Stock-market

I'm a high school student and I always had an interest in the stock market, but it always seemed too dull and complicated to get involved in. Jason Kelly opened my eyes to world of Wall Street. I took the book out of the library and kept it for weeks. I've got to buy the book now because I can't keep renewing it. Kelly writes in a conversational style that always kept me wanted to read more. He covers all aspects of investing and even includes tips from the professionals like William O'Neil and Warren Buffett. His writing is light hearted and the little cartoons help to keep it simple and understandable. I started investing because of Kelly and his strategies have led me on a successful path so far. I recommend this book to anyone interested in investing in the stock market. It is informative, interesting and never too complicated. Definitley buy this one today!

Purchasing Jason Kelly's The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing may be the most valuable investment that you ever make in your life. Kelly breaks down all of the complicated Wall Street jargon into plain easy to read English. This book will have you up to speed on stocks and investing like a pro in no time. If you're thinking about investing in the market and are not sure where to start, start by reading The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing.

The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing (1998 edition) was excellent. It was very well written, extremely informative, makes things simple to understand and it gives the reader the motivation to learn more about the stock market and the confidence to invest in it. As a novice investor who wanted to understand and invest in the stock market, I truly appreciated the simplicity in which the book was written. It provides easy to understand definitions, examples, concepts, investing strategies, worksheets and much much more. I highly recommend it!!!

Firstly, I have a lot of respect for Mamis, so this is NOT to run him or his writing style down.

In-fact, I have given his other books, When to Buy and How to Sell the Five Star ratings as they are very useful and well written.

However, after reading those, this book seems to repeat some of the points made in them and seems a little defensive about Technical Analysis. Avoid this one but positively buy the other two.

It's been four years since I first reviewed this book (see the next to the last, below), and I still consider it to be absolutely essential for anyone considering any sort of involvement in the financial markets. In fact, it's probably essential for anyone who is considering anything at all that entails more than minimum risk.

The amateurs miss the point. This is not about the best stochastic settings or how to massage the bid and the ask. This is about facing up to the very real risks inherent in the financial markets, including the very real risk of financial ruin. Amateurs don't see the risk; therefore, they don't bother to grapple with it. Instead, they would rather blow up and disappear. If one wants to last, he must come to terms with the nature of risk, his own tolerance for risk, an understanding of how to manage risk. Without that, he's doomed.

I was reluctant to buy this book based on the first reviews I read. However, I have been daytrading for four years now, and frequently go against the crowd. Perhaps it is this contrarian view that keeps me in this business. I manage a proprietary firm in Denver (Bright Trading) and recommend this to ALL the new traders as well as veterans of the craft. It is fresh, insightful and really gets to the meat of what makes one trader successful while another fails. A great companion to this book is Mark Douglas' book Trading In The Zone.

While Ingebretsen's history of the early OTC and NASDAQ are detailed and interesting, I found his style both wooden and lumbering. He is hoplessly sqaure. Further, his analysis of the preY2K NASDAQ provides no insight. Witness....

"Investing in Internet stocks was often like playing Russian Roulette."

His analysis into the post Y2K NASDAQ is even less insightful. He has the ring of that smug kid who constantly shouted on the playground, "I told you so."

Still, considering the lack of serious and even semi-serious work on the subject, I think his effort is noteworthy. Hopfully something with a little more spice will come down the pipe.

As a Nasdaq employee, I enjoyed the book thoroughly. However, I was disappointed with the INCREDIBLE lack of editing. It is fraught with spelling and grammatical errors.

Ingebretsen has that rare ability among writers-the ability to decipher a complicated subject and present it in an entertaining, readable way. Should be required reading for all B-school students, as well as for anyone who wants to know how the markets work and how their trades are executed. I learned a ton reading this.

Here's a book for the tech investor who wants to know what the different companies in the NASDAQ 100 do. There's a simple company profile, earning projection, revenue growth chart, and key financial ratios.

Since all of these things can be gotten over the Internet these days, the main benefit of this book is that it is in book form and you can pick it up for stock ideas in the tech area (except for IBM and HPQ).

The only thing that I found interesting was the author's Top 25 Picks for 2002-2003. This list includes all the big cap tech stocks except QCOM and has some comments about each choice. There's also an interesting discussion about the QQQ's and the Rydex funds and how it might be better for most investors to simply buy these instead of riding the ups and downs of these highly-volatile individual issues.

I would like to have seen a more lively format, but I guess this book wasn't meant for my entertainment. If you want to buy individual stocks within the NASDAQ 100, you will need more current information in addition to what is presented here.

The Bottom Line: It's a handy reference.