Investing for the Clueless

by Alfred M. Waddell and Alfred Moore Waddell

Binding is strong and the pages look to be unread. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806517689
• ISBN13: 9780806517681
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

reliable help for the clueless

Investing is certainly an intricately complex field for lay people who are not sophisticated in financial matters. Therefore, books like this one are good vehicles in deciphering the language of investing. Mr. Waddell, an MBA graduate from the Harvard Business School, explains all the basic concepts in regard to investing in a pleasantly readable style for the absolute beginners to obtain the necessary understanding of certain pitfalls which can appear in every step of the process. The style of writing, which first of all had to be clear and understandable to his wife who typed and screened it, is concise and to the point sprinkled with humor. A powerful primer with lots of clarification of some crucial technical aspects of investing for the clueless but curious and ambitious beginner investors.

I'm a total beginner!

I think this book did a pretty good job at teaching the complete beginner, me, about the basics of investing with stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. He favors stocks over bonds in the long term, and rightly so. He clearly demonstrates that bonds simply can't handle inflation the way stocks can. However, some bonds do make sense for certain people, like older folks near retirement. Even then, he suggests using say, 25% stocks to protect older folks from inflation. But for young kids like me (20 yrs old), long-term, diversified no load stock mutual funds seems to be the way to go. He shows one table in his book showing the average return of different stock and bond combinations through 1947 to 1989. The table demonstrates that a porfolio with 100% stocks and 0% bonds has the largest average return. He also discusses numerous tax deferral programs such as various IRA accounts, including Roth IRAs. I could go on and on about all the things I learned in this book. I would recommend this book to anyone new to investing.