"The greatest of all talents is the ability to recognize the true value of things." 
La Rochefoucauld. Maximes.

INVESTING FOR STARTERS

Dun & Bradstreet’s Guide to Your Investments, 1997. Crowell, 1997.  A comprehensive,   annually-updated investing primer with a list of recommended resources and additional readings at the end of each section.

Dunnan, Nancy. How to Invest $50-$5,000: The Small Investor’s Step-by-Step, Dollar-by-Dollar Plan for Low-Risk, High-Value Investing. HarperPerennial, 1995.   Financial columnist and author Dunnan focuses on investment strategies for those with just a small amount of capital to invest.

Engel, Louis & Henry Hecht. How to Buy Stocks. Little, Brown, 1994.   The 8^th edition of a popular stock market guide written with the novice investor in mind.

Investor’s Business Daily Guide to the Markets. Wiley, 1996.  A slightly more technical look at the market from the editorial staff of Investor’s Business Daily, the Los Angeles-based national investment newspaper.

Leonard, Frances. Time Is Money: A Million-Dollar Investment Plan for Today’s Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings. Addison Wesley, 1996.  Leonard uses the often under-appreciated power of interest compounding over time as the cornerstone of her investment plan.

Tobias, Andrew. The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need. Harcourt Brace, 1996.  A succinct, breezy and entertaining guide to the world of invesdting from one of America’s best-known personal finance experts.

Tyson, Eric. Investing for Dummies. IDG, 1996.  Any book in the "Dummies" series is usually an excellent starting-off point for the novice. Combining a lively, engaging presentation style with dependable content, this volume is no exception.

STOCKS, BONDS AND STRATEGIES

Carlson, Charles. Buying Stocks Without a Broker: Commission-Free Investing Through Company Dividend Reinvestment Plans. McGraw-Hill, 1996.  A guide to Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIPs) with a directory of companies offering the program and some sample portfolios.

Carlson, Charles. No-Load Stocks: How to Buy Your First Share & Every Share Directly from the Company with No Broker’s Fee. MsGraw-Hill, 1997.  A growing number of companies now offer you the opportunity to buy stocks directly from them. Carlson discusses the process and provides a directory of more than 145 companies offering the program.

Chai, Alan. Cyberstocks: An Investor’s Guide to Internet Companies. Hoover’s Business, 1996.  For those wishing to speculate in the volatile area of Internet stocks, this book discusses the industry and profiles 101 companies in the field. Text updates are offered in a companion Web site at http://www.cyberstocks.com

Dreman, David. The New Contrarian Investment Strategy. Random, 1982.   Dreman’s   investment strategy involves tracking market trends, investing opposite to those trends, and concentrating on stocks with a low Price/Earnings ration.

Dunnan, Nancy and Jay J. Pack. Market Movers. Warner, 1993.  An easy-to-understand explanation of how factors such as the inflation rate, budget deficit, or actions of people such as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank can affect the value of your investments, with suggestions on how you can respond to protect those investments.

Gardner, David and Thomas Gardner. The Motley Fool Investment Guide: How the Fool Beats Wall Street’s Wise Men and You Can Too. Simon & Schuster, 1996.   The architects of the successful Motley Fool investment site on America Online share their secrets in print format. They now also have a site on the World Wide Web at http://www.fool.com

Gianturco, Michael. How to Buy Technology Stocks. Little, Brown & Company, 1996.  A science and technology columnist with Forbes magazine, Gianturco looks at the history and current trends in the major high technology industries, discussing investment opportunities in some of today’s leading and emerging companies.

Hulbert, Mark. The Hulbert Guide to Financial Newsletters. Dearborn Financial, 1993.  Hulbert (The Hulbert Financial Digest) focuses on 123 of the leading investment newsletters and provides evaluative reviews together with contact and subscription information.

Loth, Richard. How to Profit from Reading Annual Reports. Dearborn Financial, 1993.  How to understand and use to your advantage one of the most important sources of company information.

Lowe, Janet. Value Investing Made Easy. McGraw-Hill, 1996.  Warren Buffett attributes much of his success to the application of Benjamin Graham’s investment strategies. Here Lowe provides a user-friendly guide to Graham’s theories.

Malkiel, Burton G. A Random Walk down Wall Street: Including a Life-Cycle Guide to Personal Investing. Norton, 1996.   An entertaining guide to the stock market and the various investment strategies and statistical tools used by the experts to predict it, including Malkiel’s own random walk theory.

O’Higgins, Michael with John Downes. Beating the Dow: A High-Return, Low-Risk Method for Investing in the Dow Jones Industrial Stocks with as Little as $5,000. HarperCollins, 1991.  The authors recommend focusing on the 30 stocks that make up the Down Jones Industrial Average and, within that context, suggest investment strategies that they say will enable you to actually beat the Dow.

O’Neil, William J. How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times or Bad. McGraw-Hill, 1995.   The founder of Investor’s Business Daily shares his formula for successful investing based on a detailed analysis of 500 top-performing stocks over a 33-year period from 1953 to 1985.

O’Shaughnessy, James. What Works on Wall Street: A Guide to the Best-Performing Investment Strategies of All Time. McGraw-Hill, 1997.  Using 43 years worth of data from Standard & Poor’s Compustat database, O’Shaughnessy analyzes various investment strategies to determine which work most effectively over time. For those with a statistical bent.

Scott, David L. The Guide to Investing in Bonds: How to Build Your Wealth by Mastering the Basic Strategies. Globe Pequot, 1997.  Succinct introduction to the world of bonds, including bond funds.

Scott, David L. Municipal Bonds: The Basics and Beyond. Probus, 1992.  The fundamentals of investing in bonds issued by states, cities, towns, and authorities.

Siegel, Jeremy. Stocks for the Long Run: A Guide to Selecting Markets for Long-Term Growth. Irwin, 1994.  Siegel believes stocks are a safer long-term investment than most other forms of investing and provides a detailed historical analysis of stock market movements and trends to support his claim. For the seasoned investor.

Stovall, Sam. Sector Investing. McGraw-Hill, 1996.  Discusses how to invest by industry group, offers brief overviews of 90 industries, and makes stock buy, sell, and hold recommendations.

Weiss, Geraldine & Janet Lowe. Dividends Don’t Lie: Finding Value in Blue-Chip Stocks. Longman Financial, 1988.   Investment Advice Based on the theory that a strong connection exists between the dividends a company pays over time and its stock market value.

MUTUAL FUNDS

Bogle, John C. Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor. Business One Irwin, 1994.   An insider’s guide to mutual funds from the founder of the Vanguard Group of Investment Companies.

Gould, Carole. The New York Times Guide to Mutual Funds. Times Books, 1992.   A financial columnist with The New York Times, Gould covers the basics of mutual fund investing.

Tyson, Eric. Mutual Funds for Dummies. IDG, 1995.  An informative introduction for the novice investor couched in the chatty informal style that fans of the "Dummies" series enjoy.

UNITED WE STAND: INVESTMENT CLUBS

The Beardstown Ladies Investment Club with Leslie Whitaker. The Beardstown Ladies’ Common Sense Investment Guide: How We Beat the Stock Market &endash; and How You Can Too. Hyperion, 1994.  With a portfolio reputed to have outperformed the experts, the Ladies share their techniques and strategies.

O’Hara, Thomas E. & Kenneth S. Janke. Starting and Running a Profitable Investment Club: The Official Guide from the National Association of Investment Clubs. Times Business, 1996.  A guide to investment club start-up and to National Association of Investors Corporation (NAIC), a non-profit organization that supplies support services to individuals and clubs. The Association has a Web site at http://www.better-investing.org

Shaw, Kathryn. Investment Clubs: A Team Approach to the Stock Market. Dearborn Financial, 1995.  Shaw uses the experience she gained from starting her own club to write this step-by-step beginner’s guide to group investing.

THOSE GREEN HILLS: GLOBAL INVESTING

Dunnan, Nancy & Douglas Schaff. How to Make Money Investing Abroad: Taking Advantage of New Opportunities in the Global Marketplace. HarperCollins, 1995.   The authors argue that an investment portfolio should contain a certain percentage of foreign stock, both to lower the overall risk and to take advantage of potentially profitable foreign markets. They discuss the full range of investment opportunities available and present an overview of 25 countries they consider to be of interest to investors.

Mobius, Mark. Mobius on Emerging Markets. Financial Times/Pitman Publishing, 1996.  A mutual fund manager for Franklin/Templeton Advisers specializing in high-risk, emerging market area, Mobius reviews his strategies and discusses developing markets in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Southern Europe, and formerly Communist countries.

Rogers, Jim. Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers. Adams Publishing, 1995.  Investment banker Rogers takes an around-the-world motorcycle trip to investigate investment opportunities abroad first-hand and presents his findings in this unique travelogue, adventure story, and investment guide.

HOW DID THEY DO THAT? SOME TOP MONEY MAKERS

Hagstrom, Robert G. The Warren Buffett Way: Investment Strategies of the World’s Greatest Investor. Wiley, 1995.   A great story about one of the most successful investors ever.

Lynch, Peter with John Rothchild.

 

One Up on Wall Street: How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market. Simon & Schuster, 1989.

 

Beating the Street: The Best Selling Author of One Up on Wall Street Shows You How to Pick Winning Stocks and Develop a Strategy for Mutual Funds. Simon & Schuster, 1993.

The very successful manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund, Lynch shares his investment strategies in these two highly readable and informative titles.

Train, John.

                    The Money Masters. Harper & Row, 1980.

 

The New Money Masters: Winning Investment Strategies of Soros, Lynch, Steinhardt, Rogers, Neff, Wanger, Michaelis, Carret. Harper & Row, 1989.

In The Money Master, Train devotes a chapter each to Buffett, Cabot, Fisher, Graham, Kroll, Rowe Price, Templeton, Tisch, and Wilson, among the top post-World War II investors . The New Money Masters profiles some contemporary investment leaders.

INVESTMENT CLASSICS

Fishers, Philip A.. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings.Wiley, 1996.  Proponent of growth and qualitative investing, Fisher is one of the leaders in modern investment theory; his book, first published in 1958, is still of value today.

Graham, Benjamin. The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel. Harper & Row, [1985], 1973.   Graham’s classic on value investing.

Lefevre, Edwin. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Wiley, 1994.  A fictionalized version of  Jesse Livermore's life, a stock market trader who made and lost several fortunes in his lifetime. First published in 1923, his book is still popular with today’s investors.

Loeb, Gerald. The Battle for Investment Survival. Wiley, 1996.  A prominent Wall Street broker when this book was first published in 1935, who had himself survived the 1929 market crash, Loeb warns of the perils of the stock market, sharing his own sometimes unconventional investment theories.

MacKay, Charles. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Wiley, 1995.  A nineteenth-century collection of real-life cautionary tales illustrating the dangers of following the crowd, especially in matters financial.

Schwed, Fred. Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?, or, A Good Hard Look at Wall Street. Wiley, 1995.  A professional leader who lost a lot of money during the stock market crash of 1929, Schwed wrote an entertaining send-up of Wall Street that is applicable today as it was when first published in 1940.

PARENTS’ CHOICE FOR THE YOUNG INVESTOR

Clason, George S. The Richest Man in Babylon. Hawthorn/Dutton, 1955.   Lessons in money management and the principles of sound capital investment, in the form of parables, show how the virtues of thrift, hard work, and application to duty, together with sound judgment, can lead to the accumulation of wealth.

Fisher, Clayton, P. The Stock Market Explained for Young Investors: The Perfect Stock Market Start-Up Kit for Any High School or College Student. Business Classics, 1993.  Grandson of Philip Fisher (Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits), the author keeps finance in the family with this excellent introductory guide to investing.

Lynch, Peter & John Rothchild. Learn to Earn: A Beginner’s Guide to the Basics of Investing. Fireside, 1996. C1995.  Using examples that would appeal to the young investor, Lynch (One Up on Wall Street) offers an entertaining review of the growth of the capitalist system, the origin of public companies, and the business of investing.

Seto, Matthew & Steven Levingston. The Whiz Kid of Wall Street’s Investment Guide: How I returned 34 Percent on My Portfolio, and You Can, Too. Morrow, 1996.   A primer on investing by Seto who, at sixteen, was profiled by the Wall Street Journal when his family-based mutual fund portfolio outperformed the experts.

INVESTING ONLINE

Farrell, Paul B. Investor’s Guide to the Net: Making Money Online. Wiley, 1996.  A guide to online investment sites and to financial resources available on the Internet.

Pfaffenberger, Bryan and Claire Mencke. The Savvy Investor’s Internet Resource. IDG, 1996.  How to track down financial information on the Internet, with a directory of World Wide Web investment resources.

SOME INTERNET STARTER SITES

General:

The Financial Data Finder
http://www.cob.ohio-state.edu/dept/fin/osudata.htm
A comprehensive list, compiled by the Department of Finance, Ohio State University, with links to many key finance and investment resources on the Internet.

FINWeb
http://www.finweb.com
A guide to financial and economic resources on the Internet, with something of an academic bent, offers many sites of interest to the individual investor.

Specific:

NETworth
http://www.quicken.com/investments
In-depth information on more than 7,500 mutual funds.

Stockmaster
http://www.stockmaster.com
Offers delayed stock and mutual fund data quotes as well as access to sites with extensive company news and data.

U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC)
http://www.sec.gov
At the SEC site you can access corporate reports, mutual fund prospectuses, and even lodge a complaint against your broker online.

Wall Street Research Net
http://www.wsrn.com
A useful site for research publicly traded companies and mutual funds and for locating financial and business information on the Web.

Compiled and annotated by Eileen Sherman.  General Library, Adult Reader and Information Services, Boston Public Library, 1997.