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
Finance wonks and investment strategists will enjoy this plainspoken tour of index funds and their discontents.
A Financial Times global correspondent delivers a bracing story of how money works—or, depending on your point of view, doesn’t work.
There are two broad categories of investing, characterized incompletely by the terms active and passive. In the first, investment funds are closely managed, while in the second, they’re parked in broad-based accounts that cover the range of the market and earn out by virtue of being balanced. As Wigglesworth’s account opens, Warren Buffett offers a million-dollar bet “that an index fund that simply tracked the US stock market would beat any group of high-flying hedge fund managers.” In the strictest terms, Buffett turned out to be right, though with qualifications. Wigglesworth sets the Buffett wager against the background of a changing Wall Street, where the culture of “prudent men…quietly tending casks of slowly maturing capital,” as one magazine described it in the 1960s, gave way to a rapacious ethos of boundless fortune-seeking. The “lazy” path invented by financiers who translated mutual funds into index funds turns out to be the safer course for most investors, at least in part because the active managers have a tendency to pay themselves handsomely and have no incentives to keep their funds manageable. Yet, as Wigglesworth writes, the hedge fund culture is alive and well: “Wall Street loves success more than modesty,” even if success comes and goes and the tortoise generally beats the hare. Meanwhile, though the index-fund approach ensures that the average investor will profit over time, it’s not without its drawbacks, including, as the author notes, negative effects on corporate governance and accountability. For all that, he concludes, “the index fund is one of the few truly, nearly unambiguously beneficial inventions, a disruptive technology that has already saved investors hundreds of billions of dollars, sums that will undoubtedly reach trillions in years to come.”
Finance wonks and investment strategists will enjoy this plainspoken tour of index funds and their discontents.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-08768-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
An up-and-down self-help manual that reads less like motivation for readers and more like an extension of the author’s brand.
A new motivational book from the acclaimed rapper.
It’s no surprise that the creator of the hit 2006 song “Hustlin’ ” can sense an opportunity. The idea of rolling out a post-pandemic rule book for those looking to make good on their quarantine dreams is a good one, even if Ross doesn’t quite pull it off. There’s no doubt that the multiplatinum rapper knows how to put words together. By fashioning them into bite-sized chapters devoted to truisms like “Stack Your Paper” or “Bosses Stay Students,” he makes it difficult to poke holes in many of his straightforward arguments. He even delivers some intriguing nuggets—e.g., when he writes about his visit to Kanye West’s mysterious artistic headquarters, Atlanta’s Pinewood Studios, the sprawling property owned by Dan Cathy, the controversial CEO of Chick-fil-A, who has apparently befriended West. “This kept happening during my visit,” said Ross, explaining how West would act and speak erratically. “Kanye would have my attention and he’d be onto something, but then he would lose me.” Interestingly enough, the same can be said for Ross, who makes some moves of his own that are hard to follow. He begins the first chapter with a lovely meditation about buying a John Deere tractor and how mowing his own lawn during the pandemic allowed him to explore his property in a way that he hadn’t yet because he was too busy. Later, he reveals it was essentially product placement and a way of using the book to make another deal. “The way I promoted my John Deere tractor earlier in this book, you might assume they were sponsoring all the landscaping costs at The Promise Land,” he writes. “They’re not yet. But I look forward to doing business with them in the future.”
An up-and-down self-help manual that reads less like motivation for readers and more like an extension of the author’s brand.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-335-52252-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
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