For prospective purchasers, hopefully you read the reviews to items before you buy them. In the case of this book, Getting Back to Even, I want you all to know that you can safely ignore the vague, uninformative, and unhelpful reviews left by some members (who probably haven't even read the book). You should not be purchasing this book unless you know something about the author, Jim Cramer. He has a daily show here in the US, every week day at 6PM EST on CNBC where he discusses stocks and their companies. If you have aren't familiar with Mr. Cramer, don't buy this book. Buy his earlier books. Though they are not cataloged or described as a series, the different books focus on different aspects of investing. They all provide general investing information, but it loosely breaks down like this (I am not listing all of his books, just the ones I've read):
Real Money: One of his earlier books, it explains his methodology in an overview fashion. This is where I would recommend starting.
Mad Money: This book follows Real Money and goes into more detail on many aspects of Real Money, such as his prescribed homework for your stock picks.
Stay Mad for Life: This book focuses more on investing for retirement, so it's not as suited to younger folks such as myself (25/male). But it is still a great guide with a ton of great information on preparing yourself for retirement at almost any age.. except perhaps if you're already retired!
Getting Back to Even: Despite what some of the sensibility-impaired critics have implied or outright accused, Cramer never suggests that he is infallible, nor does he ever give you the illusion that if you do what he tells you that you will never lose money. He always makes it clear that investing in stocks, especially speculative stocks, has inherent risk attached to it and that no matter how good you are, you WILL lose money. The goal of his books is to help teach you how to minimize your losses and maximize your gains, with the only limit being the amount of effort you are willing or able to put into the process. Getting Back to Even is for helping those whose portfolios have been hit hard by the global recession. Again, this isn't the right book to purchase as a starting point; read his earlier books first.
And just for the record, if all you did was listen to Cramer recommend a stock on his show, Mad Money, and then went and bought the stock without doing the homework he RELIGIOUSLY instructs you to do, you deserved to lose your money because you ignored EVERYTHING he has told you to do to make money. Mad Money, the show, is not a stock-picking show. He doesn't just say the name of stocks he likes. He tells you WHY these stocks are good, in his professional opinion. He helps you with your research but he is NOT a substitute for it. Don't attack him because you were too lazy or impatient to do it properly. All he teaches you is to basically learn as much as humanly possible about the stocks you own or want to own-- how can that possibly be a "scam"?
