Customer Reviews

Free Lunch On Wall Street

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I have some of Chuck Carlson's other books, but this is the one that put him on the map in the early Nineties, along with Buying Stocks Without a Broker. Somewhat sadly, FREE LUNCH has been obsoleted in more ways than one. First, and in general terms, DRiP investing became mainstream, as companies started courting investors directly (even if fees have increased in recent years), and Chuck's secrets became less so. Second, and more specifically, the bonus "hook" this book sold with was the coupons and offers, all of which have long since expired. In many cases the companies are no longer in business, and none of specials were all that special anyway: FIVE FREE hours of AOL (back then it was still called America Online), and mostly lots of trial subscriptions to financial publications.

But a bigger problem still is the wisdom of building an investment portfolio based on baby food coupons (Gerber) and discount film processing (Moto Photo). Surely an investment in a worthless company is just that--worthless--despite the seemingly attractive freebie it may offer. Mr. Carlson acknowledges as much in the final chapter. ("Don't take a big position in a lousy stock just because the company offers a good perk.") Unfortunately that advice is too little, too late for a book hung on the freebie premise.

As it is, most of the tangible perks, including AMF's (formerly American Recreation Centers) free bowling, have long since been rescinded. Even coupons for a company's own products have disappeared for the most part; I have not received a coupon insert with my P&G annual report for several years.

One tip I did take from the book was the Marvel Comics 1991 Annual Report. It's almost a graphic novel and I picked up a copy on ebay several years ago. Definitely a nice conversation piece. And not that I availed myself of it, but the 15% theme park discount for Anheuser-Busch shareholders sounded decent. I would hope that the free gum from Wrigley's is still sent out but in today's economy, who knows. As for less materialistic perks, I enjoyed the story of Chicago divorcee Betty Rogers, who gained entry to twenty-five annual shareholder meetings in order to meet the next Mr. Right!

Weirdly, Berkshire Hathaway was NOT included in this book, despite their world famous annual Omaha shindig. There are also some typos. In summary, while you might get a kick out of leafing through this time capsule, more current data is provided in George Fisher's All About DRIPs and DSPs, or better still, just search online. FREE LUNCH does provide some good information for individual investors (sort of a precursor to The Individual Investor Revolution: Seize Your New Powers of Investing & Make More Money in the Market also by Carlson), and if I had been on Amazon when it was published in 1993, I surely would have rated it higher.

Investing requires research and WORK. Free Lunch on Wall Street is not a free lunch. It still requires WORK on your part. You get out of your investments exactly what you put into them. You can read Free Lunch on Wall Street, but I don't think it's worth $14.95. Sure, you may get a free lunch at the shareholders meeting, but is it worth the other expenses just to get there

I think that there are a lot of other ideas on how to get involved in Drips using the company and your own savvy of computors and go online to save money or build a portfolio with out the high costs. I personally would like to see such a book.