A Fool and His Money: The Odyssey of an Average Investor and over 400,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle � Amazon�s new wireless reading device. Learn more

Quantity:

Express Checkout with PayPhrase

What's this? | Create PayPhrase

More Buying Choices

20 used & new from $21.90

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

Share with Friends

Share your own customer images

Search inside this book

Start reading A Fool and His Money: The Odyssey of an Average Investor on your Kindle in under a minute. Don�t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.

A Fool and His Money: The Odyssey of an Average Investor (Wiley Investment Classics) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "RIGHT AWAY, LET ME SHARE MY QUALIFICATION, TRAINING, and general suitability for this challenge-this being the place most authors of works like this lay out..." (more)
Key Phrases: corn pit, average investor, egg futures, New York, Wall Street, Merrill Lynch (more...)

4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

Price:	$48.95 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Only 1 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).

Want it delivered Thursday, February 11? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

12 new from $23.39 8 used from $21.90

	Amazon Price	New from	Used from
Kindle Edition Kindle Edition $14.82 Available for download now. Published March 22, 1988	$14.82	--	--
Hardcover Hardcover $48.95 In Stock. Published March 30, 1998	$48.95	$23.39	$21.90
See # more hardcovers
Show fewer hardcovers
Paperback Paperback $24.25 In Stock. Published March 16, 1998	$24.25	$11.50	$5.66
See # more paperbacks
Show fewer paperbacks

Frequently Bought Together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Where Are the Customers' Yachts: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street (Wiley Investment Classics)

by Fred Schwed

4.3 out of 5 stars (36) $13.57

Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920-1928

by John Brooks

4.5 out of 5 stars (11) $23.04

Money Game

by Adam Smith

4.6 out of 5 stars (25) $11.20

Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation

by Edward Chancellor

4.6 out of 5 stars (69) $11.05

The Battle for Investment Survival (Wiley Investment Classics)

by Gerald M. Loeb

4.3 out of 5 stars (27) $13.57

› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"If you think it's right it's wrong, and vice versa," quips freelance writer Rothchild in this picaresque odyssey of his search for a surefire way to multiply money. With a $14,000 grubstake, he invested in stocks and made the rounds: visiting brokerage houses, interviewing financial advisers, studying market newsletters, appraising mutual funds, penetrating the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve purlieus and Chicago's commodity trading pits (where putting one's money is "like holding up bread for the seagulls"). His education complete, Rothchild found that most of his capital evaporated even before the October '87 Crash, which completed the job. The average investor, the author concludes in this rueful, ironic and doggedly humorous tale, is "a born loser." Nevertheless, readers will be vastly entertained while learning investment essentials and idiosyncrasies they never knew they ought to know about.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This book is an exemplar on how not to invest, but it is not helpful on how to invest intelligently. The author describes his unsuccessful journey investing in stocks, futures, etc.; his use of investment newsletters and attendance at seminars; and his investigation of investment markets. Other than painting a grim picture on how easy it was for him to lose money, the book has little substance. While well written and at times entertaining, it would have been much more valuable if the author had analyzed his judgments and errors and discussed investment alternatives. Instead, the book is darted with "tips" that are more humorous than useful. Arthur J. Lieb, Library of Congress
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Wiley (March 30, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0471251518
ISBN-13: 978-0471251514
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,883,540 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

› Visit Amazon's John Rothchild Page

Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
RIGHT AWAY, LET ME SHARE MY QUALIFICATION, TRAINING, and general suitability for this challenge-this being the place most authors of works like this lay out their credentials, such as "veteran of Wall street" or "hottest commodities trader from Chicago" or "became a millionaire in stock options," and so on. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
corn pit, average investor, egg futures, ooo bushels, ooo shares, new broker

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Wall Street, Merrill Lynch, Board of Trade, Salomon Brothers, Useful Tip Number, Mercantile Exchange, Dow Jones, Del Dotto, Bankers Trust, Battery March, Drexel Burnham Lambert, Holiday Inn, Dean Witter, South Africa, American Stock Exchange, Chinese Wall, Fort Lauderdale, Hong Kong, Jim Chanos, Linda Garrett, Sun Bank, Anderson Clayton, Bridgewater Securities, Commodity Futures Trading Commission

New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats

Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 12 books:

Wall Street by Kenneth Lipper on page 136, page 140, and page 142
The Common Sense of Money and Investments (Wiley Investment Classics) by Merryle Stanley Rukeyser on page 30, and page 152
The Battle for Investment Survival (A Marketplace Book) by Marketplace Books on page 35
Coming Currency Collapse by Jerome F. Smith on page 40
Money Game by Adam Smith on page 39

See all 12 books this book cites

13 books cite this book:

Think Like a Genius by Todd Siler on page 47, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio by William J. Bernstein on page 224, and Back Matter
How I Trade for a Living (Wiley Online Trading for a Living) by Gary Smith in Back Matter
Value Investing Today by Charles H. Brandes in Front Matter
A Fool and His Money: The Odyssey of an Average Investor (Wiley Investment Classics) by John Rothchild in Front Matter

See all 13 books citing this book

Books on Related Topics (learn more)

Tales from the Boom-Boom Room by Susan Antilla

Discusses:

Bull! by Maggie Mahar

Discusses:

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	47% buy the item featured on this page: A Fool and His Money: The Odyssey of an Average Investor (Wiley Investment Classics) 4.4 out of 5 stars (15) $48.95
	35% buy Where Are the Customers' Yachts: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street (Wiley Investment Classics) 4.3 out of 5 stars (36) $13.57
	7% buy Money Game 4.6 out of 5 stars (25) $11.20
	6% buy One Up On Wall Street : How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market 4.1 out of 5 stars (184) $10.88

Explore similar items

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

(What's this?)

Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).

stock market(22)

investing(22)

economic history(16)

finance(9)

economics(7)

wall street(4)

american history(4)

risk(4)

business(3)

classic finance(3)

Customer Reviews

15 Reviews

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

4.4 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Information Overload Is Costly!, February 22, 2001

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

This review is from: A Fool and His Money: The Odyssey of an Average Investor (Wiley Investment Classics) (Paperback)

Mr. Rothschild did something in this book that you should never do. He took a year off to learn how to invest, and looked into every financial category available. As a result, he was soon inundated with advice that he often followed. Usually, he didn't understand the risks of what he was doing, and he almost always ended up making costly and unnecessary mistakes. You will find this book a funny cautionary tale about the relevance of keeping it simple and focusing on what's important.

The book is filled with short bits of advice that give you a flavor for its content.

"Never buy the June call nor sell the October put simultaneously, unless you know what they are." This is a reference to a strategy for making money in very volatile stocks. The stock he used was not volatile enough, and he lost on the position.

"'Expert' advice does not agree." So who can you believe?

Mr. Rothchild's downfall was that he is an obviously intelligent, curious person who was too good at finding sources of information. Along the way, he met more different investment brokers, security analysts, professional portfolio managers, market makers, commodity traders, and options experts than you can shake a stick at. Although no one held his hand into a fire, he often tried out an idea that he heard about along the way. The salespeople were all trained to let the investor do whatever he wanted, so he was able to get himself into deep water in the process of trying these things. Someone should have pointed out that he could have learned the same lessons by simply taking a theoretical position on paper, and tracking the results.

One hilarious sequence has him changing hotels during a vacation to avoid the margin calls that came every few hours. He didn't want his wife to find out that he had raided the household funds to float the first margin call. He could not meet the second one.

All the time this is going on, he has been telling his wife and friends how well he is doing. That was technically true for awhile, but did not last long.

Soon, his losses are so large that he was embarrassed to let anyone know. "The larger the sum you've lost, the smaller the sums you'll worry about." So he became incredibly stingy in every other part of his life.

Meanwhile, his wife's account was doing very well with being handled by a stock broker that Mr. Rothchild decided not to use. This made him feel even worse.

Then, the crash in October 1987 happened, and his wife's money was slashed, too. It was a tough year for the Rothchild family, all the way around.

After reading this book, you'll be ready for John Bogle and his Common Sense about Mutual Funds. With this information, you can match the market inexpensively, spend little time on investing, and have limited risk of taking a large, permanent loss. Sleeping well is the best revenge.

After you read this book, consider your own psychology. How good are you at making rational decisions in an area where the value of what you buy can go up and down wildly? Are you likely to be attracted to the overly complicated parts of investing? Are you good at containing risk? Mr. Rothchild's intelligence and access did him more harm than good. How can you apply his experience profitably to your own situation?

Protect your capital against losses for the best results!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

Report this | Permalink

Comment Comment

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can the Average Investor Still Make Money??, October 29, 2004

By	Stephen Pletko "Uncle Stevie" (London, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: A Fool and His Money: The Odyssey of an Average Investor (Wiley Investment Classics) (Paperback)

+++++

This easy-to-read book, by former editor, author, and writer, John Rothchild, is a unique and hilarious book that tells us of his adventure as an average investor in the stock market.

Rothchild's original plan for writing this book was as follows:

"In the late summer of 1985, during an extraordinary bull market [rising market], I decided to drop everything and devote an entire year to learning how to invest, especially in stocks. I resolved to begin at the beginning, finding out as much as I could about the business and how it really operates, meanwhile putting my own funds [of $16,500] into whatever would make the biggest profit. After achieving [this] winning strategy, increasing my net worth, and achieving financial independence [or security], I'd return to tell you how I did it."

Rothchild learned how to invest by doing things such as watching late night television programs "on how to get rich;" going to financial planning places with their money managers; reading newsletters, business publications, and historical financial books; talking to successful investors in order to perhaps learn some inside information; and going to stockbrokers for information on hot stocks, making fully-informed investment decisions, and avoiding irrational markets.

During his journey, Rothchild does a good job in explaining the mechanics of investing especially in the stock market and imparting the psychology behind investing. Even though the author does a good job in explaining terms, I feel knowing some basics on investing before reading this book, will help the potential reader appreciate the humor and practical advice of this book even more. (There are over twenty short useful tips in boldface type peppered throughout this book.)

Finally, the title of this book "A Fool and his Money" gives an indication of what happened to Rothchild's investment. As a consequence, at the very end of this book, Rothchild has a short glossary of major investment and stock market terms that he has defined as a result of his experience. He defines the terms found in this review as follows:

(1) Average Investor: born loser
(2) Bull Market: a time when your neighbor's stocks are going up
(3) Successful investor: liar
(4) Inside information: something you wish they'd tell you; what everybody else has heard
(5) Stockbroker: salesperson for stocks, mutual funds, etc.; a person who will never go broke
(6) Money manager: expert who manages your financial affairs; someone to whom you pay a large fee so you'll have less money to manage
(7) Hot stock: stock everybody is buying; what your brokerage firm calls any stock it wants to sell
(8) Irrational market: a market that isn't doing what you want it too; every market
(9) Fully-informed investment decision: wild guess
(10) Financial security: perpetual care enjoyed by insurance companies, brokers, money managers, and others in the financial security industry.

In conclusion, this is a practical and hilarious book that serves as a warning to the average investor!!

(originally published 1988; acknowledgements; 31 chapters; postscript; glossary; main narrative of 250 pages)

+++++

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

Report this | Permalink

Comment Comment

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A reality check for the average investor, July 27, 2002

By A Customer

This book was first published in 1988, after the 1987 crash. The wisdom and essence of the book is still as valuable now in 2002. It is entertaining as well as educational. The author went out of his way to describe his experience or experiments in various areas of investing, giving knowledge and first hand information on how the investment world runs from different perspectives. The author took a year to study investing and invest with his real money, with the assignment of writing this book about it at the end. As a result, his investment decisions and variety and frequency of his investment may be atypical of an average investor. However, his description of the phychology of an average investor is quite accurate.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

Report this | Permalink

Comment Comment

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 15 customer reviews...

Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars an odissey or a novel ?
entertaining book that offers a good change from heavy stuff in financial and trading literature

Published 4 days ago by B. Remia

4.0 out of 5 stars Title is a tad misleading but a good educational book
He is not what i would call an "average investor", since he went around visiting exchanges and brokerage houses in person in chicago, washington d.c. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Stephen Samperi

5.0 out of 5 stars A funny and informative book for the average investors
The lure of easy money in the stock market encourages more and more people to become investors. Mr. Read more

Published on August 25, 2007 by David Q. Trinh

5.0 out of 5 stars This book was hilarious!
This book is definitely educational and funny! All the tips in the book sound funny but are real. I was laughing so hard from reading this book, my sides hurt... Read more

Published on November 14, 2005 by Anya Sherwood

3.0 out of 5 stars Buyers Remorse, the average investor's story
"A fool and his money" is the story of buyers remorse of one very lucky investor, who walked away with 50 percent of his money. Read more

Published on June 28, 2004 by Golden Lion

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite finance books
I have read a quite a bit of books on finance (and work in finance). This book is one of my favorites...I could not put the book down. Read more

Published on January 20, 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Read
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Whilst Rothchild is not giving out specific advice on the stock market, he does provide a good general overview by relating his one year's journey... Read more

Published on December 28, 2000 by HJ

4.0 out of 5 stars A reflection of ourselves
I must say that Rothchild has successfuly written a book that an average investor loke you and me can identified with. Read more

Published on October 13, 2000 by Kenny Thong

4.0 out of 5 stars Goldratt on WallStreet
Thoroughly enjoyable and more than just slightly humorous, Rothchild takes Finance 101 and compresses it into "a year in the life of...". Read more

Published on July 20, 1999 by mranlett@bellsouth.net

5.0 out of 5 stars a common man story
Its a very humorous and informative story. Reading through the book, lot of common investors can relate the story with their own story on investing in the stock market. Read more

Published on May 10, 1999

› See all 15 customer reviews...

.jsOffDisplayBlock { display: block; } .jsOffDisplayInline { display: inline; } .jsOffVisibility { visibility: visible; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jsOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jqOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jqOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jqOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jqOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jqOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; }