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 | | Value Investing for Dummies by Peter J. Sander, Peter Sander ISBN-10: 9780764554100 ISBN-10: 0-7645-5410-7 ISBN-13: 9780764554100 ISBN-13: 978-0-7645-5410-0 Paperback 2001-12-15 For Dummies Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description Value Investing For Dummies guides anyone from rookie to savvy investor through the often confusingmaze of value investments and value investing techniques. Turn here for clear explanations and solid advice on:
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Reviews | ||
Overall a bit sloppy. This book is an introduction to Value Investing. The book gives you an overview of what you need to understand, but it will not make you an expert, and it will not serve as a reference manual either (which it claims to be). The book does have its good points, but it is overall a bit sloppily written. If the authors were to fix some of the issues I describe next, I would give this book 4 or maybe even 5 stars instead. In the meantime you may instead want to consider the book: Getting Started in Value Investing, by Charles Mizrahi. As another reviewer has pointed out, one problem with this book is that figures containing crucial financial statements are printed in a low resolution making them utterly unreadable (a magnifying glass will not help). These financial statements however, can be found in the 10K reports as the book suggests, and actually makes a good exercise for the reader to obtain and study annual reports. It is still a mistake on the authors/editors/printers part that shouldn't have been made though. Some formulas are incorrect, for instance the intrinsic value formulas on top of page 204, which should have been exponential. These formulas are crucial to value investing and it's again embarrassing to see such a mistake. Large parts of the book are simply poorly written. Some text passages here and there are almost incomprehensible, and require effort to grasp. The authors are also very repetitive and often say the same things twice or more, even within the same paragraph. I don't mind repeating oneself to aid in clarifying something, but it often appears the authors have forgotten what they wrote just two lines ago. There are many intermediate overviews of sections to come, which are too abstract to be understood for a novice in these matters, and merely serve to confuse the reader and waste time. There is too much focusing on accounting in the first part of the book, yet without going into enough detail or examples to truly understand what is going on. You will not become an accounting expert from reading this book, and many of the sections on accounting could have been significantly shorter, with references to more detailed books on the subject. The trick for an author is to gradually extend the reader's knowledge as needed, and not to present a complete theory at a point where the reader does not know how to apply it. There are too many assumptions on the reader. Phrases like "this ratio is just as it sounds", "this ratio is straightforward", etc. appear often. If the reader felt these were trivial matters, then why pick up a book called "... for dummies"? The authors put an effort into being funny (and sometimes succeed). But this is bad for readers who are novices however, because they do not know what is irony and what is serious. The section titles are also too 'clever' and do not convey much meaning to those who are not already in the know. I also do not like how the authors liken investment to flying airplanes, etc. because it's merely confusing to the reader. | ||
Dont Buy It I am flat out Pissed Off that i paid for this book and i am most likely going to write a letter to the publisher and request my money back. There are Countless typos within this book. Stupid things like forgetting a period, spelling errors, and print errors like a margin overlapping text. These are minor and not really a big deal but the following is... As you probably know value investing is rooted in understanding a company up and down... this requires a view into their balance sheets and other financial data. This book attempts to explain this BUT the images of balance sheets they use are UNREADABLE! It looks like they used a small image of the balance sheet and blew it up to the point that the distortion just makes it totally unreadable. After a few pages of that, and text that referenced unreadable images i said screw this book and moved on. I highly suggest you find another value investing book... normally i really like the Dummies books, but this one is just no good. | ||
Value Investing for Dummies It is a good book for beginners in the subject of value investing. It is quite comprehensive but a bit long-winded at times. The only problem I find is that, for practical purposes, it stated that either you create your own intrinsic value model using Excel/Lotus spreadsheet or use the prepackaged Web model - the Quicken Stock Analyzer. However, to use the Quicken Stock Analyzer, you need to be a member. To get a Quicken.com Member ID, you need a current version of Quicken 2001, 2002, 2003 or 2004. When you install and register your copy of Quicken, you can specify your desired Quicken.com Member ID at that time. If you, a beginner, does not use Quicken software or does not know how to input the given formula into the Excel worksheet - tough. Another way is to read a more difficult book by A. Damodaran on value investing. Other than the above, the book is a good introduction and the first book to be read on value investing. | ||
Nothing Better--For Beginners After reading many books on Warren Buffett and, more broadly, on the subject of value investing, I still found myself a bit lacking in how to identify the true worth of a business. The reason for this was that many of the books assumed more than, in fact, I really knew. (This is not to say that such books were of no value to me or won't be for you. It is simply stating the obvious: without a solid grounding in how to evaluate, and quantify, what any of the businesses I looked at were worth, I was strongly limited in my efforts of making good investment decisions. I was able to tell, for instance, that a company was competently run but not whether it would earn enough in the future to justify its current price. And that, as every rational investor will tell you, is key to achieving investment success.) _Value Investing for Dummies_ assumed virtually nothing. Sure enough this meant much in the book was a review of what I had already learned from others (and might be for you too) but to my mind there's nothing wrong with relearning what is already known. (Better to do so with a book at least than with one's own money.) In assuming little-to-nothing of the reader, the authors give the reader all the tools he or she needs to invest profitably in the future. Crucial to the dummy reader and, in this case, that means me, the book shows how to understand the _language_ of business: accounting. Since this is where the book shines, I'll pause here to allow the authors themselves a chance to explain what it is they're setting out to do. In Part 2 of the book titled "Fundamentals for Fundamentalists" the authors state their intentions as follows: "We open the value investor toolbox by first engaging in a short exploration of investing mathematics . . . Next up is a discussion of information and information sources key to the value investor. Then, we dig in further with a tour of the financial statement landscape, including balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements. Ratios and ratio analysis are explored as a way to make more sense of these numbers. Finally, we help you to find and interpret non-numeric influences in the value equation." In the next section, Part 3, the authors again state their intentions: "We help you to assess or _appraise_ the value of a company and relate that value to the stock price. We examine some of the proven methods of business value asessment, including intrinsic value, book value, discounted cash flow, and the strategic profit formula. Then we sprinkle in a dash of intangibles (investors shouldn't live by numbers alone) and discuss buy and sell decisions. To bring these tools and techniques together into a system, we use none other than the full example of the master, Warren Buffett. Finally, to provide practice and reinforcement we present case studies of value, and for further reinforcement we resort to the age-old technique of showing opposites: examples of _un_value." As a reader of the book, and now a reviewer, I have the duty to tell you that the authors have done exactly what they intended to do--and they have done it well. The style is such that even somewhat boring topics seem lively and the technique, as it is explained above and practiced throughout, simply can not be improved upon. The crystal-clear definitions of accounting terms and financial ratios, the detailed explanations showing what they mean and why they are important, the real-life example of Warren Buffett, and the case studies taking you all the way through the process step-by-step make this book truly the best place to start for anyone interested in investing. | ||