Customer Reviews

TheStreet.com Guide to Smart Investing in the Internet Era: Everything You Need to Know to Outsmart Wall Street and Select Winning Stocks

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The information in this book is by no means ground breaking. However, it is a well written book that provides solid all around advice for the new investor.

The book touches on many aspects of investing without being biased toward any particular one. It basically gives an overviews of many of the tools available to make investing decisions and leaves it to the reader to choose and learn more. For example, it starts out with an overview of economic factors and then moves into fundamental analysis, charting and buy/sell guidelines. It then touches on options, IPO's and tax issues.

Compared to other "newbie" books such as those by the Motley Fool, I think this offers a much more rounded approach. These books (and others) tend to present a biased view of the "correct" way to invest. This book gives a broader view that gives the reader more starting points to continue their learning and ultimately make better investing decisions.

One final comment -- there is not a lot of advertising for the thestreet.com in this book. Many chapters are accompanied by lists of websites to help you explore the topic presented in the chapter. Naturally, thestreet.com is often in the list, but all websites are given very fair treatment throughout the book.

Easily the best book about investing I have read. TheStreet.com guide is the best book for investing in 2001, but it will also be relevant and excellent five years from now. The parts on investing in volatile times and developing "sell" criteria are especially helpful. The array of contributors is exceptional.

Full Disclosure: Amazon.com customers should know right off the bat that I am a columnist on TheStreet.com, and have many friends among the co-authors of this book, so I am undoubtedly biased about this book. (But I didn't write any part of the book; I'm busy on two new investing books of my own these days....)

That said, I think this is the one book about investing that you simply MUST read if you're in the market now, or considering getting in.

The investing landscape has changed profoundly over the past year, and virtually every other "how to" book on investing I know deals -- often very well -- with the way things *were.* This one looks at the way things ARE, and WILL BE this year...and gives you the tools and perspective you need to make money in a vastly more difficult market.

Far from the easier and fondly-remembered world in which we invested in 1998 and especially 1999, during 2000 and now in 2001, this has become a market in which stock-picking is much harder -- but good stock-picking is even more important than it was. There are no easy bets any more.

You need the information in this book to prosper in 2001 and, almost certainly, beyond. The easy-money days are not coming back anytime soon...though I'm convinced that the decade ahead of us will be the best time to make money in the adult lifetimes of most of us now in the market.

Remember my bias...but consider this one seriously. It's the one book you really do have to read this year. --JS

I was looking for something a bit more adept -- this is "investing for dummies" -- which has its place, but the title makes it look like it has some new ideas when, in fact, it's mostly advice you've read on thestreet.com and elsewhere, in one book. Valuable to a novice, a nice but unnecessary compendium for more experienced investors. While this book wasn't what I was looking for, I also think the rips on Cramer and thestreet.com are unwarranted and childish and the reviews based on those criticisms are off the mark.

I've read through the other reviews and people seem very polarized over this book. Either you love it or you hate it, but there doesn't seem to be much of a middle ground. I would like to make an argument for that middle ground.

The book is quite readable. Although it conveys some useful information, it is not as dry as many books on investing. Each chapter is actually penned by a different author, but the text flows well from subject to subject. It reads more like a lengthy magazine article than a book. Although the informal and almost conversational tone of the prose makes for light and quick reading, the authors do convey some practical advice. The book is full of references to various websites (and not just their website, street.com) for researching stocks. Although this is extremely useful for the internet-savvy investor, it may tend to date this book. I suspect it will become less useful as it becomes farther away from its publication date. It covers the major aspects of fundamental analysis well, and has a particularly good chapter on when to sell a stock (and its relative tax implications), which is often missing from comparable investment books. Although it touches upon technical analysis and charting, the discussion is very superficial and is better addressed in other references.

Overall, it's a useful book and even somewhat fun to read. It is by no means comprehensive and probably not the only investing book you'll ever need. But as an amateur investor with a moderate amount of experience, I found enough to justify the purchase price and even enjoyed reading it too.

The book is a must-read for those who are new or are considering taking control of his/her investment future and becoming a do-it-yourself investor. The book covers a wide-range of topics that simply must be learned and understood before one tackles the investment game and landscape. I am a regular reader of TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com, and I was not disappointed by many of the time-tested wisdom outlined in the book.

For those who are unwilling to invest the time and effort necessary to educate him/herself on the topics covered by the book, I wish them luck because it is a jungle out there. The book does not contain sure-fire ways to get rich quick, but it does contain all the ingredients one would need to invest successfully for the long run.

"It truly is a brave new world for investors," writes Dave Kansas at the conclusion of this book. The phrase "brave new world" comes from Shakespeare via Aldous Huxley, who of course used it ironically. It will be the rare investor who can read those words today without a twinge of pain: most of the last two years have been a bad trip for stock owners. Many people with money in the stock market have seen their gains evaporate like snow in Tucson.

The more you know about how the market works, presumably, the less you are likely to succumb to the investor's perennial traps - fear and greed - or pay the price for naiveté. TheStreet.com Guide to Smart Investing in the Internet Era has a splendid pedigree, namely the web site TheStreet.com (and its sister site, RealMoney.com), and Kansas has called on a number of its shrewd writers to contribute sections in their own areas of expertise.

The book benefits from most of its writers having been "in the trenches," that is, actually having spent years trying to make money on Wall Street. They are not just journalists or academic theorists. The book, like the site that spawned it, has a pleasingly pragmatic quality.

It is also easy to read, insofar as a subject with as many complexities as equity investing can be easy. Even the through-the-looking-glass world of options almost seems to make sense in these pages. (But although the discussion includes shorting stocks and buying and selling puts, there is, curiously, no section about selling covered calls - the only form of options trading that is appropriate for many nonprofessional investors. The book's other major gap is that there is nothing about the strategy of indexing, which deserves consideration.)

It is evident that care went into this guide. It has been editorially polished, unlike so many quick-and-dirty productions from even supposedly reputable publishers today that appear to have gone directly from the author's word processor to type.

Just about all the important topics are covered in enough detail to be useful but not so much as to be esoteric. Also included are two worthwhile features that I have not seen in any other investment guide: a table, based on specific quantitative and qualitative criteria, of the best stock analysts in a variety of sectors; and another table ranking online brokers, based on a reader survey by TheStreet.com.

But while TheStreet.com Guide does many things well, and there is nothing particularly wrong with it, I have to confess to being mildly disappointed. The problem is style - or rather, the lack of it - rather than substance.

If you are familiar with TheStreet.com or RealMoney.com web sites (which I expect most of those who buy the book will be), you know that James Cramer, the sites' co-founder and frequent contributor, is that rare bird who can write about stocks with color, flair and wit. Many of the sites' other writers have something of the same ability. The web sites flash lightning; they're a gas to read as well as timely and informative. The book goes down smoothly, but it's rather bland. To see what I mean, compare its prose with that of the glossary, which is written by Cramer himself. (Sample Cramer-isms: "Dumb money: Slow money, usually mutual-fund or pension money." "Flip: When you get a hot stock and you blow it out immediately. The brokerages try to discourage flipping, but in this crazy market where only small bits of stock get floated at the beginning, there are a ton of flippers on these pops.")

If TheStreet.com Guide to Investing in the Internet Era as a whole had been written with this kind of sass, which appears regularly on the web site, it would have been more memorable. Nevertheless, the book is less work to read than most of its ilk, and will teach you things you don't know or encourage you to think freshly about things you do. For this "brave new world" of online investing, TheStreet.com Guide is worth its weight in armor plating.

The Street.com is just another overhyped dot-com company that couldn't keep its own financial house afloat so why take financial advice from a failure?

You also have to wonder whether the 5-star ratings are all supplied by Street.com employees who are trying to look out for their own financial futures and jobs.

BTW: The information in this book isn't even original or given in enough depth to do a reader much good. You'd be better off with a proven book like "The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need" by Andrew Tobias or any book by Peter Lynch.

The Street.Com Guide is absolutely essential for any professional or small investor. It puts you in the cockpit with real time professional money management. My recommendation for The Street.Com is based on my thirty year experience as an former CEO, investment advisor and active investor. Its research guidance is worth the price alone. It is the critical edge in today's fast moving and complex markets.

This book is full of great advice. The internet changed the way people invest, research, buy, and sell stocks or other investments. The authors show readers how the internet can be used during the research process. I liked the information about how investors can use message boards. But the author warns readers that there might be people trying to manipulate prices by writing untrue statements about companies.

I also enjoyed reading about the IPO Game. Individual investors have disadvantages when they decide to participate in IPOs. The three most powerful parties in the IPO process are the investment bankers, the corporations being taken public, and the institutional investors who are the banker's main customers. Unless individual investors are able to get in at the "insider's" price, the changes of making money are slim. But with patience, they might find newly traded companies favorably priced after the 25-day mark or lockup period. I recommend this book to investors.

- 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