Customer Reviews

The Motley Fool's What to Do with Your Money Now : Ten Steps to Staying Up in a Down Market

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

 

 

After owning a couple of the previous works from the Motley Fool (and subsequently throwing them out because the advice is pretty bad) I took a look at the latest edition by borrowing it from someone.

First of all I've always found their advice frustrating. On one hand they kind of half-heartedly recommend passive index investing and then they go about telling you about the latest stock-screening get-rich-quick fad. Toss in a couple dubious stock picks along the way and you have nothing but a mixed message.

I think this book is a pretty shallow attempt for these two to make up for the really bad advice they gave in their other books over the years. They take several chapters explaining away (in hindsight) how wrong they were, but even in this light they fail to embrace proven strategies and instead go about telling you what stocks to own (Starbucks anyone??). Basically this book is trying to convince you that "This time it's different." They are now trying to mend their ways and show that now their advice is worth listening to and all the stuff they said before was wrong and they're very sorry you lost so much of your money using their strategies. And oh, by the way, we still offer for sale this nifty stock investment newsletter and website for a really great price!

I really think the best approach is to concentrate your portfolio on passive index funds compromising various asset classes (domestic, foreign, bonds, real estate) and just rebalancing once a year. This is a very proven strategy that will beat virtually every actively managed portfolio/fund with far less stress (and taxes). Most major pension funds follow an indexing approach for a good reason: It works.

For a much better read try out The Coffeehouse Investor, books by Larry Swedroe, Bogle, and William Bernstein. Send these two jesters back to the circus...

If you're a somewhat experienced investor, don't waste your money. While Gardner has an involving speaking presentation, there isn't much here beyond some superficial financial planning and investing advice, with a little history of the dot com bubble burst and some mea culpa on the Fool's business foibles. One major investing theme in the book seems to be index funds. He repeats over and over that 90% of managed funds do not beat the S&P index. While that may be true, don't tell Bill Miller, Wally Weitz, Will Danhoff, Ron Muhlenkamp, Bruce Berkowitz..... Of course, he also fails to mention that many funds do not invest in anything remotely associated with this large company index, so it's not fair to compare. Gold funds, small cap funds, international funds, sector funds..... While the average person would be better off following this advice in lieu of uninformed, uneducated investing, it's really a lazy investor philosophy. Not to mention that while repeating over and over that the only mutual fund you need is an index fund, the Motley Fool has begun a newsletter called 'Champion Funds'- makes one think they're OK with managed funds, as long as they can get paid to tout them.....

Although the Motley Fools have shown their inexperience, like some of us knew they would, they have also started maturing. Much of their advice is generic enough to be good and hardly any of their advice is "bad" (like much of their competition). Also, there are some gold nuggets later in the program, so it is worth a listen if you are at any transition points in your life.

This book is filled with investment wisdom. I enjoyed hearing about the story about the early days of [...]and how they were anxious to grow it as quickly as possible without having a defined business plan. What they were doing was trying to raise capital not to bring the company to profitability, but to simply grow larger so that they could raise even more capital later on.

- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market

One reason I always liked the Gardners was because they not only provided smart, commonsense financial advice in a fun, un-boring way, but also because they seem to be honest in a financial world with lots of conflicts of interest.

In the case of this book, they take a sometimes brutally honest look at what went right and wrong over the past few years in their world. They contrast "business" lessons they learned from running the Motley Fool (like how important it is to create a business that focuses on profitability) with "investing lessons" they learned from the popping of the tech stock bubble (like how important it is to invest in companies with real profits and sustainable business models). Very interesting. The rest of the book is a number of steps to take today to get your financial life on track, Fool success stories, motivation, Q&As and the like. All very helpful and informative for the novice or more experienced investor.

Some of the advice I have seen elsewhere (and is a repetition of earlier good advice), and the book is short, but well worth the money if it helps you get back on track after a horrible couple of years.

Everytime I have a money question The Motley Fool comes forth with an answer that is no-nonsense, easy to act on and either makes or saves me a ton of money.
This book is great because it helps people understand what happened in the last few years to business, the economy, the market. But, it's not like it is just another think tank book. It goes the step further to help you make smart moves now that will pay off. Good info about insurance, CDs, capital gains. Definitely a good, timely read.

While minimally entertaining, it has the feel of "hey we have the best hindsight of anybody!" They admit they lost big time during the Market downturn. I gave them two stars because there were a couple of things said that not everybody else was saying.

I'm looking for information on how to avoid or benefit from the market, without listening to all the losers. Anybody know of someone who continued winning even during the downturn. Now that would be valuable information.

There are only 4 pages in the book that tell you what to do and the advice is general--not specific. I think the Fool have put one over on their readers by publishing this book because everything in the book has been said before. A couple of years ago I heard the Fool say on their radio show that the NASDAQ could hold at 5000, but look where it is today---1600. At the time of the Internet boom the Fool were big Internet investors in such companies as Yahoo (then 250--now 17), etc. Hahhah If you look at the picture on the cover they don't seem happy and they are holding what appears to be a bag of cash. Guess they learned their lesson. Cash is king. These guys are great at marketing and selling ideas, but when it comes to this book there is no need to buy it. Save your money and invest in yourself.

I got the audio version of this (although abridged...I think a book like this will separate the grist from the meat and potatoes of the real information...and since most people need to review and hear stuff 3-4 times to get the information...this is a good way to do it). CD 1 is stories of their past and others to explain the lessons that they have learned... fairly entertaining at times... and needs several listenings to get the full impact (especially about their Fool.com and their foolish expansions of what they were not good at.) At one point they explain a chart that they say is worth the cost of the whole course...if only they or the publisher had thought to include a little packet of the graphics they were refering to in the front cover...but enough listenings to it and you get it.
CD 2 are all their suggestions of what to do with your money and to get yourself financially secure... so if you just want the information and none of the filler (like you can with self help books) then skip to the end (or CD 2 in this case). It helps me to focus on what I want to do with my money and why I am out of debt now but not able to save any (another good book for getting out of debt is "GET OUT OF DEBT, STAY OUT OF DEBT AND LIVE PROSPERSOUSLY"... which I consider a very good book and along with the Fool Brothers has helped me to pay off the credit cards and have the potential for saving and living hapilly.
Cool Runnings to you.

I didn't want to go to a one because some of it was useful. Their admission on how poorly they performed in the market downturn says it all. So now they're saying, along with countless others, "We have the best hindsight of anybody!", rings absolutely hollow. Very bland humor too.

If you've read or heard them before, there's no need for this one. Try to find somebody who has beaten these bad times.