Finally – The First Book

Finally, I have completed the first draft of the first SmallIvy Investing Book, The SmallIvy Book of Investing.  For those who have been waiting, it should only be a couple of months now until the first edition comes out.  Things should go fairly rapidly from here as I edit and then find a publisher (from what I’ve seen so far, it may be difficult to find a good book-on-demand publisher, which is a shame given that the technology is there to finally break the publishing monopoly, especially with e-books.  If anyone knows of a good one, please let me know!)  I’m hoping to have both print and e-book copies available by early Spring.

The book provides a lifelong strategy to investing and growing wealth.  Ideally someone will pick it up when they are in their early twenties and use the advice to learn to handle money and invest, thereby becoming financially independent by the time they are forty-five or fifty.  Those at other stages of life who are new to investing or just not doing well with their investments should find it useful as well, however, since it gives a lot of good information on stocks, bonds, and other investments and investing strategy.  Also, while it is much easier for someone who is 20 to become financially independent, with enough determination there is no reason someone starting in their forties cannot be debt free and have a good nest egg by the time they are ready to retire.  It just takes more work.

An outline of the book is as follows:

1. Investing
   1. Reasons for Investing – growing wealth, maintaining wealth
   2. Assets for growing wealth
   3. Assets for maintaining wealth
2. Investment Options
   1. Common Stocks
   2. Bonds
   3. Preferred Stocks
   4. Mutual Funds
   5. Real Estate and REITs
   6. Commodities – Gold, Silver, Platinum
   7. Derivatives – Options, Warrants, LEAPs
3. Understanding Risk and Reward
   1. Investing, Speculation, and Trading
   2. The relative risk of investments
   3. Asset Pricing and The Risk Premium
   4. Risk and Reward of Common Stocks
   5. Risk and Reward of Bonds
   6. Risk and Reward of Real Estate
   7. High Risk/High Reward Speculations
   8. Stages of investing
4. Investing in your Stage of Life
   1. Factors to Consider
      1. Volatility
      2. Diversification
      3. Time Frame
   2. How the Small Investor can Beat the Mutual Fund Manager
5. The Investment Strategy
   1. Stage 1– Early Career (Ages 16-30)
   2. Stage 2– Late-Early Career (Ages 31-45) 
   3. Stage 3– Middle Career (Ages 46-58)   
   4. Stage 4– Late Career (Ages 59-70)  
   5. Stage 5– Retirement/Second Career(Ages 70+)
6. Early Life Investing
   1. Getting Ready for Investing
   2. Setting up an Investment Plan
   3. Budgeting and Saving for Investing
   4. How to start investing in stocks
   5. Dollar Cost Averaging
   6. Stocks or Mutual Funds?
7. Mid-Life Investing
   1. Rebalancing a portfolio
   2. Shifting from Growth to Preservation
   3. Mid-Life Goals
8. Late-Life Investing
   1. Getting Ready for retirement
      1. 401K Transfers
      2. Unrolling an IRA
   2. Asset Protection
   3. Income Generating Strategies
   4. Giving Money and inheritance

If interested, please send me an email or leave a comment.  I’ll let those who indicate their interest know when the book is available for purchase.

Once the first book is done, I’m planning to start working on a second book on picking stocks.

Please contact me via vtsioriginal@yahoo.com or leave a comment.

Follow me on Twitter to get news about new articles and find out what I’m investing in.  @SmallIvy_SI

Disclaimer: This blog is not meant to give financial planning or tax advice.  It gives general information on investment strategy, picking stocks, and generally managing money to build wealth. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell stocks or any security. Financial planning advice should be sought from a certified financial planner, which the author is not. Tax advice should be sought from a CPA.  All investments involve risk and the reader as urged to consider risks carefully and seek the advice of experts if needed before investing.

Periodicals to Read for Investing

When getting into investing, there is certainly a lot of information to be read.  Some of it is good, a lot of it is bad.  I’ve covered some of the good investing books to read in previous posts (browse the categories for Book Recommendations to find these).  Today I’ll provide some information on the periodicals I read.

Of course, with everything going from print to online, there are a lot of online resources as well.  I generally use printed material, however.  I spend enough time on the computer at work – I’d rather relax at home in an easy chair with a newspaper than spend more time staring at a screen.  In addition, some searching for stocks involves flipping through and looking for price patterns.  This cannot be done from a website.

Research has also shown that people don’t actually read websites (are you even reading this?).  They usually read the first few lines, then scan to the bottom, only reading the first few words on the left side of the screen.  They then maybe read the last few lines.  You may visit a lot of websites, but are probably not picking up a lot of information online.

So, here are the periodicals I read and why:

ValueLine Investment Survey:  If you are serious about investing, you need to get a subscription to ValueLine or visit your library and use their’s.  There is just too much good information in there for picking stocks.  I generally will look at the top rated stocks in each section as it comes out for good investments.  I also will look through the list of stocks with a 1 for Timeliness and then dig into the issue for more information for the ones that look attractive.

Wall Street Journal:  This is a good resource for learning about how to invest, as well as for keeping up on trends in the economy.  The third section usually has a column covering some aspect of investing.  They also has many articles on the upcoming housing bubble crash in 2006 and 2007.  The folks at the Federal Reserve who said they didn’t see it coming were obviously not reading the Journal.  I did and was short thrift stocks and oil stocks when the crash came.

Barrons:  This is the Wall Street Journal’s grumpier sister publication.  It has several good columns covering different sectors of the economy.  It also has a lot of different stock tables, although these have become less useful since there is now so much information online.

Forbes:  Forbes aggravates me sometimes since they promote ridiculous lifestyles of excess (most of the people who are buying all of these luxury goods don’t have two dimes to rub together at the end of the day).  They do have some good articles on investing strategies, however, and are a good way to keep up on the effects of legislation on markets.

Money:  I find that a lot of the advice in Money is really bad.  They are often talking about ways to get rewards on credit cards and go into debt.  There are some good articles on saving and investing, however.  It also gives you insight into what “normal” people’s finances are like.  If you want to be wealthy, you can’t be normal when it comes to money.  Normal is broke.

Please send investment questions to vtsioriginal@yahoo.com or leave them in a comment.

Follow me on Twitter to get news about new articles and find out what I’m investing in.  @SmallIvy_SI

Disclaimer: This blog is not meant to give financial planning or tax advice.  It gives general information on investment strategy, picking stocks, and generally managing money to build wealth. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell stocks or any security. Financial planning advice should be sought from a certified financial planner, which the author is not. Tax advice should be sought from a CPA.  All investments involve risk and the reader as urged to consider risks carefully and seek the advice of experts if needed before investing.

Books to Read – The Warren Buffett Way

Warren Buffett is a long-term investor.  He looks for companies that have a special niche and are the “best of the best” in their business.  He tends to buy controlling stakes in these companies and then hold them for a very long time.  Some of his favorites include Sees Candies and Gillette.

In his book, Robert Hagstrom presents a biography of this legendary investor, and goes over the strategies that he uses to pick winning stocks and his investment style.

http://www.amazon.com/Warren-Buffett-Way-Investment-Strategies/dp/0471177504

Refer a friend – link to this page: http://smallivy.wordpress.com

Disclaimer: This blog is not meant to give financial planning advice, it gives information on a specific investment strategy and picking stocks. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell stocks or any security.  Financial planning advice should be sought from a certified financial planner, which the author is not. All investments involve risk and the reader as urged to consider risks carefully and seek the advice of experts if needed before investing.

Book Recommendation – A Random Walk Down Wall Street

My next recommendation for investing books is a classic by Burton G. Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street.

http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/0393315290

In this book, Mr. Malkiel describes what he calls the “random walk theory,” which basically says that all news is instantly priced into stocks.  Thus, keeping up with the news about companies does you no good because as soon as you hear about it, it is already priced into the price of the stock.  The best portions of the book are the information on Beta, a factor used to describe the level of random fluctuations that a stock will experience.  He relates that studies have indicated that purchasing stocks with high Betas, which have bigger fluctuations and therefore carry more risk, will provide greater returns in the long run.  Basically it proves the assertion that there is a greater potential for gains if more risk is taken (although there is also a greater possibility of losses).

If this information is useful to you, please refer a friend: http://smallivy.wordpress.com

Books to Read – “Trader Vic: Methods of a Wall Street Master”

A second book I’d recommend is Trader Vic: Methods of a Wall Street Master by Victor Sperandeo.

http://www.amazon.com/Want-Money-Would-Rather-Around/dp/1580625274

 Victor Sperandeo is a trader from Wall Street who offers several tips from his experience.  He also gives a great review of Dow Theory and technical chart reading.  Finally, he has a section on the psychology of investing.  He’s found that people often lose money not because of their strategies, but because their psychology causes them to act differently than they should because money is on-the-line.

Refer a friend – link to this page: http://smallivy.wordpress.com

Disclaimer: This blog is not meant to give financial planning advice, it gives information on a specific investment strategy and picking stocks. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell stocks or any security.  Financial planning advice should be sought from a certified financial planner, which the author is not. All investments involve risk and the reader as urged to consider risks carefully and seek the advice of experts if needed before investing.