Rule #1 (of Investing)

After reading The Barefoot investor, I become more interested in both property and shares investments. Put the property book aside for the next write-up and this one is about shares investments. Read along if you know nothing about shares investment and want to start somewhere.

After checking on Youtube for investment knowledge, talked to friends, and started to look at what would be a good book for a person who knows nothing about investments nor anything about numbers, like me.

I always put myself, perhaps subconsciously, avoiding number works or any works that related to money. I still could remember that my friends chose to join an economics major in high school and even chose one for their uni year and I just couldn’t relate to it. Perhaps there are other things that framed me to believe that I would never be rich nor having the thought of having lots of money is a wrong motive.

For this, I was wrong.

I’ve been wrong on many things but learning from this mistake lead me to understand that I didn’t have good exposure on economics let alone knowing anything about investment. Yeap, people told me doing investment in shares was too risky and impossible to follow and I believed them.

Until I find this book.

The Rule #1 book by Phil Town opened my eyes to how the shares investments works and even gives great guidance using the mortal words that I could understand. I read half of the book literally just in days with excitement and disbelief that there is a structure on how to understand this irrational exuberance.

The book started with some understanding why we need to invest in shares. Not only that, it also answered and broke my asinine understanding.

So, now that I know investment is good, the book started to build the concepts of how. It teaches you of how to find a good company to invest in shares. What areas to look and how to read the financial summary, balance sheet, and other number to check whether the company is in a good share or not.

After you are absolutely sure about the company, the next step is to know what is the best price to buy the shares of the company.

That that you have the company you love so much growing and so does your investment. You need to know when to sell or perhaps the right words are how to sell.

So that’s it in a nutshell all the book about but I’m not finished yet.

There is a catch.

The book, teaches the rules that you could follow but the example given was written in 2006/2007. The data that you are looking for in MSN Money or Yahoo Finance is no longer available for up to 10 years as the book showed.

Apparently, after contacting its website, I was informed that nowadays the information is available on a paid-subcription website. From this moment, my appreciation of the book was reduced and I was having difficulty to follow through as the example given are no longer available from MSN Money nor Yahoo Finance.

But if you decided not to read this book just because the example doesn’t make sense, you’re really missing the point!

As this book has convinced my about the world of investing, I’m happy to find a different way to learn by using paid-subcription website which by the way, they have 1 week to 30 days trial.

PS. I’m not an investment wizard nor have any sufficient knowledge about investing to give anyone a financial recommendation. This write-up is about a book that I learned a lot from. If you would like to know about your financial situation I would strongly suggest finding a financial advisor.

PPS. Before this book, I purchased The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. I put the book down after a few pages and assumed a fetal position. Perhaps someday, I said.

PPPS. I have a big question in which data from each website shows the different results and I was confused about how to use one from the other. If you find yourself on this spot after doing your research, perhaps this article could help.

PPPPS. There is another book I’m currently reading as a continuation of this. It’s Invested by Danielle Town and Phil Town. I will write about is someday.

Book Review: Invested

I like the book merely because it provides a fresh view of Rule #1 book and even making it so much simpler for anyone who’s afraid of investing and wants to start somewhere.