Customer Reviews

The Wall Street Journal, Guide to Understanding Money and Markets

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This classic of basic definitions has a new edition that came out in 1999. Although I have not yet read that one, I do suggest that you skip this one.

The book is filled with discussions of how investors value stocks that few serious investors would recognize. There is almost nothing about investing outside the United States. NASDAQ gets almost no mention. The information about discount brokers is wrong. The terminology for describing many types of stocks was never correct, as best as I can recall.

The facts that are correct relate mostly to trivia, like what the number on a stock certificate means. It could help you answer a question on Do You Want To Be a Millionaire? but has little other practical use. Many of these facts (such as how to read the stock tables) can be garnered by simply reading the footnotes in The Wall Street Journal or Barron's.

This book is a good example of the communication stall. We tend to believe everything that we read from what should be reliable sources, even when the information is often faulty.

Donald Mitchell....

This book is excellent for people who are new to investing and managing their own money. It is colorful, easy to read, gives great real-life examples and provides a great index to the book can be used as a referrence manual. The book can be read rather quickly to give someone a feel for understnading stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures and money in general. It's a must read prior to investing money.