infomercial. The hosts Andrew Tobias and Jane Bryant Quinn are annoying, and frankly come across as morons. In one episode, we learn that 80% of mutual funds don't beat the market average, (any Motley Fool knows that) yet Jane tells us later she is a mutual fund investor. Then Andrew quips that she's really investing her husbands money. In another episode we learn that bonds can be as risky (or riskier) than stocks, and that it's a myth that they are safer than stocks. Later our hosts advise us that we should diversify into bonds to lower our risk. The hosts don't cut through the confusion to make concepts easier to understand, they add to the chaos and come across as confused themselves. As for the series usefulness, it's not a bad introduction to general investment concepts but certainly won't give you many new insights, or teach you how to invest. It's just a very general overview of different types of investing strategies, and a shallow introduction to various concepts (how bonds work, emerging markets, black box investing) Unfortunatley, it doesn't really teach you much "art" at all, and doesn't match up to the usual PBS quality I've come to expect. If you've already done your homework on investment terminology and basics, you may find some parts useful. Seasoned investors may enjoy seeing interviews with the superstars of the financial world that you normally only read about. For the new investor, start somewhere else.

As a financial professional, those videos are big disappointment to me. It didn¡¯t offer any insightful ideas, but instead that contents offered in the videos are comment knowledge in term finance. I wouldn¡¯t recommend this video to anyone who has finance background.