Stock Investing for Dummies

For Dummies

by Paul Mladjenovic, Brett Barry (Narrator)

Stock Investing For Dummies, 2nd Edition covers all the proven tactics and strategies for picking the right stocks. Packed with savvy tips on today's best investment opportunities, this book provides a down-to-earth, straightforward approach to making money on the market without the fancy lingo. Soon you'll have the power to optimize your returns by:
Recognizing and minimizing the risks Gathering information about potential stocks Dissecting annual reports and other company documents Analyzing the growth and demand of industries Playing with the politicians Approaching uncertain markets Using corporate stock buybacks to boost earnings Handling the IRS and other obligations With a different strategy for every investor--from recent college grad to married with children to recently retired--this valuable reference is a must-have. It also features tips and tricks on how to tell when a stock is on the verge of declining or increasing, how to protect yourself from fraud, and common challenges that every investor must go through, along with resources and financial ratios.

Genres: Finance, Business, Nonfiction, Money, Economics, Reference, Personal Finance

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Jeff Kelleher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beginner look elsewhere.

The "Dummies" reference in the titles is irritating, but I am a fan of this series. The key to understanding any field of knowledge is "big picture first." That's what most Dummies books give us. Not this one, though. A veteran investor will find it aimless. A beginner will find it overwhelming.

The posture is that of the investment "professional" who is receiving a novice in his office. He is leaning back in his chair, his fingers in a steeple, his tone that of condescending sufferance. He is expounding on the great difficulties of his field, not so much to enlighten the client as to demonstrate how indispensable he and his kind are.

"You have to understand economics," he wants us to know, "and accounting. Those are vital." You also have to understand politics, and the future trends of modern culture. You need to read the Wall Street Journal every day, and subscribe to Investor's Business Daily and Barron's. Oh, and you must scrutinize each company's 10-K and 10-Q SEC filings. Is he serious?

"You have to analyze risk," the author pronounces, then follows up with an astoundingly incomplete exposition of what market risk is. He falls into the trap of characterizing it as something akin to betting in a casino--that is to say, something measurable. Moving averages, crossovers, and divergences will signal it. Puts and calls and collar options will contain it. It is as if he never heard of "The Black Swan". (The Black Swan Strategy is an aggressive option play, but no beginner had better go near it.)

He instructs the novice on how to investigate a company's prospects--P/E ratio, PSR ratio, debt to revenue, growth industry, blah blah blah. But he almost whispers the central point of all stock picking: NOT whether this is a "good" or "bad" company, but "Is the stock underpriced or overpriced?" And if it is either, how do all those highly-trained professionals fail to see what our earnest beginner so blithely grasps? It is as if he never heard of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street."

Worst of all, he perpetuates the fiction that the beginning investor can beat the market by adopting his strategies. He is going to make you into Warren Buffett, but he neglects to disclose that Buffett--and even the sainted Benjamin Graham--have advised retail investors to reject every strategy set forth in this book. It's as if he never heard of Jack Bogle's compelling works on index investing.

How does a beginner's book fail to highlight the cognitive errors that the Behavioralists have shown to plague beginning stock pickers--and even veterans? Wouldn't that be the most useful advice of all? Hubris would be at the top of the list, and that is the very error that this book stokes. It's like those late-night Stairmaster ads that promise a sculpted body in just a few short weeks

[Amin Mo · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s very good, but I think that there should have been added a first section that explains the basics like indexes such as DJIA,NASDAQ, S&P 500 etc... and just economic basics like what is a share and how does it work? Why do companies put shares on sale? How and why does a share rise in price? Etc... I personally know all these basics because I read “The intelligent Investor” before this one, but for “dummies” I think those things should have been included in the book.
This book gives great information for anybody seriously interested in starting stock investing, it tells you how to spot a winning stock, how to analyze it, how to expect if it might go down, what affects a stock, fundamental and technical analysis, brokers and what they do, how to start investing and many other things...
It also opens new fields to read about, for example now after reading it, I will read next a book about technical analysis because it’s a very wide subject and it was talked about the book very briefly.
I always summarize what I read and go all over it again after I read about it in a DOC in my computer, there was so much new things I learnt it got to the point that I had to write for two hours to write about what I read, the book is rich with information.

[Mohammad Mirzaali · Rating 3 out of 5]

برای آشنایی با بورس و اوراق بهادار جالب و قابل استفاده بود، اما گاهی با تکرار مکررات حوصله‌سربر می‌شد

[Christiaan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought it was a great read, and worth the time of anyone seeking financial independence. Mladjenovic not only teaches the necessary tools for wise stock investment, but financial security and a balanced portfolio at that. I went from knowing nothing about stocks to being a comfortably knowledgable beginning investor. The author doesn't talk over your head, and clearly spells out all concepts and mathematics in a simple and easily understood fashion. I recommend coupling this book with Investopedia.com (which is among his recommended resources) to gain further insight on themes and topics throughout the literature. Overall, this book is a valuable resource.

[G]

It is my first book of the genre. I was more interested in the investing terminology, so skipped a lot of parts where predominantly investing advices where given, as not my purpose, at least for now. Therefore refrained from rating it.

Choose this particular "dummies book" because I like books for absolute beginners not to use pretentious language. And this was true, I found clear explanations of the concepts which helps boost confidence in this domain (I believe that a non-fiction book needs to always be clearly written). This despite of the fact that the book is an old edition so a lot of things might be outdated. For example, I did not encounter any mentioning of the trading algorithms robots that threaten the future of brokers. Also, the DJIA was ~15.000 whereas now it is ~35.000, so I said to myself, it is better not to waste time on the trading advices.

[Abby Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This took sosoosososoosososooooo long to finish because of multiple hiatuses and note-taking but it was WORTH. IT!! There's a whole ton in here so if you want to read it TAKE NOTES because I would not remember anything if it weren't for that.

I learned so much from this it went so indepth about analysis and factors that determine if you should buy hold or sell a stock and it was extremely fun. Now if you're expecting a guide that only talks about them, then you're looking at the wrong book because this accounts for other securities such as bonds and metals so expect more than just stocks.

[Amr Khaled · Rating 3 out of 5]

I certainly didn't feel this book was for dummies. Not that I was clever, but the book is really too overwhelming for a beginner.

While the best thing on it was the website references, the clear advice, the big picture. But it was still too much to digest & too long to process.

Still the chapters regarding the "stop-order", "dividends", "economics", & "insiders" were good information. This just had to be said.

[Pouyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stock investment

I definitely recommend this book if you interested in stocks investment, well written and easy to understand , by reading this book you will have very good knowledge about the subject.

[Theigbobandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the basic info you need to invest in the stock market dumbed down a lot.

I think it could have been a lot shorter than 363 pages and can probably summarize the book in 20 pages

[Nadine]

I’m not going to give this a star rating, but what I will say is that I found this volume to be incredibly informative and easy to read. Before, I knew absolutely nothing about investing in stocks other than the classic “buy low, sell high”. I’m by no means an expert now, but I can say confidently that my plunge in stock investing won’t be as scary or overwhelming now that I’m armed with knowledge about the market and strategies to minimize potential losses.

I’d definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a starting point in investing. The only issue I had with the text is that it’s geared towards an American audience, as there’s a whole chapter on taxes that is not informative to a Canadian.

[Vishnu Prasad · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great place to start reading about investing in equities and a good refresher for MBA graduates

[Tonya G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Information shared was definitely helpful.

[Sammi]

Six years later & about 700 books in between but I’ve finally finished it (sorry dad that I took so long!)

[Patrik · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book it talks about how you can start off in the stock market and good ways to get rich off of it. This book isn't really a beginner book, but you have to have some background information on stocks to know what's going on. The beginning of the book talks about what a stock is. A stock is a investment in something. Nearly all big companies have a stock. Around the book it talks about how it is a very risky business and how you have to be careful. This book didn't tell me what stock to invest in but it did show me how to invest and make the right choice. One of my favorite quotes from this book was "making it sound like a monolithic entity instead of what it really is." This quote is explaining that the stock market looks intimidating and that a lot of people talk about things and make it sound a lot different from what is really is. My second favorite quote is " before you say, incoming stocks are great, il get my checkbook out and buy a batch right now." This is showing that once you see a stock drop, you better get on it fast because other people are already waiting for it.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was this my favorite book? Obviously, no. But it did increase my knowledge on investment terms and stock strategies by about 100%. I think it is great for anyone who like me just wanted to get some basic information. It does contain a lot of information on how to invest if you are approaching retirement, which wasn't really helpful for me, but could be useful to someone else.

I will warn you that the book is liberally peppered with puns and small bits of conservative bias (i.e. high taxes are terrible for stock investors and the market!) But it didn't bug me enough that I stopped reading the book.

[Ulio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty decent introduction to Stock investing but I recommend just going to Investopedia which is free and you can find the same amount of content(more in depth).

I read the 2008 version which was the recession version so a lot of the advice in the book is very conservative but in general for a beginner I can see how that is a good thing and also for the fact that we could be heading into another recession.

[Arthur Zhuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction to the basics of investing in stocks but definitely not enough knowledge in here to give you the confidence to purchase. This book will give you pointers on what type of investing you should do based on your intentions but doesn't delve deep into them. Gives you quick summaries on how to read company financial statements and the like. Good book for introducing you to the basics.

[Joseph Hargreaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, relatively concise, introduction to investing for someone who knows nothing. A few chapter were skippable, but otherwise I would recommend for anyone looking for the fundamental insights into investing. Scratch the surface with this and then delve deeper.

[Chad Lamb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good guide to basic terms and understanding of stock investing. A little irritatingly repetitive at times but still a good guide. The author has great foresight about economic and market trends that did occur in the following years after this book came out.

[Mohammad Kotb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book, I've learned a lot from it. And it's a kind of book that can be used as a reference and always check. And it's very good to read it all.

[Ranjani · Rating 4 out of 5]

As my first book from the genre, I would say it is a pretty decent read with not-so-pretentious language, exactly the reason why I picked a “dummies book”. Set about with some fundamental concepts of stock investing, the author gradually progresses to demystify some intense vocabulary from the investing world, pretty much dumbed down. There are some topics that were repeated in multiple chapters like the key ratios (P/E ratio, Price-to-Sales-Ratio, Price-to-Book-Ratio), reading balance sheets, and income statements. But I somehow found it satisfying, as it cemented the idea behind the concepts. Each chapter is self-contained so you can always refer to parts that piques your interest and dig deeper through the resources that he has mentioned in the appendix (which are pretty decent bdw). One thing I didn’t appreciate much was the fact that the information(about taxes) in some of the late chapters was geared towards the American audience, which was not so informative to someone living in Germany. Overall, I’d recommend this book to anyone looking for a starting point in investing. I can safely say that stock investing isn’t as overwhelming now that I’m armed with knowledge about the stock market, the terminologies, strategies to minimize losses, useful trigger techniques, and so on.

[Karen Hewitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stocks for Dummies" is an approachable and comprehensive guide to understanding the world of investing in stocks. Author Paul Mladjenovic breaks down complex financial concepts into easy-to-understand language and offers practical advice for anyone looking to get started in the stock market.

The book is divided into six parts, covering topics such as the basics of stocks and the stock market, analyzing stocks, investing in mutual funds and ETFs, and retirement planning. Mladjenovic provides real-world examples and case studies to help readers apply the concepts to their own investing strategies.

One thing I really appreciated about this book is that it's not just for beginners. Even if you have some experience with investing, "Stocks for Dummies" provides valuable insights and strategies for taking your investing to the next level. Mladjenovic covers topics like diversification, risk management, and tax implications in a way that's both accessible and informative.

Overall, I found "Stocks for Dummies" to be an excellent resource for anyone looking to gain a better understanding of the stock market and how to invest in stocks. Whether you're a beginner or have some experience, this book provides valuable insights and practical advice for making informed investment decisions.

[B. Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The content certainly justifies the title of the book. However, the following observations are to be duly noted, before you start reading.
1) A bit of understanding about share market and it’s basic functioning, can give a lot of advantage while learning from the book.
2) The book talks about few concepts which are only applicable to USA stock market. As such it would be nice if you could go through books authored by your own country’s stock market professionals, right after reading this book.
3) Even though the book is written in a manner so that we can read any chapter as per need(as implied by the author), it is better if you go through chapters consecutively.

[Sukriti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stock Investing For Dummies, 5th Edition by Paul Mladjenovic is a comprehensive, beginner-friendly guide to navigating the world of stock markets and building a solid investment strategy. Written in clear, accessible language, it explains essential concepts such as how stocks work, how to evaluate companies, risk versus return, and how to construct a diversified portfolio. The book also covers practical topics like choosing a brokerage, managing risk, and understanding market trends. Updated to address modern market conditions and investment vehicles, it’s a trusted resource for anyone starting their investing journey or seeking to strengthen their foundational knowledge of stock investing.
Apple

[Edu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy recomendable para iniciarse en el mundo de la inversión en bolsa. Lo he leído en 2019 y obviamente está un poco anticuado pero la mayor parte de lo que explica es aplicable a la actualidad. De hecho, en varias secciones del libro da ideas que apuntan la crisis de las sub-prime de 2008, para mí es una gran garantía de que el autor sabe de lo que habla... El único "pero" que le he encontrado es que tiene mucho de "investing" pero muy poco de "trading" (short-term investing). Quien esté interesado en iniciarse en el mundo de stock trading necesita otro libro.

[Rex Wei · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to the basics of stock investing and a little bit about portfolio allocation. Not the perfect replacement for the literary classics of investing, for this book is as is name suggests a guide for new stock investors. When you're ready do check out the classics such as Benjamin Graham and Peter Lynch for deeper knowledge.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This easily breaks info down to make it easier to know what I'm looking for In researching stocks or understanding data. I also feel investopedia is a great help as well. If you an amateur like me then you'll appreciate this book. I'm looking forward to making some money off the eventual recession were headed for.

[Joshua Ziefle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful introduction to the topic that covers a lot of material. I felt like I wanted more specificity/direction at times, but upon completing the book, it was a value-add for me and will be a good resource to consult in the future. I am more knowledgeable now than when I began, and that is the point of these books.

[Valery Lukin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My opinion may not be quite rational here, since I am just trying to grasp basic ideas of investing in a Stock market in general, but I found this book able to explain core basic concepts pretty well. Before reading I had extremely vague view on a subject, where afterwards I fell that I grasped many concepts and investigating subject further became for sure easier.

[Ibrahim970400 · Rating 5 out of 5]

By far either the best or the second best book for any beginner. It starts by talking about stock market for any person who doesn’t have any clue what is a stock or stock market and gradually takes you to a point were you could start investing.