Customer Reviews

If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't Buy It, 3rd Edition

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Aside from the humor in the book this is perhaps the most interesting investment plan I have ever seen. It is aimed at the basic investor, not someone who has spent years studying the stock market. The simple straightforward language is easy to understand. By trading no-load, no-fee mutual funds following this method it is possible to grow your money. It also discusses when and how to move your money to safe havens when mutual funds are not a good choice.
There are also chapters on options, commodities, and gold, but they are short and the subjects are presented more for background information than anything. You could not trade those successfully from the information in the book. But if you have money in IRA's and 401K/403B's then this will show you how to maximize your investment

Buy this book TODAY! It saved me a fortune!
My father in law talked about this guy "Al Thomas" at all the holiday dinners. I never gave it any second thoughts. I should have. Long story short, my father in law dies, leaves his wife a nice portfolio and I get his book collection. While selling the books I came to "If it doesn't go up, don't buy it" by Al Thomas. It looked interesting especially in this market; it was around August 20, 2008. I was losing money since the beginning of the year so I decided to read it. I started reading and could not put it down until it was done. I followed his advice and ended up selling everything in my portfolio on August 28. Al Thomas saved me a little over six figures as of 12/5/2008 and I didn't even buy the book!
Now I know why my father in law was always in cash when the market tanked and I wasn't. DO NOT DELAY, BUY IT. The price of this book is nothing compared to what it will save you during this downturn and the next one and the one after that, ect.
This is my first book review; I felt I must spread the word about my personal "Warren Buffett". I cannot stress the importance of this book in my investment library; it stands alone at the top. I don't know why Al doesn't have his own TV show on CNBC but he should.

The book is a mediocre. The author spent most time attacking others. The key things can be finished in 10 pages.

I also subscribed the author's "Over the shoulder". It turned out he gave conflicting info. For example, on 10/9/08, he advised to sell all the 401K if still holding because he thought market will still be down for 25-40%. The next day, 10/10/08, he sold his own bear funds because he estimated a rebounce of the market. He gave readers different advice other than he actually does.

I gave 3 stars because I still would like to test what is written in the book. With the time going on, the book may turn out to be a "look-back" and worth nothing.

I bought the book around August 2008 and followed what it said about getting in a cash position and money market fund until the market stabilizes and told friends and family to do the same. We have all made money and protected our principle and this book helped. I have done alot of trading and investing in stocks, options, and futures over the past 14 years. I find the information in this book very helpful to almost everybody. I'll put it's results up against almost all brokers. Just think how much you'll save in commissions alone!! I'm not getting paid to write this and I do not know the author. Also, I recommend reading www.moneyandmarkets free newsletters daily and your future should be set if you do what it says. Also,you'll understand what's really happening all over the world. I will not review the books contents because the other comments before me explained it very well. It is worth anyones time to read it.

[[ASIN:0967155312 If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't Buy It, revised and
updated]]

After reading the 1st chapter, you'll be armed & dangerous. Dangerous to the mutual fund industry, stock brokers, salesmen and anybody else that has hoodwinked you into believing that investing is brain surgery. It isn't. The author outlines a VERY SPECIFIC method that you can use to be your own mutual fund advisor. Easy to read & easy to follow. This is not rocket science, and not brain surgery. This could be the last book you every buy about investing in mutual funds. For every investor, 401k, 403b, 457, IRA, Roths, etc. This is the key to your retirement. Best book I ever bought on investing. 5*

I have been investing/trading the markets for 25 years though not full time until the last 3. Through that time the obvious facts Al points out were there to see and sometimes I would pay attention to them and prosper. Other times I would be fundamentally correct and ride to a great win only to give back a great deal or all of it. And of course later find the fundamentals had changed, when the data was released to us common folks. Other times I would just be wrong.

Al's book is great in reminding us that the object is to get a return on our investment, ignore our egos, and make money. Something is always going up and holding depreciating assets waiting for the tide to change defies any form of logic, if the goal is to make money. And things going up tend to keep going up until they don't. When they don't, you don't want them anymore. You can always buy them back if they go up again. Missing 10% to the upside at times is not bad if you also miss 40% to the downside. And it can also keep some cash on the table to buy something that IS going up.

Following longer-term trends keeps you in for the moves where the big money is made, and gives reason for patience when there is no reason to be exposed. Preserving precious capital and sleep.

He also let's you get in on things that are going up. Yes, you didn't buy at the exact bottom, so what? Catching 40% of a 100% move is still 40% and beats the bank rates.

I had to read the book 4 times before I accepted the facts that were obvious to me for many years. Buy the book and read it. Read it many times. While Al claims to be a technical trader, I think his message is really more philosophical as his message is to keep focused on the objective.

Al Thomas' book is a great guide that needs to be read by every novice, as well as the experienced investor. Well written, and well organized. His book reveals the motives of the Mutual Fund industry. The industry is not there to help the investor, but to exploit them. One of favorite expressions is Mall Street. He takes no enemies!

The novice investor has been conditioned to think that the "buy and hold" strategy is all one needs to be a successful. It works well in a bull market, but is deadly in a bear market. Al helps you determine when to be in the market and when to be out, in cash.

Al also has a subscription newsletter, in which he puts into practice the ideas presented in his book. And as "you look over his shoulder", he points out mutual funds and ETFs that appear to have promise, in the current market. He tells you what he invests in and why. When he buys and when he sells.

Al shows how to make money when the market is going up and not lose your shirt when it's falling. His plan is not to hit the home run, but to steadily and gradually chalk up earnings of 1 -2% per month.

Some of the investing books I've purchased have turned out to be great choices and some were disappointing -- disorganized, flawed recommendations, etc -- but this is the first book where I felt defrauded after purchasing it. The book is poorly written and poorly organized, but what really damns it is the actual content: completely unsupported assertions, contradictory recommendations, and (in a surprising number of cases) plainly ridiculous statements.

It isn't even a case of the book offering bad advice; if you attempted to follow the advice within to the letter you'd spend all your time trying to puzzle out vague and contradictory "rules". For example, Thomas goes on for several pages about how you should never listen to the "so-called investing experts", then, ten pages later, spends two pages detailing how you should base all of your mutual fund purchases on recommendations from a single investing advice newsletter.

I'm no financial guru, but you don't have to be at all to quickly recognize how terrible this book is. I purchased it on the strength of the recommendations here, and I can only conclude that they must have been written by friends of the author, because they certainly don't seem to describe the book that I received.

Very poorly organized and edited book (self published?). The author thanks his brother in law, a "great fisherman", for editing it. LOL, enough said. It is very opinionated and uses very simple strategies such as moving averages, for trading mutual funds. Even this revised edition from 2003 doesn't cover ETFs. It is a good, basic, introduction to momentum trading. Unfortunately, you will probably get whipsawed out of most positions, lose a little money, and generate a lot of commission expenses. The authors claim to fame, indeed the only records supplied in the book, is a profit of 40% in 1998. As I remember, anyone who just sat their money in a good growth, aggressive growth or small growth company fund in 1998 would have made 40% anyway without trading at all.
The only reason I am not rating this book one or two stars is that you can get a free e mail subscription to the authors newsletter. It too is very disorganized, but at least it shows you real time, real prices, what positions the author is taking. That's more than most pay services offer.
I think Mr. Thomas means well. I suspect he is a nice man. But his strategies don't seem to work too well anymore. Anything can work when back tested, that means nothing in the future except that it probably won't work anymore.
From the newsletter, I can see that Mr. Thomas is right about 40% of the time, and loses small amounts of money the other 60%. He is hoping that the profits from the 40% exceed the loses from the 60%. Sometimes they do, but add commissions and they probably won't.
One thing that really opened my eyes is that Mr. Thomas is in fact, Mr. Market. He can be very bullish Monday, somewhat bullish Tuesday, neutral Wed., slightly bearish Thursday, and a growling bear Friday. The next week he might start out bearish and end up bullish!
At least half the book is Mr. Thomas raving on and on about brokers. Half the newsletter is him raving about Barrack Obama. He is a crank, but an entertaining one.
Worth a read, but be careful and better papertrade what he says! Buyer beware!

I love this book for one reason -- it enabled me to avoid the bear market of 2008. Based on the advice in this book for using a simple 200 day moving average chart, I moved from stock mutual funds to cash in January, 2008, with minimal losses. Thank you, Al Thomas. After I lost about 40% in my retirement accounts in the 2000-2002 bear market, I decided to turn my back on buy-and-hold investing and find a better way. If you are down 40-50% this year, do yourself a favor and listen to this author for a way to avoid the next bear market. Believe it.