Customer Reviews

Do You Want to Make Money or Would You Rather Fool Around?

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

 

 

Great writing style. I'm surprised to say this about a financial book, but it was a real page-turner.

This book teaches you when to trust your own observations as a consumer an investor, and also supplies a few good rules to fall back on. It's investment advice, with a bit of personal advice mixed in. There are comical stories which help you realize how insane and irrational our financial markets can be. It helps you understand the psychology of Wall St., while keeping a healthy distance from Wall St.'s incestuous institutions of research.

"Investing is a psychiatric profession. It deals more with emotion than with balance sheets and income statements." John Spooner shares that insight at the beginning of the book, and his stories certainly bear out that perspective.

The title of the book is explained in the first story about Big Arthur, who really did just want to fool around. It turns out that stock investing is primarily entertainment for most of Spooner's clients. If he tries to provide them with good investments, they get annoyed and leave him. He has to be careful in figuring out what their real objectives are. One woman tells him to invest conservatively for current income, then gets angry when he doesn't beat the S&P 500. She finally quits him.

The stories are done in a style reminiscent of Adam Smith in The Money Game, except these stories aren't quite as funny or illuminating. They certainly resonate with me, however. I've known a lot of people these stories could have been written about.

Spooner's real opinion is shared succinctly in the middle of the book. "People are mostly good at making money but terrible at investing it." "And not one of them . . . was capable of managing his or her own money." As a result, he tells you to hire a broker and to do what the broker says, or fire the broker.

He has three key questions to ask in deciding which full service broker to use. I think you could be misled by these questions, as I was when I hired a talented, well educated man to be my full service broker in 1968. He clearly passed these three tests, and was a nice fellow to boot, yet 80 percent of my money was gone within a year. He put me into three of the worst dogs you can imagine.

For perspective, I suggest that you also read John Bogle's, Common Sense About Mutual Funds. If you seriously want to make money, buy index funds. If you want to fool around, find a full service broker who will amuse you. The choice is yours.

This book provides a valuable perspective on the stalled thinking that affects people's ability to invest. You can either make most of these mistakes yourself in the future, or learn them by reading this book. It's much cheaper to buy and read the book. I suggest that you decide to make money with your money. Save your entertainment for other parts of your life where the cost isn't so high.

Live long and prosper!

From this book I learned with whom the author has played golf and how much alcohol the author consumes during lunch. I learned essentially nothing worthwhile about investing. What you get in this book is a series of short, disconnected, sometimes inconsistent anecdotes, unsystematic, lazy "wisdom" from Wall Street's old school. I honestly can say that I learned nothing from this book which will help me with my investments. Do I sound too harsh to be true? Here's my bottom line: Scan through it in a book store or library before you spend your hard-earned dollars on it. If I could give this book zero stars, I would.

Spooner's book is an amusing and wise "how to" guide on the art of making money in the stock market. He provides a lot of tips that are absolutely dead on, tips which investors probably only learn the hard way after years of losses, or which some investors never learn. This book, I would think, would be must reading for every single online day trader these days who are otherwise far removed from the streets and street smarts critical to successful investing. Spooner should write a similar book on putting.

Investing can be as much a matter of comportment and attitude as anything else. Spooner's relaxed, anecdotal style is a welcome departure from the "sure-thing", exclamatory type of trash that's been on the bookstore shelves (and in the warehouses!) for the last two years. His advice is (largely) helpful to anyone who chooses to invest rather than gamble. By the way, you don't end up managing half a billion dollars of other people's money as an individual stockbroker by blowing smoke at them. Buy the book and read it.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book. I found it interesting reading, loved the stories which convey the messages clearly, and believe it is full of common sense. It is a sound approach which has served his clients, (of which I am proud to be one), well over the years.

Being able to trade or carry out a trade successfully is a talent, the ability to write and catch the readers' attention through 242 pages is a different story. Spooner shows that he has both gifts from God. The stories are really interesing and insightful. A good leisure reading for anyone who has a stake in the investment market.