Laughing at Wall Street: How I Beat the Pros at Investing (by Reading Tabloids, Shopping at the Mall, and Connecting on Facebook) and How You Can, Too [Hardcover]

Chris Camillo (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 8, 2011

$20,000 to $2 million in only three years— the greatest stock-picker you never heard of tells you how you can do it too

Chris Camillo is not a stockbroker, financial analyst, or hedge fund manager. He is an ordinary person with a knack for identifying trends and discovering great investments hidden in everyday life. In early 2007, he invested $20,000 in the stock market, and in three years it grew to just over $2 million.

With Laughing at Wall Street, you’ll see:
•How Facebook friends helped a young parent invest in the wildly successful children’s show, Chuggington—and saw her stock values climb 50%
•How an everyday trip to 7-Eleven alerted a teenager to short Snapple stock—and tripled his money in seven days
•How $1000 invested consecutively in Uggs, True Religion jeans, and Crocs over five years grew to $750,000
•How Michelle Obama caused J. Crew’s stock to soar 186%, and Wall Street only caught up four months later!

Engaging, narratively-driven, and without complicated financial analysis, Camillo’s stock picking methodology proves that you do not need large sums of money or fancy market data to become a successful investor.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“You don’t need Wall Street to be a successful investor. In fact, Chris Camillo’s inspirational approach to creating wealth shows that you know more than the suits on Wall Street —and that knowledge can make you millions.”

--T. Harv Eker, Author of #1 NY Times Bestseller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

 

"Chris Camillo shows the power that self-directed investors today have to transcend the advice of Wall Street gurus."

--Perry Blacher, CEO of Covestor-the world's largest portfolio verification service

 

“In Laughing at Wall Street, Chris Camillo's personal story, engaging anecdotes, and practical common sense explanations show the novice and amateur investor what works and what doesn't. I'm intrigued. And inspired.” 

--Erin Chase, Author of The $5 Dollar Dinner Mom Cookbook

 

"Chris Camillo's Laughing at Wall Street is a fun, practical guide for the novice investor on how to use tools at their disposal such as social media and observation of everyday shopping patterns to become a successful investor. Readers can benefit from Camillo's personal experiences of investing success to create their own winning portfolios!"

-- Jordan E. Goodman, personal finance expert and author of Fast Profits in Hard Times

 

“It’s time to beat the “Street” like Chris did.  If that intrigues, excites and inspires you, read his compelling book!”

--Mark Victor Hansen, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul

 

“Laughing At Wall Street is a terrific way to create a financially fit future”

--Denise Austin, America's Favorite Fitness Expert and bestselling author of Pilates for Every Body and Fit and Fabulous After 40

About the Author

CHRIS CAMILLO is one of one of the world’s top performing amateur investors. Most recently a market research executive, his jobs over the years have included washing and selling cars, delivering pizza, and folding clothes at The Gap. He lives in Texas with his family.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (November 8, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312657854
• ISBN-13: 978-0312657857
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.9 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (101 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #150,382 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Laughing at Wall Street author Chris Camillo is not a stockbroker, financial analyst, or hedge fund manager. Yet in early 2007, in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Chris invested $20,000 in the stock market, and in just over three years it grew to over $2 million. How did he do it? By observing the world around him.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Read October 3, 2011

By John Chancellor TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This book is a very interesting read. Chris Camillo, the author, takes a dim view of Wall Street and the financial analysts. He spends the first part of the book bashing the analysts approach to investing - both fundamental and technical - and the unreasonable fees most investment advisors charge.

Most investors have no idea how much is being skimmed off the top of their mutual fund accounts by the investment advisors.

Then Mr. Camillo introduces his approach to investing. It can best be described as information arbitrage - only invest when you have knowledge which Wall Street does not have or refuses to accept. For the most part this would limit your investment to smaller companies. But Apple was one of the examples cited where the market - the people on main street - where warmly embracing the iPhone but Wall Street was not.

Information arbitrage requires a keen sense of observation - something lacking in most people. You must look at what is happening around, what people are doing and then deduce what that information means to the market place. I know many people who in 2006 - 07 "knew" the real estate market had gotten way overheated. But few if any could connect the dots and use that knowledge to make a profitable investment decision.

So while the approach is very interesting, having the discipline and insight to carry it off is going to be difficult for most people.

The first half of the book is very interesting, easy to read and quite insightful when the author is presenting his theory and how to use it. He also gives some solid information about how to use the online chat rooms - what to look out for and what to expect.... It has been some time since I had visited any financial chat rooms so the reminder and the information I found quite helpful.

When the author started discussing put and call options, I found the tenor of the book slowed down quite a bit. I think the average reader could skip those chapters and not miss that much.

If you are looking for a solid approach AND if you are willing to invest the time and energy in becoming an astute observer of what is happening on Main Street and then confirming what that will do to the price of a particular stock, this could be an extremely valuable book. If you are looking for a quick and easy way to investment riches, look elsewhere. The approach advanced by the author is very slow, find an information arbitrage, confirm it and be patient.

While I totally believe his claims about the money he made, I am not so certain that very many people will be able to follow his pattern. Read more ›

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Peter Lynch + Nicolas Darvas= Chris Camillo October 13, 2011

By Steve Burns TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

You have to sit up and listen intently to any investor who has turned $20,000 into $2 million in only three years. Author Chris Camillo did not do this by accident, he has been watching the stock market and learning about what truly makes money in investing since he was a child.

The author warns investors about avoiding mutual funds for investing due to their high fees and lack of performance of the majority of them compared to their benchmark indexes. I agree with him, stick with stock index funds in your main investment retirement accounts. Mutual funds are a pretty lousy deal, they lose 20% of your money in a bear market year but still take their 2% management fee. You take all the risk, they get paid regardless of your returns. Stick with index funds or index ETFs for investment accounts and I would advise adding a trend following method to get better returns than mutual funds.

The author made his millions by investing in stocks using what he considered "information arbitrage". The wealthy upper class predominantly male money managers on Wall Street miss the early beginnings of crazes like Crox shoes, they know nothing about the latest popular kids television show, and your teenagers may let you be the first one to know about the hottest new teen store or video game. These early ideas many times lead to huge earnings for the stocks of the companies that create them. These are the great investments the author recommends after due diligence.

While these insights are not new (I have heard the same suggestions from Peter Lynch and Jim Cramer) what is different is that Chris Camillo kept swinging until he hit the consecutive home runs that made him a millionaire....

What enabled him to accomplish this in such a short period of time was a concentrated investment strategy like the Nicolas Darvas system, he held concentrated positions of 25% or 50% of his portfolio in one stock, this is not diversification it is putting your eggs in one basket and watching the basket very closely. Even that level of concentration was not enough, he would hold his positions with one strike in the money stock options 6 to 9 months until expiration for supercharged returns of sometimes 500% returns.

He was able to acquire his original stake of trading capital through basic frugality with the only purpose of the money being to go for it with big returns on concentrated leveraged bets on stocks he had researched. The author says he was only able to find and research one or two big plays a year, to research he uses calls to stores, visits to malls, investor message boards, his friends on social networking sites, and a keen look out through his "investors glasses" for break out hot trends. Chris Camillo also worked in consumer research so I have no doubt that taught him a thing or two about trends.

This book just shows for a fact with a lot of study and years of hard work,(and I am guessing many failures) it is possible to become a stock picking millionaire.

Great book, it is really that simple and that hard at the same time. You must have the guts to lose if you want to win. You have to do the work to find the picks. You have to learn how to let the winners run as far as they will. You must persevere if you want to win.

This book shows you how one guy did it. My only suggestion is that I wished he would have told the story of his detailed trades instead of the principles of how he did it. I would have loved to read a Nicolas Darvas style book about his personal trading journey step by step. Read more ›

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Motivating The Self-Directed Investor October 17, 2011

By J. A. Bell VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

First of all, I like the author's writing style, and I like much of the information, research and "factoids" in the book. I also think the author is probably a pretty nice guy. Any son who notices that his parent's lawnmower needs oil, then takes the time to "google" the best type of oil, THEN goes and buys that particular oil, and then mows the lawn, is more than okay in my book. He comes across as: 1) observant and 2) responsible. These are qualities I look for in any investment guru.

I also think his methods for motivating younger investors might just click with many of them.

Like many of the other reviewers, I noticed that Mr. Camillo has read the Peter Lynch books. I found my own dusty copies that I've had since the 1990's (Beating The Street, and One Up On Wall Street, each with a $2.99 sticker on the front) and looked through them for comparison purposes. Both Lynch and Camillo like to make observations at the mall, noting that high traffic stores could be attached to companies that are returning large profits. These are potential stock picks, but only after investigating further, using due diligence. I was impressed with Mr. Camillo's rejection of Coach after he investigated further. He really shines when it comes to due diligence and apparently he has made good decisions based on his investigations -- buying some stocks, rejecting others. Where Lynch and Camillo part company, though, is that Lynch buys the actual stock, and Camillo favors options. He explicity tells how to buy options in "Chapter 9: Fake It 'Til You Make It!"

In the chapter titled, "See It, Believe It!..." Camillo points out that as a self-directed investor, he has gathered (and since discarded) two decades of investment books and "how-to-invest" articles, that have been written by well-intentioned "experts," but that "suspiciously," these experts never "published or offered access to their own audited multi-year investment returns as proof of their claims of being able to substantially outperform either the stock market at large or the performance of a randomly assembled portfolio."

He writes: "Whenever I meet people dishing out investment advice, I always ask them to disclose their personal investment returns for the prior three-year period. If I ran a financial and investing television network, I would institute a "Why Should I Listen to You?" meter, which would prominently display on-screen the three-year investment returns of every guest pundit during the full length of their on-air interview." (67)

After reading this, my expectations were high, and I thought, "If this author details his actual stock picks, dates, and amounts invested, earned and re-invested 'in only three years,' printed on the back cover) to earn $2 million from his original $20K investment this book will receive a high review." Although detailed information was not forthcoming in this book, there is a post on his website from an independent accounting firm in Texas. A statement from CPAs shows that on September 1, 2006 the initial balance was $83,752 and on April 30, 2010, the balance was $2,337,559 for a yield of 774.22% (Average Annual Rate Of Return). A 774% rate of return, while not impossible, is a rare achievement and an incredible accomplishment.

I would have liked to have seen more detailed information in "Laughing At Wall Street," though: a rough outline of his portfolio during the "three years" it took him to realized substantial gains detailing his bigger trades and generalizing his smaller ones, (including specific dates, or even chunks of time).

He stated that he did purchase Activision, the maker of Guitar Hero (page 97) and in less personal terms, he wrote: "As little as $1,000 invested in Ugg's parent company, Decker in late 2002...parlayed into True Religion stock in early 2004, and again parlayed into the stock of Crocs shortly after the company's IPO in February of 2006, would have grown to $750,000 by 2007. That's 750 times your money in just five years." (97-98) Other stocks he MAY have purchased would have been: IMAX, Netflix, Salesforce and Cerner. He also mentioned Apple, but did HE invest in it when the investing was good? Did HE invest in Decker, True Religion, and Crocs? Inquiring minds want to know.

Overall, "Laughing at Wall Street" is motivational, easy to read and outlines how to save money on fees (anywhere from 1% to 3%) by being a self-directed investor. Read more ›