Winning the Investment Marathon: A Simple Path to Financial Success

By H. Bradlee Perry

Book Overview

Build your nest egg, finance your retirement, fund a college education... Protect your savings against inflation, bad times, unemployment or injury... Find solid, growing businesses to invest in...... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0967313805
• ISBN13: 9780967313801
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Midas Press
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

How risky are stocks?

The main thing I noticed about this book was that its author repeatedly emphasized how great stocks were. He said that if you do it right and study the company, its earnings, and dividend payoffs (instead of the stock price) you'll pick good companies to invest in. After that you'll hold onto the stock for years and years and years, and if you have enough diversification in your portfolio, you'll be sitting pretty in the long term. This book is all about long term investing, and that's why I like it so much. In addition to promoting the safety of stock investing (if you pick them right and diversify correctly) the author also mentions that bonds aren't all they're cracked up to be. Because of callback features on many of them, it's a lose-lose situation. I think the author suggests something like an 80% stock and 20% bond portfolio ideally, unless you're squeamish about day to day fluctuations. The intended audience for this book seems to be a more wealthy crowd than the average joe. Most people can't afford a completely diversified stock portfolio, so they have to pick a mutual fund that will choose stocks the way stocks are chosen in this book. That just takes research and help from a reliable financial advisor with a very satisfied clientele. This book doesn't promise any short term gains and suggests that any books that do are full of bunk. There's no way you'll predict the next huge upsurge in the market. You still have to work your whole life and invest over years and years. That's reality. The main feature of this book is its surprising emphasis on the relative safety of stocks, as long as you follow the procedures the author suggests and don't sell unless there are problems with the company. I agree with his plan. The problem is you need a lot of capital to implement it and unless you have a lot of time on your hands, you'll need a good financial advisor you can trust to help you along the way.

Most sensible advice I've seen

This book HITS THE NAIL RIGHT ON THE HEAD. It provides the most sensible investment advice I've ever seen -- a sure way to become an investment winner without taking a lot of risk.

A sensible, wildly successfull investment method

This little book is a jewel. It is for the indivdual investor who should absorb and practice its contents. The best book on the subject I have read. 1 "In rural Maine, the best compliment one can pay a person is 'he's really sensible.'" The same view applies to investing." "I believe the essential factors for success are quite simple. Complexity breeds confusion and often failure in this seemingly volatile, difficult field." 2 "Although stocks do swing widely in price at times, their trend is what counts: in the long run, every stock's price rises just about in direct proportion to the growth of the company's earnings and dividends." 3 "It is very importent to analyze the basics of different businesses and see what their sustainable long term growth has been. Past growth does not portend the future. This involves gathering information and making subjective judgments 4 "However, missing a long term growth forecast occasionally is not fatal. Baseball players do not get a hit every time at bat. It's the average of the investor's decisions that determines success." 5 "The first thing to analyze in any company is its competive position." 6 "Here are are three tests to use to make intelligent stock purchases and sales. Is the company growing more or less than the typical pattern for the company and its industry? Is the company's profit margin above or below its historical norm? Is the current superior or inferior performance reflected in an historically high or low valuation?' 7 " Be a sensible skeptic." 8 " Don't be a sucker." 9 "Spread your bets." The book finishes up with more pithy advice to have you stay the course. All of the above is illustrated by actual data to prove the case.

A Solid Reinforcement of Growth Investing Fundamentals

I settled in on my couch for a closer look at this work by one of Babson's finest. By the time I stood up, I had finished it. It provides a solid reinforcement of NAIC (strategic long-term) investing principles. Brad Perry suggests a strategy of analyzing companies as business enterprises and their valuation in the stock market. Complexity breeds confusion - and often failure - in this seemingly difficult field. Perry presents a common sense outlook, shaped with healthy skepticism, that demonstrates that the factors for investment success are actually quite simple, and that investors should focus on some basic principles.