LAUGHING AT WALL STREET
How I Beat the Pros at Investing (By Reading Tabloids, Shopping at the Mall, and Connecting on Facebook) and How You Can Too
by Chris Camillo
It took “self-directed” investor Camillo just three years to transform $20,000 into $2,000,000. It should take readers about three pages of this book to realize that duplicating that feat is going to take considerably longer.
The tone is like a loud, late-night infomercial, and the opening paragraphs make striking it rich seem so easy. However, any thoughts readers may have of hacking through the Wall Street jungle in search of riches will soon give way to confusion over concepts like maximizing call options contracts. Camillo’s road to wealth was a convoluted path of highly technical and complicated financial tools. That’s not to say that replicating his considerable achievements is impossible; it’s just a lot more complicated than the author would have investment neophytes believe. All that’s needed, according to the author, is for readers to use their already finely tuned consumer radar to scope out the next Ugg boots sensation before Wall Street catches on. The bigwigs in their ivory towers, he writes, have a huge blind spot when it comes to zeroing in on such things. We Main Street types, on the other hand, have the inside track because our kids happen to be the arbiters of all things cool and popular. Even if Camillo’s premise is correct, actually capitalizing on Main Street’s alleged entrepreneurial advantage over Wall Street requires a lot more technical expertise than is available in this high-pressure how-to guide. It’s probably a good place to start, but fresh-faced investors simply need more information.
Initially tantalizing until the sober reality of complicated investing tactics kicks in.