Lessons from the Legends of Wall Street

Nikki Ross has documented principal strategies and investing advice from the great Wall Street legends of our time. I have found the underlying principals of Buffet and his mentors as well as Price and Templeton to be very helpful. It is an easy to read enjoyable book. It may not be for day traders in general, but they could benefit from the list of questions asked by the masters before investing. I believe that had many investors read and applied this book prior to and during the recent crash, they might have saved a lot of money. Blake Conant

This book is one of the best books on investing I've read yet. It does not give you chart patterns and indicators, but it shows you how the great ones made their fortunes. As I said, "They are legends for a reason."--They set a standard for investors. A definate read.

I have to admire any investment author who starts with the premise that the past is just as worthy of study as the future. We are fortunate to have among us, though not for much longer, a number of living legends in the world of finance -- Fisher, Templeton, Buffett, Tisch and others -- who will one day take their habits, idiosyncracies, and wealth-building secrets to the grave. When they are gone, there will be no one to take their places, or enrich us with their wisdom. For years, we have been deluged with repetitive texts on how to become a millionaire like your neighbor. Isn't it better to have a manual on how to emulate the titans? There's an old saying in the school yard that if you are going to cheat on an exam, copy off the person who gets the A+, not the C students. Nikki Ross' book has been sorely needed and will prove just as pertinent today as it will in 20 years -- when the memories of these legends grow more faint.What I liked most about Nikki's work is its translation value -- her ability to condense the lingering, sometimes philosophical synapses of these great men into lingo that lay investors can use practically. She avoids the temptation of delving at length into their biographies (which are rich enough and worthy of a sequel) and instead presents us with step-by-step instructions (almost as if she was taking dictation from Fisher and Buffett themselves).A savvy stock-picker will quickly pick out the common threads that run throughout the book. All of these titans boiled down investing to a few core principles:1) They view stocks as pieces of businesses and put all their efforts into determining the value of their prospective purchases. 2) They focus on price but understand that the real value of an investment is procured over time as the company grows. 3) They shun convention and believe today's dissertations on portfolio modeling are recipes for mediocrity. 4) They don't give a hoot about day-to-day fluctuations in the stock market. 5) They are all humble men who delighted in increasing clients' net worth just for the sake of proving it was possible.It helps that Ms. Ross is a certified financial planner and a columnist. Her experience in giving real-world advice to individual investors lent itself to an easy-to-read, well planned book that any investor -- sophisticated or otherwise -- can use to their advantage. This book successfully bridges the gap between stock-picking and financial planning without coming off as self-serving, as many financial planning books are.

Nikki Ross presents a common sense three-step approach to investing. This approach is based on applying time-tested strategies that five successful giants have applied. Their experience through market crashes and the market highs demonstrate that their strategies are time-less and will be as valuable tomorrow as they were yesterday.The first step is gathering the information. She shows where the information can be gathered using Internet resources (over twenty-five are listed), SEC reports, annual reports, magazines, and newspapers.The second step is the evaluation process. Here she brings to life some of the insightful questions applied by Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Phil Fisher, T.Rowe Price, and John Templeton. The quantitative aspects of the evaluation are addressed (such as the company's sales, profit margins, and earnings). In addition the qualitative aspects (the company management's abilities, products and policies, market position, and company life cycle) become part of the investigation that leads to the third step, making a decision. In reading Nikki Ross' "Lessons from the Legends of Wall Street" I found questions of these legends most valuable and applicable in the evaluation of my own portfolio.The third step, making the decision, requires that the investment meet a personal set of criteria before making a purchase. This also would be applied when making the decision to hold or sell the investment.Nikki Ross presents these same strategies of the legends (that are used even today by mutual fund managers, money managers, and investment counselors) in an useable format that can be applied by the reader. In comparison to some other investment type books, this one cuts through the complex theory and offers common sense strategies for investing.This interesting book is well written and timely. I would recommend this book for reading to help develop a solid investment strategy.Philip Boudreaux, MBA

Before commenting on what's in the book, I would like to take a moment to point out what is not. When the history of the great investors is written about the years 2000 to 2020, it will be filled with names different than those studied in this book. We don't know who those people are yet, but they will probably do something different from what these great investors of the past have done. Caveat investor! A backwards look at investment styles often does not translate into superior rewards in the future. That's one reason why 80 percent of professionals cannot beat the market averages. See John Bogle's Common Sense About Mutual Funds for more details on that perspective.If you already know who Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Phil Fisher, T. Rowe Price, and John Templeton are and what their investment styles are or were, you don't need this book. If these people or the details of their work are unfamiliar to you, this book will serve as a good introduction to those perspectives. It will also take you less time to study than reading the more definitive works on these people. If any of the approaches excite you, I suggest you go in for more depth elsewhere. What is unique and valuable about this book is an attempt to blend the styles into one you can use to pick stocks and bonds. I thought that it was done reasonably well. Each investor is laid out in the same format, and then the results are summarized in the last part of the book. Basically, you are shown how to gather and evaluate the most appropriate information, and then to make a decision based on your evaluation. There is also some good material to help you understand your risk profile, so you can focus on the relevant types of investments for you. There are also some questions to fill out like those that financial planners often use (that should be no surprise, given that the author is a certified financial planner). My only concern is that this book could encourage you to try to do too much of your own investment picking and monitoring. Most people don't want to be that involved. And most people don't have the time or interest to do the job well, even if they want to. Although it is exciting to think about getting great investment returns, the odds are actually against you. If great results interest you, even after those caveats, I suggest you read ChangeWave Investing and think about putting 10 percent or less of your money into that approach. It could be the outstanding result that will become equally respected with the past greats in the future. In any case, enjoy using this well done book to overcome your misconception, disbelief and procrastination stalls about personal investing. Your brief apprenticeship with the masters outlined in this book will give you a better understanding of what successful investment processes have looked like. Then see if they fit you.Live long and prosper!