Customer Reviews

Stock Market Rules: The Facts and the Fiction: 50 of the Most Widely Held Investment Axioms Explained, Examined and Exposed

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This book is promising, but ultimately disappointing. A beginner investor will find this book confusing, because it skips around multiple topics without much contextual or background material. An intermediate or advanced investor will find this book trite, because each topic covers familiar ground, and lacks any depth or detail. You will find a few good tidbits here and there, but overall the content is shallow.

The author is a fan of Dow Theory, and the book is littered with references to Dow Theory this and Dow Theory that. The text is overly reliant on the Dow Industrial Average, which in my opinion is an inferior index to use when analyzing the general stock market. Unless you are interested in one of the merely 30 old-line slow-growth industrial companies that comprise the DJIA, you would be better off using the S&P 500 Index or the Nasdaq Composite Index for your market study.

Remarkably, this book appears not to have been edited at all. Despite being in its third edition, the book contains numerous typographical, numerical, and factual errors in both the text and the illustrations. In a casual reading I noted more than 10 serious errors. Table 3-1 shows 11 companies, with their current and historical prices, along with the percentage-change in each price. 7 of the 11 calculated price changes are blatantly wrong! It is hard to trust an investment book that can't calculate percentage-change correctly. Table 3-2 lists a company stock buyback totaling only $250.00. The text refers to "Points A, B, C and D" in Figure 5-3, but no such points appear on the Figure. And so forth all throughout the book.

Paying money for this book is a poor investment. Borrow it from your local library instead.

The author's focus is on trading on the basis of trends, market timing, and chart analysis. There's a lot of discussion of technial issues about limit orders, options, and so on. He gives you a lot of very valuable warnings about the "perilous pitfalls" of investing, especially for active traders. I learned a lot about this book, and that's the bottom line. I took this book out from the library. I don't know that I would buy this book, unless I were a "day trader," or at least much more active than I am now.

I read the second edition, not the most current 3rd edition. I did, however, compare the table of contents of both editions, and it looks like the author tried to organize the content better. But it looks like the same basic material.

This book was a bit confusing for me probably out of my league for this time. I took this book out of the library and gave it a try, I read some chapters and skim some part but I ended up being lost. Stock Market Rules, Third Edition, is a book, an in-depth, up-to-date examination of the 50 axioms that will most help investors gain the edge in today's technologically supercharged markets. Investors needing authoritative, hands-on guidance will look to this updated edition for its:

-Short sections covering the 50 most immediately useful rules
-Easy-to-read yet analytical approach
-Arrangement by research, strategy, and other major topic areas

Great book for investors who already has a hands on the market.

Absolutely terrific...Stock Market Rules, (Third Edition), analyzes and explains fifty axioms (the rules) to tell you those which really work, the ones which used to work but don't anymore, as well as the axioms which are now and always have been terribly wrong. Beyond merely explaining these rules, Michael D. Sheimo uses them to help the reader learn about stock trading. This is extremely helpful to the beginning investor, as well as the investor who's been at it for a while. Filled with useful information and analysis on how to invest in today's fast-moving markets, Stock Market Rules, (3rd Edition) reveals the truth of what has been said and is still being said. It provides techniques and ideas that can improve your investing confidence and results.
Here are a few of the gems:
Rule #3: Good Companies Buy Their Own Stock
(not necessarily)
Rule #2: Price Doubling Is Easier At Lower Prices
(just not so)
Rule #9: Look For Insider Trading
(you can too, Martha)
This book is excellent now as it was in the past and will be in the future. The short, quick, clever chapters are easy to read and memorable.

This book explains the logic and reasoning behind the 50 most popular Wall Street axioms and mottos. If you're still one of those old-fashioned types who still use full-service brokerages, now you'll know when your broker is BSing you, and when he / she really knows his / her stuff.