Trillionaire Next Door: The Greedy Investor's Guide to Day Trading [Hardcover]

Andy Borowitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 16, 2000

Daytrading is to adults what Pokemon is to children. It's the latest craze to sweep a nation where get-rich quick schemes infiltrate our subconscious every waking second through infomercials, media hype, and e-mail spams. In this hilariously insightful guide, The New Yorker and New York Times humorist Andy Borowitz shows, in plain, simple, tongue-in-cheek-English, that daytrading is a science, just like chemistry or astrology. To those savvy enough to master it, daytrading makes the old methods of buying and selling stocks as obsolete as a month-old cell phone. The Trillionaire's Guide to Daytrading includes such helpful tips as "Never own a stock long enough to know what the company does" and "Any stock worth buying is worth selling four minutes later". Other invaluable gems of wisdom include tips on when to buy, when to sell, and when to call Domino's: advice for the longterm investor: which stocks to hold in your portfolio for five, ten, fifteen minutes, or even longer; and a helpful glossary of economic terms, including "mousepad" and "click".

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's hard to dislike any book that's dedicated to OprahAin the blatant hope that she will endorse it on her television showAthen blithely dismisses $9 billion as "chump change." Borowitz, a magazine writer whose humorous satires have appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times, has captured the style that permeates just about every get-rich-quick book: a knowing tone coupled with ridiculous mathematical abstractions. "Five years ago, no one traded stocks online. Today, over one quarter of all investors are trading electronically. Do the math; at this rate, in 20 years, there will be more day traders in the United States than people." As in all these books, Borowitz presents "the essential 10 rules" of becoming a trillionaire, each of which is followed by a "real quote" from a day trader. Rule number seven is typical: "Control your emotions." The quote: "I try not to take this business seriously, but some of my stocks are really out to get me." Essentially a long magazine piece padded with graphics (such as an asset-allocation pie chart divided into segments marked "Day Trading," "Lotto" and "Poking Around on the Beach with a Metal Detector"), this is nonetheless an entertaining diversion.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A funny little book savaging the nation's obsession with making easy money in the market." -- --New York Post

"Day trading has been glorified and vilified, and now it's been properly satirized." -- --Online Investor

"If The Trillionaire Next Door were a stock, I'd buy it, sell it, buy it, sell it, and buy it again--it's that good!" -- Stacy Gellman, day trader

"Wall Street's version of humorist Dave Barry." -- Newsweek

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 103 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness; 1st edition (May 16, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066620767
• ISBN-13: 978-0066620763
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,541,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andy Borowitz is a writer and a comedian whose work appears in The New Yorker and at his satirical website, BorowitzReport.com, which has millions of readers around the world. The author of six books, he is the first-ever winner of the National Press Club's humor award, a two-time finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and a two-time host of the National Book Awards. He has been called a "Swiftian satirist" (The Wall Street Journal), "America's satire king" (The Daily Beast) and "one of the funniest people in America" (CBS News Sunday Morning).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HILARIOUS!, May 24, 2000

By 

Lynn Snowden Picket - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trillionaire Next Door: The Greedy Investor's Guide to Day Trading (Hardcover)

I've always admired Andy Borowitz's writing in The New Yorker, but I wondered how funny could Andy be about the stock market? Trust me, it's hilarious. Timely, witty and very fresh -- it's the kind of book that makes you want to read parts of it aloud to your friends, even if they're really, really busy and beg you not to. This is the perfect summer read -- and it would make a great Father's Day gift.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great investment!, July 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Trillionaire Next Door: The Greedy Investor's Guide to Day Trading (Hardcover)

The best investment advice you can get is to buy this book and read it instead of worrying about all those 16-year-olds whose stock options are worth more than the GNP of Portugal. It's hard to be funnier than the real traders, with their theories based on random walks, dartboards, hemlines, and the World Series, and it's even harder to be funnier than watching people lose money on flyer stocks with cute names like boo.com and Crazy Eddie, but this book makes it and then some, with completely hilarious discussions of making a stock go up by yelling at the screen, getting good investment advice (and a Big Gulp) at the 7-11, finding the right asset allocation model (don't forget the importance of lotto and combing the beach with a metal detector), and the crucial role of pizza in a day-trader's diet. The comparison of Adam Smith and Willow Bay, the description of Warren Buffet, "the myth of knowing what a company does," and some really wonderful graphs and charts are not only wildly funny, but .... amazingly insightful. This book is right on the money.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If it sounds too good to be true--go for it!, May 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Trillionaire Next Door: The Greedy Investor's Guide to Day Trading (Hardcover)

If you want to make someone happy, give them this book. The distilled yet rapid-fire wisdom Borowitz offers will be handed down for generations to come: How to trade in your sleep, how to understand the insider lingo that fancy Wall St. people use to exclude regular people, how to use a dartboard to pick stocks, why it's best not to know what the companies you invest in actually do....I've made gifts of this book to financiers and regular human beings and they all find it sidesplitting. Given the direction the market seems to be going, we all need a good laugh, and this is it. The book comes with upgrades: I logged onto [their] site and have been delighted to get breaking news bulletins about Greenspan's magic coin, Bill Gates' gift of a clock radio to the Department of Justice, etc.