The Wall Street Journal Complete Money and Investing Guidebook

by Dave Kansas

Unravel the Mysteries of the Financial Markets—the Language, the Players, and the Strategies for Success

Understanding money and investing has never been more important than it is today, as many of us are called upon to manage our own retirement planning, college savings funds, and health-care costs. Up-to-date and expertly written, The Wall Street Journal Complete Money and Investing Guidebook provides investors with a simple—but not simplistic—grounding in the world of finance. It breaks down the basics of how money and investing work,

• What must-have information you need to invest in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds

• How to see through the inscrutable theories and arcane jargon of financial insiders and advisers

• What market players, investing strategies, and money and investing history you should know

• Why individual investors should pay attention to the economy

Written in a clear, engaging style by Dave Kansas, one of America’s top business journalists and editor of The Wall Street Journal Money & Investing section, this straightforward book is full of helpful charts, graphs, and illustrations and is an essential source for novice and experienced investors alike.

Get your financial life in order with help from The Wall Street Journal .



Look

• The Wall Street Journal Complete Personal Finance Guidebook
• The Wall Street Journal Personal Finance Workbook
• The Wall Street Journal Complete Real Estate Investing Guidebook

Genres: Finance, Business, Nonfiction, Money, Economics, Self Help

221 pages, Paperback

First published December 27, 2005

Reviews

[Casey Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book helped me to understand investing much better. I was completely closed minded about investing and it is nothing of what I thought it was. I read this book and a few others and I am now starting to fly this plane called investing.

[Vikram · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s very good book for beginners who want to step into financial world of stocks, bonds etc. Terms are introduced and explained in very simple language with examples.

[Barret Floyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this book. It is useful

[John Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would say this is an entry level book into the world of investing, whether for retirement in your 401k or personal investing. This is a book I would read first to get an airplane view of investing. Though published over 15 years ago, the information in this book is still relevant and necessary to know in order to have a good grounding for investing. Page 66 says, “This [book] isn’t an investment strategy book but a book aimed at providing you the basic structure of the investment and money world.” They spend the rest of that chapter providing a little help understanding two investment strategies that exist: fundamental investing and technical or chart based investing.

[Joel Everett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basic overall introduction to Investing and Finance; somewhat comical, or deeply tragic, in the sections that cover the surging real estate market in 2005 which was only several years before the GFC. The glossary in the back is helpful and a valid reference even in 2020 as the financial nomenclature remains the same today as then.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

This and other Wall Street Journal Money books are simply priceless!

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a bit old book, going only to 2006 just before the crash. Nevertheless, it's a very good starting point for learning about investing.

[Caroline Harbour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good starting point for people wanting to learn more about investing and finance, but definitely not a “complete” guide, it’s very much an overview

[Gerard Chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice overview into understanding what the basic instruments are made of.

[Sinistmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid introduction to financial topics

[Bianka Anguiano · Rating 5 out of 5]

The basics your want to know about stocks, binds and the market in general.

[Cascade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked up at the library to learn the basics of the finance system and vocabulary. Found it very readable and perfect level for me - started basic but had some details too, with helpful examples.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read it for a class. It’s a nice basic overview of investing. Probably too basic for anyone who has had much exposure to investments and markets

[MADHUKAR DAYAL · Rating 3 out of 5]

Outdated. Good only for some basic know how about the markets and some history of the markets.

[Sebastián Espejel · Rating 3 out of 5]

money good

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not the end-all-be-all guide to investment wealth and richness that many people may think it is just because it has the WSJ name attached to it. However, it never makes this claim in the first place. What it IS, though, is a thorough primer in the basics of the stock market and other investment vehicles.

While I do have previous understanding about the basics of the stock market, this book not only helped refresh that knowledge, but it also served to enhance certain aspects of it by going a little more in depth, as well as giving some of the more "interesting" history of Wall Street.

I can easily see myself recommending this book to other people who know absolutely nothing about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, REITs, and other investment vehicles as a way to get them off to a clear, level headed start. The book stresses patience and a long-term strategy for the potential investor, tactics which are echoed by other sound investment institutions (The Motley Fool) and investors (Warren Buffett, anyone?).

Best of all, it helps you understand some of the more complex aspects of the market such as short selling, futures, options, and all those other strange and bizarre investment vehicles that are out there. It doesn't get (thankfully) in the really weird stuff like default credit swaps and such, but sticks to things that are mainstays on the market. It also helps describe some of the investment institutions that exist out there (banks, brokerages, firms, and the like), and along the way does (gently) give suggestions for how neophyte investors may want to start off in the market (balanced portfolio, etc.).

What was really weird about reading this book, though, was how it talked about many of the investment institutions (AIG, Lehman Brothers, etc.) in a general description. I actually found it not only a little funny (this book was written a few years before the current financial crisis we're in now), but it helped me to understand why such a big deal is being made about "bailing out" some of these financial institutions, by contrasting their previous status and their "fallen" status currently.

Finally, the writing style is easy to understand. Nothing too complex or difficult, and the examples that are given are simple and get the main point(s) across relatively well.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kansas's guidebook is a simple introduction to money and the markets it flows through. Like the other books in The Wall Street Journal's series on personal finance, The Complete Money & Investing Guidebook (2005) is really a primer of common financial tools: stocks, bonds, IRAs, 401(k)s and the like. Kansas doesn't go into much depth, and he doesn't give much investing advice. But for a financial neophyte, this quickly digested guide is a great jumping off point to further research. One of its strengths is its suggested readings and Web sites that will lead to a deeper understanding of personal finance.

Written three years before the current market woes, the guidebook gets points for foreseeing the dangerous bubble growing in the housing market. But Kansas seems to have had little inkling of the severity of that bubble's bursting and the tremendous impact it would have on US and global economies. If there was one thing I found a little irritating about the book, it was its preoccupation with the last market meltdown in 2001-2002, when the dot.coms went bust. A guidebook should ideally help you see what lays ahead and help you navigate through it. This book lingered too long on past hazards, confirming the now familiar observation that market watching at best can explain only what has happened. As far as the future is concerned, even experts are looking through a very thick glass, darkly.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

My dad suggested I read this book after venturing into the stock market, mostly because I had no idea what he was talking about when he said he was writing covered calls.

I came out of the experience having pretty much all of my questions about stock market terminology and how things work answered — I even snickered a bit when the book said that hedge funds don't have to report their financial information the same way publicly traded companies do, because the whole world got a lesson in that last September / October.

The reason I'm docking one star is because the book is copyright 2005, and therefore a little outdated. I hope there's another, more updated edition out there that would discuss the mess we get ourselves into. I'd love to be able to understand it better.

Edit: Found it! It's called "The Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street," by the same author, Dave Kansas.

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

published in 2005, it's interesting to see what the WSJ was telling the public about how to invest in the stock market, 2 years before a massive drop in the S&P 500. also laughably basic given that the author assumes the reader will be doing his own investing. (The early years from 2000-2004 were apparently good ones for markets, including emerging markets, around the world, according to Faber, so you couldn't have gone wrong. A bull market makes the average joe look brilliant.) Now in 2020 there are few viable options for people who are not multis than index ETFs or mutual funds. The demise of America's middle class is upon us.
The Wall Street chapter revisits the entrenched corruption of brokerage houses and their teams of analysts with major conflicts of interest, and Eliot Spitzer's golden days as a prosecutor. Merrill Lynch's Henry Blodget was barred from the securities industry for recommending stocks to the public which he called dogs privately, and now the UES B&R, Yale grad is the successful founder and CEO of Business Insider, with hundreds of millions in profits. He feels very badly about what he did, and now wants to make up for it, haha

[Himanshu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great introductory book to financial markets and different asset classes. The book covers everything from backgrounds of famous stock exchanges to investing in real-estate. I would highly recommend this book to anyone starting their career in financial industry. I wish I had read this book when I first started my career.

Full review:
http://www.enlistq.com/book-review-ws...

[Elysse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was no thriller novel, but I really liked it, and feel like I have a general understanding about the different types of investing and financial tools out there. This book did have lots of extras, like some historical data, lists at the end of each chapter of websites/books to read, and other little tidbits, so it was very well thought out and researched. I do like that this book was a general way to gain knowledge about investing, instead of a "get-rich-quick" scheme, or a "self-help" book, which made it much more enjoying to read because it gave me ideas of working with my finances with out reminding me of how bad I am with them.

[Ashish · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by one of the managing directors of Goldman Sachs and I can understand why. The book is excellent for anyone willing to understand markets and the basics of investing. Loved Kansas' simple yet vivid explanations of ostensibly scary jargon related to investing. It also provides external sources and recommends a healthy list of books for anyone willing to dig deeper into markets. Overall, this book is a good place to start for beginners to investing.

[Shamy Jean-Baptiste · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book for getting to know the basics of Wall Street. It reads more like a compressed textbook than a novel though because it's aim is to inform.

[Josh Benham · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far, this is a pretty good book. Amazon doesn't rate it highly, but I think it's pretty straightforward and gives you the basics of investing, really as fundamentals. A chapter on stocks, a chapter on bonds, etc.

Not so much advice on tricks to investing, which I like. It's more about how the markets work. A background book...

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the surface it appears like this book is teaching you quite a bit about the markets, but in reality it's just wordy. Still, I like the author's examples as well as his effort to incorporate some Wall Street (and Main Street) history.

[Yosep · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and worth reading. It is full of entertaining and historical information in addition to the "meat" of the book, which is an unbiased explanation of everything you could possibly want to know about the financial markets and money.

[Bethany Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was clear and informative, especially for someone quite ignorant about money

[Olin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good overview of investing topics, including some complex products. Easy read even for those not in finance. Recommended.

[Jeramey · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who thought they knew a decent amount about finance and had taken a handful of college economics and finance courses, I still learned a fair amount. I would recommend this book.

[Brian Hara · Rating 3 out of 5]

See other WSJ review.