A practical reference guide to personalized investment for a wealthy readership.
Buchholz, the founder and managing partner of BFG Wealth Management, aims to challenge the status quo of investing strategy in this debut personal-finance book.
“Most portfolios fail to perform not because markets are unpredictable,” argues the author in this investment guidebook, “but because they’re built without purpose.” Many high-earning people, he suggests, are offered the same “generic advice as everyone else” by their money managers, who don’t take the time to create personalized portfolios based on their clients’ specific tax situations, real estate holdings, and goals. The book convincingly suggests that the conventional asset-allocation models used by wealth managers are based on antiquated formulas, designed for an economy that existed decades ago. These portfolios also assume that every investor has the same retirement end-goal, Buchholz says. This pragmatic volume eschews theory for “real world” examples, identifying contemporary trends in emerging industries, such as robotics, cybersecurity, and smart transit. The author predicts, for instance, an imminent “Hydrogen Revolution” in energy and transportation, strengthened by policy and government-backed infrastructure. He also rejects “old-school, bond-heavy investing,” noting that income-oriented portfolios require a diversity of investments that include higher-yield stocks, dividend-grown equities, and real estate investment trusts that “provide access to real estate cash flow without direct ownership responsibilities.” The practical advice of Buchholz, a Texas-based investment adviser, encompasses 10 chapters that cover topics from portfolio design to risk management. The book concludes with a “Portfolio Self-Assessment Checklist” that challenges readers to evaluate their investments “through a different lens,” based on their own individual circumstances. Overall, Buchholz blends expertise based on years of experience with an accessible writing style designed for readers who may be unfamiliar with the jargon that defines 21st-century investing. To that end, the book also includes ample appendix materials, including a glossary to help readers navigate complicated investment terminology and its myriad acronyms. That said, the book’s emphasis on high-earning professionals and business owners will likely limit its audience.
A practical reference guide to personalized investment for a wealthy readership.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9798218775032
Page Count: 104
Publisher: BFG Wealth Management
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
More uncommonly sensible investment guidance from a master of the game. Drawing on his experience at Fidelity's Magellan Fund, a high- profile vehicle he quit at age 46 in 1990 after a spectacularly successful 13-year tenure as managing director, Lynch (One Up on Wall Street, 1988) makes a strong case for common stocks over bonds, CDs, or other forms of debt. In breezy, anecdotal fashion, the author also encourages individuals to go it alone in the market rather than to bank on money managers whose performance seldom justifies their generous compensation. With the caveat that there's as much art as science to picking issues with upside potential, Lynch commends legwork and observation. ``Spending more time at the mall,'' he argues, invariably is a better way to unearth appreciation candidates than relying on technical, timing, or other costly divining services prized by professionals. The author provides detailed briefings on how he researches industries, special situations, and mutual funds. Particularly instructive are his candid discussions of where he went wrong as well as right in his search for undervalued securities. Throughout the genial text, Lynch offers wry, on-target advisories under the rubric of ``Peter's Principles.'' Commenting on the profits that have accrued to those acquiring shares in enterprises privatized by the British government, he notes: ``Whatever the Queen is selling, buy it.'' In praise of corporate parsimony, the author suggests that, ``all else being equal, invest in the company with the fewest photos in the annual report.'' Another bull's-eye for a consummate pro, with appeal for market veterans and rookies alike. (Charts and tabular material— not seen.)
Pub Date: March 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-75915-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993
Sure to generate debate, and of special interest to adherents of free market capitalism.
A book-length assertion that capitalism’s woes can be traced to government interventionism.
Sharma, an investments manager, financial journalist, and author of The 10 Rules of Successful Nations, The Rise and Fall of Nations, and other books, opens with the case of his native India. The author argues that it should be in a better position in the global marketplace, possessing an entrepreneurial culture and endless human capital. The culprit was “India’s lingering attachment to a state that overpromises and under-delivers,” one that privileged social welfare over infrastructure development. Much the same is true in the U.S., where today “President Joe Biden is promising to fix the crises of capitalism by enlarging a government that never shrank.” Refreshingly, Sharma places just as much blame on Ronald Reagan for the swollen state that introduced distortions into the market. Moreover, “flaws that economists blame on ‘market failures,’ including wealth inequality and inordinate corporate power, often flow more from government excesses.” One distortion is the government’s bloated debt, as it continues to fund itself by borrowing in order to pay for “the perennial deficit.” As any household budget manager would tell you, debt is ultimately unsustainable. Wealth concentration is another outcome of government tinkering that has, whether by design or not, concentrated wealth into the hands of a very small number of people, “a critical symptom of capitalism gone wrong, both inefficient and grossly unfair.” Perhaps surprisingly, Sharma notes that in quasi-socialist economies such as the Scandinavian nations, such interventions are fewer and shallower, while autocratic command economies are doomed to fail. “[T]oday every large developed country is a full-fledged democracy,” he writes, and the more freedom the better—but that freedom, he argues, is undermined by the U.S. government, which has accrued “the widest budget deficit in the developed world.”
Sure to generate debate, and of special interest to adherents of free market capitalism.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781668008263
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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