The Motley Fool Investment Guide: How the Fool Beats Wall Street's Wise Men and How You Can Too

This gem of a book will give you all you need to know about investing that would take over a year to learn in college/graduate courses. It also shows you that the beauty of our system is that individuals have the power in their hands to educate themselves and do at least as well if not better than the high paid Wall Street gurus. I always thought this kind of stock analysis was beyond me, but their step by step explanations make learning almost fun. Plus, you'll learn how Wall Street guys make all their money ripping people like us off (okay, I'm sure there are some honest blokes out there....). The point is, we are all capable if we invest a small amount of time. The writing is breezy and easy to follow (with lots of good humor packed in) and the subject matter endlessly fascinating. The appendices give you all the "idiots" stuff that you think you know but probably don't -- a kind of A-Z of stocks. It will also motivate readers to go online and find lots of this information. Highly recommended.

Bought my first copy while on a weekend away in Monteray with some close friends. Never put it down. My traveling companions wondered where I had disappeared to! Finished it the following Monday evening after work. Bought my second copy after the first, loaned out, never came back. Bought a third copy specifically for a friend. This purchase is my fourth, the second copy having disappeared also. This one will remain a part of the foundation of my investment library,sorry, this one will not be loaned out. Thanks guys, this popped all the bubbles, removed all the myths, cleared the fog, straightened the wavy mirrors.

most people i know, have no strategy when it comes to their personal investing. they just buy a few mutual funds, and big stocks like msft,yahoo, and disney. i was one of these investots. this book helped explain everything to me and provided a logical approach to investing. what to invest in and what not to. i am a finance/accounting major at one of the top 5 b-schools in the country, and i learned more about investing from this book than i have learned in school. stronly recommend

The Motley Fool is easy to read, simple to understand and amusing. Yet, the more I read, the more uncomfortable I became. First, it is clearly written for the person with little or no investment experience and no business or economics background. That would seem to limit its audience. I felt at times like I was being talked down to, that this book was not for me. Second, the book gave good advice in some areas - Part II on mutual funds is probably the best. When it reached Part VI on shorting stocks, normally a very risky strategy, I became concerned for the newer investor. In addtion, this book would be more useful if the authors gave some guidelines on how much of one's portfolio should be invested and percentages for using these different approaches. While I say "bravo" to their attempt, I am concerned that what I call The Misconception Stall (making decisions based on incomplete or misleading assumptions) and The Communication Stall (not having the message heard or understood the way it was meant) run rampant here. For example, as companies move with their seasonal or industry cycles, different investment approaches are warranted. Dividend models tend to bring in value players and "bottom fishers" who are there because they are not expecting growth in the stock. Is this where you want to be? Also, there are actions companies can take, such as buying back shares at the bottom of a cycle and issuing shares at the top of a cycle that can result in more rapid stock-price growth than any of these approaches. I hope in The Gardner's next book they will address these issues more "fooly"! Also, new investor would find it very helpful to have a list of questions they should ask the company they are about to invest in. There is no substitute for asking the right questions.

The Motley Fool Investment Guide is one of the best books on investing in the stock market I have read. Besides being written in plain English, it provides a framework for deciding what types of investments are appropriate for the reader, and then develops each investment approach in a logical and entertaining way. The MF Guide starts by pointing out that 75% of mutual funds fail to surpass the performance of the S & P 500. Thus, for the conservative investor, it should be simply a matter of choosing and sticking with an "index fund", and you will beat 3 of 4 professional money managers(!) For those who want to do better, Tom and Dave Gardner (the chief MFs) propose using the proven "Dogs of the Dow" approach which with their own twist provides returns that should average 20% per year. Finally, to spice up your portfolio, they explain their approach to picking small cap growth stocks which have potential for explosive profits, as well as how to pick stocks to sell short. At each step of the way, the MF Guide explains the approach under discussion, why it is attractive, and what types of compromises one makes by adopting that approach. For the average individual investor, this should allow "fine-tuning" of their investment approach so that they can achieve their desired returns without undue risk. Unlike most investment guides (Winning on Wall Street, One Up on Wall Street, Random Walk down Wall Street, etc.) the MF Guide covers a variety of approaches to stock market investing. Further, it does not require much prior knowledge, since it explains the salient concepts as it moves along. This includes such simple things as using a discount broker or calling a company for information as well as how to use fundamentals to screen stocks to decide what their likely prospects for growth are. (A particularly helpful section is the one on reading and interpreting financial statements. While not fully comprehensive in all details, it gives the typical individual investor an excellent start on extracting useful information from the financial reports of the companies in which they are interested.)Despite all the great stuff in this book, you are probably still skeptical because of the title. Basically, the authors adopt the title of "Fool" to contrast themselves with the typical "wise men" of Wall Street. They feel that by ignoring much of the conventional wisdom which the analysts, commentators, observers, and brokers offer, we as individual investors can outperform them all, and, have fun doing it. You can find out more by buying the book, stopping by the Motley Fool section on America OnLine, or going to their home page on the Web. (sorry--don't have the URL handy.