Barron's Guide to Making Investment Decisions

Highly recommended book. Besides a very pragmatic approach and rudimentary explainations of the basics the excellent feature about this book is the "further reading" section. It helped me discover "security analysis by graham and dodd". Just for that I'd pay many time over for this book. The book itself explains things for the lay-person in non-complicated language. Sections on stocks, bonds and high level elementary strategies are also explained. Enough to get you started. What is best about this book is that you can read this book, buy a newspaper and get started. Highly recommended. Buy the book.

I'm not sure what a 'beginning investor' is, but I used to have some investments, then suddenly had to deal with a lot more money. At that point, I read a number of these what-to-do-with-your-money type of books, and this one was far and away the best. It's not about how to pick individual stocks. But it will give you an excellent perspective on how to think about your needs, your goals, and your asset allocation and really make a coherent plan for handling your investments. It is well-written, clear, covers a lot of ground, pretty solid and can be pretty sophisticated. It doesn't just discuss different types of investments (although the discussion is pretty thorough), it helps you understand how to think about them in the context of your own investments. This is the only one of these books that I still refer to for information. It should be useful to beginning and experienced investors alike. Highly recommended.

From Option Logic, September 16, 1998 Option Logic recommends this book to clients. The book has a deliberate approach that is necessary for surviving and succeeding in the investment arena. The book discusses the psychology of risk and reward early, and uses real life examples to help readers develop a perspective on what investments to choose and how they can be used to meet their goals. This look before you leap approach will serve serious investors well.