Books to Read

I received an email the other day with the following question. Since I figured some of you may have a similar question I figured I would repost my response. I apologize in advance for any spelling or gramar errors, I didn't re-read what I wrote.

My question is: what books did you read (and are now re-reading, I suppose) when you were beginning that gave you the most help and insight?



Sorry for the delayed response. I often forget to check this email account and obviously havent updated my blog in quite some time. But anyway, there are a couple ways to go with regards to the book selection. First, it depends on whether or not you want to delve into the technical analysis or not. If you do I recomend starting with - How to make money in stocks - William O'Neil, How to profit in bull and bear markets - Stan Weinstein, How I made 2 million in the stock market - Nicholas Darvas, and How to trade stocks - Jesse Livermore. If you want to stay a little more fundamental I would read Peter Lynch's books, The warren Buffet Way, if you can stomach it (it is very long) Securities analysis, the intelligent investor. For added info I would go with Battle for investment survival, Come into my trading room, and market wizzards. I advise an approach of both fundamental and technical analysis. They are both important if only because people pay attention to both methodologies. Long term the fundamentals are more important but short term the technicals dominate. Also I can promise you will do better in the market if make yourself read every filing (10K, 10Q, press releases) from the companies you own and be sure to listen to the conference calls. Other than that let me know if you have any other questions.

Hmm

It honestly blows my mind how the market continues to go higher. I hear the reasons on why people think the market should go higher: tame inflation, Fed is taking a break, yada yada yada. Somehow, I think there has to be a good reason why I don't feel comfortable with this rally. I just don't see this ending well. Sorry for the pessimistic outlook.

Vonage

I'm watching Michigan vs. Notre Dame right now and just noticed that Vonage is sponsoring the pre game show. I am just wondering if a company that will never make any money should be advertising for a football pre game show? Who knows, maybe that stellar management knows what they are doing...they have a good trackrecord so far don't they...

Welcome Back

And we are off to the races again. I have increased long exposure over the past month and I am thinking it is getting to be time to sell some stocks. I am going to do some trimming, moving gradually towards a more negative bias. Sell into strength as there isn't a whole lot to move the market substantially higher. It has been a range bound market this year and I don't see that stopping any time soon. Not much interesting to say right now as I am patiently waiting.