The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Investing [Paperback]

Kenneth M. Morris (Author), Virginia B. Morris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2, 1999

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money & Investing initiates you into the mysteries of the financial pages -- buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures and options, spotting trends and evaluating companies. For those who are curious but intimidated by everyday financial jargon, this guide offers a literate, forthright and lively alternative.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This handy fact-filled book initiates you into the mysteries of the financial pages -- buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures and options, spotting trends and evaluating companies. For those who are curious but intimidated by everyday financial jargon, this guide offers a literate, forthright and lively alternative. Recommended. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

An easy-to-understand, easy-to-use primer that helps take the mystery out of:

--Money
--Indexes
--Treasury Bills
--Stocks
--Commodities
--Options
--Bonds
--Futures
--Mutual Funds
--Inflation

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money & Investing initiates you into the mysteries of the financial pages--buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures and options, spotting trends and evaluating companies. For those who are curious but intimidated by everyday financial jargon, this guide offers a literary, forthright and lively alternative. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Lightbulb Press; Revised & updated edition (August 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684869020
• ISBN-13: 978-0684869025
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

249 of 250 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A foundation for investing., May 9, 2000

By 

Rusty Keele (Salt Lake City, UT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Investing (Paperback)

I purchased this book six years ago so that I could start down the long road of learning how to invest my money. It is far and away the best beginning level investment book that I have ever seen! THE GOOD: 1) It starts from the beginning! It begins by explaining money, the Federal Reserve, and economic cycles. From there it moves on to stocks, bonds, mutual funds and futures & options. 2) It is simple! With its colored charts, simple paragraphs and real world examples even grade school kids can understand the concepts presented here. 3) It is concise! It gives you enough information so that you completely understand the concept, yet it does it in two pages! No more wading through economic textbooks looking for the meaning of "price/earning ratio." THE BAD: 1) It starts from the beginning. If you already know about money cycles, common and preferred stock or U.S. Treasury bonds then this book may bore you. 2) It is simple. Don't go looking for too much detail here. If you want detailed information about which mutual find to buy, look elsewhere. 3) It is concise. Once it covers the basics it ends. If you already know the basics, then you could be considered a graduate of this book. OVERALL: The title really says it all: it is a guide to understanding money and understanding investing. Once you understand the concepts you can move on to more detailed books.

103 of 105 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great "dictionary" to investing, August 3, 2000

By 

A. Maxham "Just trying to help..." - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Investing (Paperback)

I had finally gotten out of credit card debt, and now that I had money to invest, I hit Amazon and looked for books to guide me in this task. I purchased this book (and two "For Dummies" books- to investing and mutual funds). I tell you this because if you are looking at this book for the same reason, I hope I can help.

All the other reviews are right: it is thorough, consise, clear, friendly, colorful and explains "money." The subject matter of this book is identical to the Money and Banking class I had to take in undergrad (and have long since forgotten, but it looks familiar).

What I wanted was a book that was more advice-oriented. While this book will NOT really fulfill this purpose, it does make for a fantastic dictionary- For example, if you are sitting there and the person on CNNfn tells you "something" about bonds, you can flip to the bonds section, and translate it for yourself. You can open up the stock pages and understand what all those mini numbers mean. They explain the basics of mutual funds. For these purposes, this book is truly excellent. Heck- it's more than a dictionary, it's one of those Foreign Language to English dictionaries- translating non-English words for you.

So, if you want *advice* for investing- this ain't the book. But if you need a quick, clear and handy (it's a skinny book- a little bigger than a folded map) way to understand what's going on in Moneyland, this is great.

268 of 288 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Incomplete and Misleading Basic Definitions, August 1, 2000

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Investing (Paperback)

To me a guide from a brand name source like The Wall Street Journal should always elucidate and never mislead. If this book were called a dictionary of money and investing, I would give it a five star rating. For it works well as a dictionary. In fact, it is better than a dictionary because the explanations are clearer, more detailed, and better illustrated.

In the sections on what money, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and economic indicators are, the book functions as that five star dictionary.

Within each section beginning with stocks, the "guide" also begins to guide you in subtle ways that can cause you harm. Let me cite a few examples. The guide seems to suggest that when the market is going up, a company's earnings are doing well, and interest rates are not rising that is a good time to buy a stock. The illustrated graph seems to show other times when it is good not to buy stocks. As such, it suggests the mentality of buying and selling stocks to catch cycles. Yet research has shown that few people can master that process, so those who try will tend to do less well than those who buy and hold.

Another example is in failing to discuss the role of management fees, expenses, portfolio turnover, and diversification on which mutual fund to pick. As John Bogle shows in Common Sense on Mutual Funds, these are very important factors to consider. Yet they are not defined or cited.

The book also teaches people a little about short selling, commodities, futures, and other exotic investments. The book fails to point out that these are well beyond the skill of the average investor, and that many people get hurt in these areas. Basically, this is like a book of definitions about poisonous snakes that fails to mention that the snakes are poisonous if they bite you.

Other obvious omissions included no mention of tracking stocks, ADRs in the stock section (you find the definition in International markets, where to me it fits less well), the differences in discount brokers, electronic trading choices, and how to find information about stocks on the Internet (the only source cited in the SEC).

The focus is overly on the U.S. with only a small section on international securities. The area of interest rate futures, where Europe dominates, is barely referred to in this book.

Some of the information is just plain out of date. NAIC is cited as being the National Association of Investment Clubs. I believe it dropped that name over 10 years ago although it still goes by NAIC. The guide refers to there being 37,000 investment clubs in the U.S. I think that number was exceeded many years ago.

Further, much of the information is basically about how to read economic statistics. Many people would argue technical analysis is at least as important as economic statistics, but nothing about technical analysis is included in the book.

If you want to learn about investing, you need to know investing principles more than you need to know these terms (such as the various aspects of a stock certificate's printing and engraving). You will find most of the relevant terms covered in basic investing books like Louis Engel's book, How to Buy Stocks. You would be far better off reading ChangeWave Investing, Common Sense on Mutual Funds, and Rich Dad, Poor Dad's Investment Guide than this book for getting a sense of what the basic investing issues are.

Overcome your misconception that anything with The Wall Street Journal's name on it is bound to be the best resource. Certainly, that isn't true in this case.

My suggestion is that The Wall Street Journal revise this book and either cut it back into being an expanded dictionary, or expand it into an investing guide worthy of its name.