Stock

The 2003 edition of The 100 Best Mutual Funds uses data through December 31, 2001.
The book is primarily a collection of two page profiles on each fund. The profiles start with a 5 star ranking system to grade Total Return, Risk Reduction, Management, Current Income and Expense Control. Next the author uses 5 category grades to evaluate up-market performance, down-market performance and predictablility of returns. The grades are excellent, very good, good, fair and poor. I have two problems with these grading systems. First, the categories are too broad, second the author does not specify which time period or periods he used to determine the up and down market performance.
Finally, the two page profiles should be replaced with tables. Tables would make it easier to compare the mutuals funds in each category to one another. Tables would also eliminate the "same words but different numbers" monotony of the text.
I would recommend using Standard & Poor's Net Advantage database if it is available at your local library. If not the American Association of Individual Investors www.aaii.com provides a quarterly mutual fund data table, focusing on low load funds, at a reasonable price. The table can be downloaded into an Excel Worksheet so you can use Excel's filter feature to produce a list of funds with specific criteria.

general information about mutual fund, something you can easily find on the internet.

A mutual fund is essentially held by shareholders and managed
for an investment fee. This book discusses some of the top
mutual funds in the market together with the considerable
returns. Top funds are American Century Global Gold,
Vanguard Health, Longleaf Partners, Clipper and Calamos Growth.
These funds all have a double digit yearly rate of return.
Aggressive growth funds tend to have the maximal capital gains.
These funds can turn downward in a faltering economy so it is
critical to invest coincidentally with an upturn. If you catch
the bottom of a recession and invest, it is possible to
have three to four times your money in just a few years.
Many of these funds have good investment newsletters which
are important to read carefully. The key is to diversify risk
by placing your portfolio in a managed risk mix of investments.
i.e. safe returns, intermediate risk and aggressive funds

In the large market of mutual funds, there is a good chance that you can choose the wrong fund. This book will teach you the ways in which to investigate, buy, and trade mutual funds. I found the information contained about each mutual fund, it's purpose, value, etc. to be in depth and easy to understand. The explanations of statistical data are to the point, and the mutual funds listed as the best are convincing. Williamson explains the do's and don'ts of mutual funds and all of the lingo is explained. Get this book before you buy a fund!

The Dot.com has dot.bombed--and this cipher selection stands as mute testimony to the reality that these two "rang the bell at the top" of the internet bubble by rushing this embarrasing collation into print.

Of their "Top 10" THREE are no longer in business, or are barely able to stay listed on exchanges, and the other 7 are equally ugly.

When Walden wrote his self-aggrandizing review, he stated there would be the potential for a 75% swing DOWN in a stock. HE A) wrote that after the bottom fell out of internet stocks, B) failed to warn that the "upper number" was closer to 98% swing down, not 75%, and C) failed to give eBay its due, a very very successful internet stock "to own."

And they BOTH missed PayPal, the young internet upstart--in business when they wrote this tout, who blew eBay's Billpoint in house payment service plumb off the race track as well.

Those who want to know what to short and when to short should be the only ones to buy Walden's advisory books...he's rung the bell at the top more than once by his cookie cutter, rush to press, just as the "game" is over and the momentum players surge to a new gambit tack. A review of his titles bears out this historic reality.

I agree with Peggy, this book doesn't have much meat even just for surveying the internet stocks landscape. "100 Best Internet Stocks to Own" by Greg Kyle does a much better job in this respect by providing more information on each company's background, major turn points of stock prices in their history, analysis of business challenges as well as opportunities. More informative and more insightful. Put these two books side by side, you'll notice the difference in no time.

Peggy Mannix has completely missed the point (and value) of Walden's latest book, and apparently didn't read his introduction. Yes, many of the stocks have gone down in value due to the correcting marketplace, but the point of the book is to provide guidance for those of us who want to include Internet companies as a part of our portfolios. I found the discussion about the many facets of the Internet marketplace extremely helpful in understanding how the new economy operates. As the title says, these stocks are "for the long run." If you're looking for get rich quick picks, look elsewhere. If you're looking for solid advice about incorporating internet stocks into your portfolio, Walden's book can be of tremendous help.

When books about the best 100 Internet stocks to own come out, you know you are near the market peak. Sure enough, as I write this, these stocks are down about 50 percent since the book was published. Yet, you will look in vain in this book for suggestions about selling overpriced Internet stocks short or watching cash levels and cash burn rate to see if companies will survive. By this time next year, many of these companies will be out of business.

Every new industry, every new technology, and every new way of competing enjoys a brief period of euphoria on Wall Street. Usually, the end comes within five years . . . or sooner if major disappointments creep up before then. The surest part of the Internet development was the inevitable cataclysmic fall, which was scheduled for either 2000 or 2001. It looks now like both years will have this characteristic. Again, there is no mention of this phenomenon in this book.

Why then did I give the book two stars, rather than one? Well, it's near Christmas, so I wanted to say something nice. I think you can use this book as a guide to web sites that might be worthwhile visiting, at least until the companies go out of business. I graded it two stars for its web site information. I found a few that had good material that I had not visited before.

If I could, I would rate it a zero or as a negative number for investment advice.

Now, there may be a good day to buy Internet stocks in the future. But this book won't help you figure out when or what to buy.

To the best of my knowledge, there is yet to be a good book written about investing in Internet stocks. So continue to be careful. One thing I can guarantee is that the day when there are 100 good stocks to buy related to the Internet is well into the future.

Avoid overpriced stocks and books about them, unless they are guides to short selling. Buy a lottery ticket instead. You have about the same chance of winning, and you'll lose less money this way.

As a financial advisor it is very often difficult to keep up with all aspects of all stock categories available to my clients. Most especially internet stocks. This is a class of stock that both frightens and excites my clients and often brings the most questions.

It is comforting to know that this book, "100 Best Internet Stocks to Own" by Greg Kyle, is now available so that I can recommend it with confidence to my clients as a very solid tool that will help them to understand and identify the strengths, weaknesses and pitfalls of this market catagory.

It is my belief that this book can be used as one of the key guidebooks when contemplating an investment in internet stocks. The feedback from my clients confirm this.

This is a good introduction to Internet stocks. It contains 40 page explanation of Internet and how to invest in it. The next 210 pages are all company information, with author's opinion on the companies. One thing the book misses is to cover Cisco, Sun Micro, Oracle, EMC, and so forth. The author claims that they don't belong to the new Internet era stocks (not the correlated group), but any investor who would like to invest in the Internet should know about Cisco and Sun Micro too, as the investor probably care less whether they belong to the correlated group than whether they can capture a good Internet-related investment.

I bought this book yesterday and I am taking it back today. I am pretty new to investing (maybe 10 trades in all) and even I found errors and misleading statements right from the start. For example, this book describes both bonds and blue chip stocks as investments that will never lose value, which is absolutely not true.

Here are some other misleading quotes:

"Stocks by default provide higher returns than mutual funds since management fees are not levied on stock owners." In reality, many mutual funds actually exceed the returns of particular stocks, even when the management fees are taken into consideration.

"If your stock is worth more now than what you paid for it, then you have realized a capital gain." In fact, you have not realized anything until you actually sell the stock at its increased value.

In both of these examples, I think I understand what the author was getting at, but the statements are so misleading or vague that they seem dangerous, especially for beginners. And the book is chock-full of these statements. A book if this kind seems like such a great idea, it's too bad this one tried but failed to deliver what the beginner probably really needs.

The best part of this book is it's simplicity. The author was able to put aside enough of the technical jargon that most brokers love to repeat after each other to intimidate us artistically inclined creatures.

Another aspect I love is how concise and to the point everything is in this book. It was capable of clearing away the mystery of investing. My attitude has changed from a Las Vegas casino view of the stock market to one of respect for the market.

I went ahead and opened an account with an online broker, followed some basic principles and am doing okay. No, I'm not a tycoon. I just invest a little at a time for the long haul.

In a word, this book provides enough horse sense to get you started on the road to understanding investments.

This book has all the basics you need to know about the stock market, from options to IPOs. It is indeed a great book for beginners, especially if you don't know much about all the investment terms. However, if you look for actual stock plays and case studies, look for another book.