Customer Reviews

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Investing

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The Wall Street Journal is, bar none, the best financial paper in the country, but the "Guide to Understanding Money & Investing" is written in a very differnt and interesting manner: the information in it is top-notch, but there are pictures and drawings throughout it, many of which make the book seem like it should be in a junior high social studies class. Despite its physical appearance, the book makes an excellent effort at explaining the stock markets, world currencies, bonds, futures & options, and much more. It is easy for many people to simply dismiss the global economy as being something that they'd rather not be concerned with, but when you examine it closely, the world of finance may be one of the most complex creations ever made by man. The "Guide to Understanding Money & Investing" shrinks that world down into one that can be understood, and by the end of the book, you'll realize just how smart the people on Wall Street are - and just how much closer you are to their level of knowledge. This is not a book that is meant to be read in one sitting; it may be better used as a reference. An excellent addition to any investor's library.

If you, like me, are getting started in the wonderful world of investing, this is a book that you need to get. It covers in very simple-to-understand language everything that investing entails from the perspective of the Wall Stree Journal, i.e. if you were to get into and/or follow investments using WSJ as a tool, and what a tool it certainly is. The material is nicely laid out in five sections, all of which can be covered without any specific order, depending on the type of information you're looking for: they also can be read linearly, in order to get a better understanding of the complete picture.

The sections are:
-Money: allows you to better understand what money really stands for, the cycle of money, the role of the Fed in regulating the economy, etc.
-Stocks: from what they are, how they "look" like, to how the market works and what cycles characterize it, how to evaluate companies, etc.
-Bonds: same thing, but applied to bonds.
-Mutual Funds: "putting it all together."
-Futures and Options: the higher end of investment.

This book, which also will not take too much time to process, contains a world of wisdom if you're serious about investing, or if you just want to better understand money and investing. Perhaps, if you're not convinced now, after you read it, you might end up more interested in investing, somthing which all of us should in one way or another do!

This is part of a series of handy and colorful introductions to important financial topics - particularly helpful in learning to read the paper that publishes them - the Wall Street Journal. This book is used as part of some introductory courses at the University of Michigan Business School, but I am not sure which ones. It does have a lot of good information that is explained well and has a great many explanatory graphics - some of which are especially useful.

I think the main benefits of this book (and this series) is to become familiar with the vocabulary involved with the topics around money, investing, stocks, bonds, markets, funds, indexes, options, and more. And learning how to read the various presentations of these instruments in the Wall Street Journal is a big help. But this book can only be an introductory step. After you read this book you will know enough to begin studying the various topics, but don't think you will know enough about them to do much more than get yourself in big trouble if you start playing around with much more than mutual funds.

But this book will help demystify the terms and processes around equities, bonds, and other instruments. For this I highly recommend it. I use it in explaining these topics to folks who want to begin learning about the issues surrounding investing.

I just got this book a few days ago and have been very surprised and impressed by how well it is put together. It not only covers the basic fundamental topics necessary in understanding the system, but it also provides colorful and easy to understand diagrams that coincide with a plethora of information tidbits. A great book for the investing novice and ideal for anyone who needs some help filling in the gaps!

Wall Street Journal has placed it's awesome "cut above the rest" personality in this book just as they do in their daily newspaper. Explainations appear to have been thoroughly done and redone, very fine tuned to include the best understandable words, and occasionally are amusing and entertaining. One more reason it is obvious this book is basically written for novices is that about 50% of any given page is swamped with colorful drawings, pictures, and visual displays, and the other 50% is textual explainations. The visuals no doubt make reading about investing fascinating, and the text was superiorly written.. The only drawbacks is that the book was published in 1993, completely leaving out the new internet world.. Furthermore, being that it is a paperbook one would think they could knock the list price down from $14.95 to maybe $9.95, as it is a thin book at less than 150 pages.

As many have said in their reviews, this is a great starting point for those new to investing and financial markets. In fact, it's the best I've ever found and I've looked a lot. The simple, plain English explanations are what makes this book stand out. For the nuances and more detailed information regarding the topics in the book, look to a textbook from a college finance class. But for the person who knows very little, start with this.

This was a good book for me to start with. The subject is presented very lightly and easliy to digest. I realized that there was a lot of things I did not know about finance/investing and this book gave me a general explanation of them. Definitely a good starter book for total beginners.