I thought I would branch out and give the readers some of my favorite investing books – ones that I have read that you probably havent heard of recently.  These are especially important now that the market is so low….its the time to invest.

Many books and their authors claim to have all the answers but rarely do they meet your expectations. These authors are sure to provide the insight necessary to be successful. The list is in no specific order except for the first book. It should be read upfront to give novice investors an excellent overview although its content is helpful to all levels. After that you’re on your own to pick and choose the order in which you read them. Just make sure that you finish them all before getting too far into the investment process. It will make a difference.

1. The first book is The Neatest Little Guide To Stock Market Investing. It’s extremely focused and written by a guy who used to work in the technology industry and now spends his time living in Japan investing in the markets. Amazon readers give it five stars. Check out his web site and you’ll see why his book is listed first. It’s very readable, easy to understand and available at your local public library.
2. In 1994 Peter Lynch, the legendary portfolio manager, wrote Beating The Street, a book about his investment style and how the average person could do the same to beat the markets. It is extremely well written and well received. To date no other money manager has written something nearly as compelling.
3. Four years later, another money manager by the name of David Dreman wrote the book on value investing entitled Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Next Generation. While not nearly as readable as Peter Lynch’s book, it is an excellent examination of value investing and everything it entails. Light on brevity and heavy on statistics but informative nonetheless.
4. The last two are investment classics. The first was originally published in 1958 by Phil Fisher, one of the pioneers of growth investing, and it is still a bestselling book. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits was a reference to his belief that you bought growth stocks and held them for the long term. One example of this was Motorola. Fisher bought it in 1955 and still owned it when he died in 2004. How many people do you know that have held a stock nonstop for 49 years.
5. The final choice is the ultimate book about investing: The Intelligent Investor. None other than Warren Buffett has declared it the finest book ever written on the subject. It just so happens that its author, Benjamin Graham, was Buffett’s teacher and mentor at Columbia Business School. I think Buffett turned out pretty well, don’t you? Originally published in 1949, it is the bible for serious investors. You must read this book if you can only read one. It’s that good.

Here they are:

1) Investing is for meeting long-term goals; savings is for meeting short-term goals.

2) Broad diversification, with exposure to all parts of the stock and bond markets, reduces risk.

3) An investor’s most important decision is selecting the mix of assets to be held in a portfolio, not selecting the individual investments themselves.

4) Consistently outperforming the financial markets is extremely difficult.

5) Minimizing costs is vital for long-term investment success.

6) Investors should know how each investment fits into their plans and why they own that particular asset.

7) Risk has many dimensions, and investors should weigh “shortfall risk”-the possibility that a portfolio will fail to meet longer-term financial goals-against “market risk”, or the chance that returns will fluctuate.

Market-timing and performance-chasing are losing strategies.

9) An investor should not expect future long-term returns to be significantly higher or lower than long-term historical returns for various asset classes and subclasses.

They are pretty simple and do a great job of embodying everything we stand for here at TPS.

As fun as it is talking all the time about things Im interested in, and whatever topic happens to float through my head on any given day, I would like to hear what you, the readers would like to read about. The only real catch is obviously try and keep it pseudo on topic at least. Though I think I could probably research and write a decent article about the effect of the jet stream on the migration of killer bees, thats probably not a good topic for this site. Here are some things I have lined up coming up, but I would like some comments on what YOU want to know about:

-More on the roth 401k
-P2P lending both on both the lending and the borrowing end
-Where there really ARE monster in your closet
-The price of milk
-Smart Investing
-Guide to debt
-Inflation
-Mutual Funds that beat the market
-The ins and outs of the business I am starting
-More frugality tips
-My networth-o-meter
-Dealing with credit card companies
-How to quickly overcome bad credit, or quickly move from good to great credit
-A Joe graduate update, the 1 year mark
-Save tons of cash around the house
-More google questions
-A bunch of other stuff

But really, you name the topic, and I write about it. Lets hear it people!

I have my wordpress (and theme) files replaced with ones that said “STFU already” and my backup failed, so things are still going back together, thanks for everyone’s patience! Note: several pages will be unavailable for a small amount of time due to changes that need to be made.

Update: ok, most pages are working…however the “about” “best posts” and “glossary” are all down until later tonight.

So this morning, I was minding my own business getting my morning caffeine fix that if I ditched I would save two dollars a day (but I would also be without my delicious lo carb Monster goodness) and I was waiting in line to pay.  The guy in front of me was paying for: 2 burritos (2X$4.75), a small starbucks energy drink($3), a snickers bar(.79), shock tarts(.59), chips(2.99), 4 packs of cigarettes(4X$4.00).  Ok, whatever, but here is the conversation he had with the gas station attendant:

Her: “how you doin this morning?”
him: “Be a lot better if I wasn’t making 10 bucks an hour cleaning ducts”
her: “yeah, I hear ya. $35.21 (his total)”
him: “well i could always work overtime, we get 2 and a half pay for that, but <edit> that, I aint workin past 4″

He pays and leaves.   Now, maybe its just me but if you spend half your days wages on breakfast, and you get paid 2.5X for overtime, MAYBE just MAYBE you should work an extra hour or two.  I’m going to guess he doesn’t have much if any of a retirement plan going on.  Of course, to each his own, but if you are reading this, please, never be this guy.  When we are both 60 I don’t want you to be cleaning my air ducts while I’m out golfing.