Customer Reviews

If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't Buy It!

5 star:		(57)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

An excellent book and approach to investing. However, you will have to read it several times. If you don't you'd be apt to think the system does not work in a bear market but it does, and very nicely too. Thomas recommends finding momentum by checking 13 week, 6 month, and one year performance results -- I suggest you also check 4 week fund performance results.

Highly recommended by this writer. My portfolio is up 10% in 3 months by following the "If it doesn't go up" method during an ugly bear market.

The book takes the reader on a revealing journey through the absurdity and nonsense that has become Wall Street. If you're under the weather from building wealth for your broker while your portfolio withers, I prescribe a healthy dose of "If It Doesn't Go Up Don't Buy It." For an entertaining read and solid information on wealth building this book can't be beat. If you're a broker I suggest you read it with your seatbelt fastened.

Take a look at most of the recommendations here and see if they don't like promotions generated by friends of the author. One guy says he was down 25% one year, then up 2% the next year and 20% the year after, which brings him to within 3% of being even. Sorry pal, that's not the compound returns work; you're still down 8.2% (1 X -.25 X 1.02 X 1.2). A 25% loss followed by a 25% return isnt' breakeven, it's down 6.25% (because the 25% loss comes off $1, the 25% return is only on the $.75 left).

Don't waste your money on newsletters and get rich schemes promising you that you can be a good investor in an hour or two a week. As Warren Buffett says, "If you've been in a card game for 30 minutes and don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy."

If you want to become a successful background, learn the basics of accounting, study companies, and read Graham, Buffett, Lynch, etc. instead of this get rich quick garbage There are no shortcuts. If you don't have the time or background or desire, do yourself a favor and buy no-load index funds from a company like Vanguard.

I'm sorry to be so harsh, but I'm beyond sick of these charlatans who get rich fleecing people that don't know better.

My thanks to Al Thomas for writing a book explaining an investment system that works, that is simple and that anybody can master regardless of background or experience. Other reviewers have covered the books contents quite well. I'm here to show how the system has worked. Using his method of buying only the better performing no-load mutual funds and holding them only so long as they perform well my gain YTD (Sep 25,2000) has been 46.7% even though I took some severe hits in March when the Nasdaq bottomed.

I was turned on to this book by my Accountant back in early 1999. I was a beginner to intermediate investor at the time, and certainly lost more than I made due mostly to lack of discipline.

This book discusses a safe investing strategy with limited losses, and huge profit potential. Since reading the book and following the market indicators, I've experienced significantly more profit than the few small losses. The theme of the book is invest in mutual funds, follow market indicators, BE DISCIPLINED, minimize losses, and maximize profits.

I continuously recommended this book in any conversation I'm involved in discussing investments. Two of my close friends with 7 figure portfolios (and plenty of other friends and relatives with much less) follow this strategy to the "T". Of coarse they (and I) dabble in other strategies, but this is their primary portfolio strategy.

I would recommend this book anyone interested in making money in the market. Anyone from beginner to expert traders will benefit, as the book cuts right to the point, and explains all necessary details in a clear and concise manner.

Thanks for the great book Al!!!

Mr. Thomas' assertion is that there is a simple way for the average individual to participate in the investment world, to outperform the indices in relative safety. To this end he is an outspoken advocate of no-load mutual funds. His strategy is to momentum-rank NL funds and trade them like individual stocks. The diversity of funds coupled with the diversity of the individual securities therein precludes having all one's eggs in one basket. Selection of high-momentum funds ensures that the investor does not "buy the market".

In the realm of relative safety the operative word is "relative". There is, of course, no way to beat the indices without participating in downside volatility as well as upside. To opt for lower volatility is to settle for a concomitant mediocre return.

In authoring this book Mr. Thomas draws on his wide range of investment experience. He shares not only his NL fund strategy but also those related to trading a diversity of financial instruments including commodities, bonds and options.

Mr. Thomas is outspoken and opinionated, as he should be. He has a message and he delivers it in a forthright manner. The book is informative and is an interesting read. I recommend it to anyone interested in investment strategies.

Paul Remsen

Finally, someone is looking out for us little guys who want to make money. This book is a deal! I have purchased several for family & friends. It's short, easy to understand, and will make you a lot of money. I have been investing myself for just over 2 years now. And, I wish I had stuck with doing everything he tells you to do. I made $7,500 my first month! But, I decided to listen to others about investing in some stocks, and now I've been torpedoed like everyone else in the market. From now on, I will do exactly what he says to do in the book. Also, How many millionaires would bother emailing you each week to tell you about the market, how they are making money, and explaining what the heck is going on? Al Thomas will if you buy his book!

For those of us who have better things to do than to spend countless hours every day, or every week, hovering over our investment portfolio, the no-load mutual fund investing approach described in "If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't Buy It" is just what the doctor ordered.

The system which Mr. Thomas teaches requires a minimum number of trades per year and, as a result, avoids many of the whipsaws produced by some of the other systems out there. And, it's structured so that you're out of the market during unfavorable periods, thus incurring substantially less risk than the market itself. Since he incorporates two of Hulbert's top-ranked advisories in his timing and fund selection process, you can easily verify the author's claims and returns for yourself. I did --- and they prove out.

While he urges his readers to focus their attention on mutual funds as the best vehicles for the average investor, he also covers quite adequately, individual stock selection, the all-important topic of when to sell, commodities, and dealing with a bear market, among others.

A nice feature of owning this excellent book is that it entitles you to receive Mr. Thomas' email newsletter, which he calls, "Over My Shoulder." He puts this informative little missive out quite frequently, and I've found it to be a useful supplement to the book.

Review published 7/13/2000 in SPACE COAST PRESS By John Barnes Former owner/publisher of Space Coast Press and the author of "Evita", the story of Eva Peron

I have always traveled light during my years as a foreign correspondent. To get in and out of war zones with speed, I carried one small bag stuffed with clothes, an old portable typewriter, replaced in later years by an even smaller laptop - and a book. Only the book has changed. My worst choice probably was Hugh Thomas's "Spanish Civil War", which I had with me during my stay in Cuba's Secret Police headquarters during the 1963 missile crisis. I could hear the firing squad at dawn from my cell. With light from a tiny vent in the ceiling, I could just make out the stone walls last letters written in blood to wives and children. It was not a good place to read Thomas' horrific accounts of the massacres and senseless killings in Spain's civil war. I have been reading another Thomas - Merritt Island resident Al Thomas - during my recent travels through Southeast Asia. His book, "If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't Buy It!", is much more fun. To give a sense of what's in store for the reader, it carries a warning label on the front cover -"Following instructions herein will cause reader to become rich. If you have an allergy to large sums of money, Do Not Read!" Thomas was a member and floor trader on the Chicago Open Board of Trade until 1981 when he sold his membership so he and his wife, Carolyn, could sail the seas for 2 years aboard their 41' ketch, the Aumakua (which means guardian angel in Hawaiian). Afterwards he founded World Trading Group which grew to be the seventh largest introducing commodity brokerage firm in the U.S., with 35 branch offices from coast to coast. He is now president of Williamsburg Investment Company, trading stocks, options and mutual funds. His book sets out to distill the best of what he has learned from trading in the financial markets for more than 30 years and offers advice on how to make money in mutual funds, stocks, futures and options. It has been written, he says, for the little guys with a few thousand dollars or more to invest who want to make a good return on their money with maximum safety; a slow, steady 30% to 50% annually over any five-year period. Along the way, Thomas trashes brokers, mutual fund managers, money managers, and just about every analyst who ever drew a breath. And to all those who have watched their portfolios shrink in the recent market downturn, he warns: Watch out for those brokers who push the "you-are-in-for-the-long-haul" and "the-market-always-comes-back." Retired folk in particular, he says, don't have the luxury of waiting out a decade for bear markets to end. "If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't Buy It!" was written before this year's spectacular crash in the tech stocks. He believes more than anything else his book will help investors not to do most of the dumb things experts want you to do. He constantly reminds readers that while their brokers may be really nice, honest folk, investors must always remember that their first loyalty is not to any broker, fund manager or family of funds, it's to their own money. That reminder alone is worth the purchase price of the book. I will be carrying it with me when I set off on my next assignment.

I heard Al a couple of years ago on a radio show here in Phoenix.
I only caught a small amount of the show, I thought this is not what I have been told by my investment advisor which was the popular buy and hold system. Al made a lot of sense to me, in a very short time, Enough to buy his book and learn his method. I also learned a lot about the wonderfull world of brokers. They make the snake oil salesmen look like saints.
Do yourself and anyone you can pass it on to a favor. Get this book!