101 Investment Lessons from the Wizards of Wall Street: The Pros’ Secrets for Running With the Bulls Without Losing Your Shirt

The 101 lessons are designed to help you formulate your own investment plan, a key factor for investment success. Some of the lessons are well-known on Wall Street, others might surprise you. Quite a few are contradictory. In a bull market, the lessons will help you to protect your profits. In a bear market or during the next correction or crash, you will learn how to invest with a minimum of risk. Either way, you will come out a winner.

Author’s Note:

Many people invest in the stock market hoping to find the next Microsoft or Dell. However, I know from personal experience how difficult this really is. For more than a year, I was making hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars a day investing in the market. It seemed so easy. I dreamed of quitting my job at the end of the year, of buying a small apartment in Paris, of traveling around the world. But these dreams came to a sudden and dramatic end when a stock I owned, a Texas cellular phone wholesaler, fell by more than 75 percent over a one-year period. On the worst day, it plunged by more than $15 a share. There was a rumor the company was exaggerating sales figures. That was when I learned how quickly Wall Street punishes companies that misrepresent the truth.

In a panic, I sold all my stock in the company, paying off my margin debt with cash advances from my credit card. Because I owned so many shares, I lost a small fortune, half of it from money I borrowed from the brokerage company. One month, I’m a genius, the next, a loser. This one big loss was my first lesson in the market.

My father was a stockbroker, as was my grandfather before him. (In fact, he founded one of Chicago’s earliest brokerage firms, Sincere and Company.) But like so many things in life, we don’t learn anything until we experience it for ourselves. The only way to really understand the inner workings of the stock market is to invest your own hard-earned money. When all your stocks are doing great and you feel like a winner, you learn very little. It’s when all your stocks are losing and everyone is questioning your stock-picking ability that you find out if you have what it takes to invest in the market.

You might wonder why you should read a book from someone who lost money in the stock market. I lost, and lost big, but instead of giving up, I got inspired. I began to read everything I could about the market from books, magazines, and newspapers. I sought out professional money managers and financial experts who willingly shared their successes as well as their failures. I spoke with some of the most well-known and respected investorsthe Wizards of Wall Streetand created 101 investment lessons based on what I learned.

Included in this book are strategies and inside tips from three dozen experts as well as individual profiles of 20 top investment professionals. I took special care to eliminate financial jargon and complicated formulas or calculations. By reading this common-sense guide to the stock market, you will learn how to do research, build a diversified portfolio, trade stocks, manage money, recognize when to get help, and how to avoid the most common trading pitfalls.

I think you will learn a lot from the men and women included in this book, investment gurus like John Bogle, Shelby Davis, David Dreman, Elaine Garzarelli, Mason Hawkins, Bill Miller, Louis Navellier, William O’Neil, Jim O’Shaughnessy, Ralph Wanger, and Martin Whitman, to name only a few. They will tell you what to look for in an investment, the mistakes they made and what they learned, and the secrets to making money on Wall Street. The people I profile are acclaimed experts recognized by the media and others who work and do business on Wall Street.

Contents:

• Profile: James P. O’Shaughnessy
• Profile: Ralph Wanger
• Profile: John W. Rogers, Jr.
• Profile: Robert Rodriguez
• Profile: William Berger
• Profile: William J. O’Neil
• Profile: Mason Hawkins
• Profile: Jean-Marie Eveillard
• Profile: Don Phillips
• Profile: Elaine Garzarelli
• Profile: Robert Sanborn
• Profile: John C. Bogle, Sr.
• Profile: William H. Miller, III
• Profile: Erik Gustafson
• Profile: Gary Pilgrim
• Profile: Shelby Davis
• Profile: Spiros Segalas
• Profile: David N. Dreman
• Profile: Louis Navellier
• Profile: Martin J. Whitman

101 Investment Lessons from the Wizards of Wall Street: The Pros' Secrets for Running With the Bulls Without Losing Your Shirt By Michael Sincere pdf