A wily stock market strategy presented in an informative, if somewhat muddled, manner.
Financial advice from a longtime investor focuses on stocks that sell for less than $10 per share.
For investors who want to buy individual stocks, Carach has an intriguing proposition. Why not consider cheap stocks rather than the more common blue chip ones? A former real estate appraiser and lifelong investor who wrote Forty Years a Speculator (2007), the author calls stocks selling for less than $10 per share “the most ignored and detested sector” of the market—but this has not stopped him from pursuing them for decades and making a tidy profit. For the first 100 or so pages of this book, Carach shares his observations about the market and his “conviction-contrarian” philosophy of investing: buying low-cost stocks “when they are being hammered into the gutter” and holding them for “at least two to five years.” This early material provides intriguing insights into how the author invests, but it is unevenly written and highly repetitive (a fact Carach acknowledges; he apparently collected previously penned articles and included them as chapters). The second half of the book moves from the general to the more specific as the author delves into several market sectors, including mining, oil and gas, high tech commodities, gold and silver, and real estate investment trusts. He assesses some of these sectors as well as the American economy in blunt style; for example, he asserts, “The next chapter in the history of gold and silver will be written in Asia where it is adored and not in the west where it is scorned and regarded as a barbaric relic.” Carach lists some of his favorite stock picks with only spotty details about them. Readers may, of course, regard these choices as recommendations, but he cautions investors to do their homework: “Research your stocks before and not after you buy them. Diversify broadly, no more than 5% in any position, and the riskier the play the less of your money should be in it.” While some of the prose seems amateurish, the author’s unorthodox investment advice may spark serious interest.
A wily stock market strategy presented in an informative, if somewhat muddled, manner.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-67674-617-1
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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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