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A Fool and His Money: The Odyssey of an Average Investor by John Rothchild

sax1 said: "As an introduction, I will explain what attracts me to the stock market. I thought it's gotta be the easiest way to make money in the world. Sure you can make millions by buying those real-estate courses sold on late night infomercials where the unemployed and college students seem to do so well that even Donald Trump might envy them. But that's still a lot of work. You have to go out there and actually buy some property and deal with things like title, taxes and loans. It's not so with the stock market, where you can just sit in front of a computer in your pajamas and click your way to riches without doing any real work. To help achieve my goal, I read as many investment books as I could. The problem with investment books is that they are like diet books. Go into any bookstore and you will see them everywhere. Every author claims to have found a way to help people become rich or thin. Yet, it is estimated that up to 90% of individual investors lose money and probably an equal number are still fat. And then there is a problem of bias. Many investment book authors have worked in specific areas of the security industry. As a result, their books are self-serving. It is for these reasons that I recommend a book not written by the usual industry insiders with self-serving interests. In 1985 John Rothchild thought he could make killing in the stock market too. So he took one year off to become an investor. This gifted writer detailed his journey into the financial world in his hilarious and informative book "A Fool and His Money: The odyssey of an Average Investor" He went to the stock exchanges in New York, the Federal Reserve building, the commodity exchanges in Chicago and offices of insiders and talked to stock analysts, traders, brokers and fund managers. He started with about $16,000 and eventually lost most of it. He traded stocks, options and commodities and even sold stock short, which was a loss and caused him to move from hotel room to hotel room to avoid margin call. He made all kind of mistakes that most investors can identify with -- hot tips from his brokers and strangers; selling too soon; selling too late; buying things without any idea why; getting stock tips from fortune tellers; buy stocks based on overhearing a conversation. What I find valuable is his accurate account of the machinery of Wall Street and how difficult it is for average investors to make money. Now I know why stock analysts always tell people to buy and why most mutual funds don't perform well. These are just a few examples of the many things one can learn from this book. Even though I have been trading for a while before I read this book, I still learned a great deal from it. I highly recommend this gem to anyone who enjoys a well-written, funny and informative book."