ISBN0814406769

I bought this book because I wanted to learn the basics of investing so I could make informed decisions. All the other invetment books at the bookstore are either too boring or too complicated to make any sense of them. I feel that I have gained a wealth of knowlege with this book and I am no longer listening to friends, relatives or magazines for tips that never worked. They only confuse you more and end up making you loose your money or pay a large amount of taxes. Now I have a long term strategy that makes sense and is in line with my long term goals and needs. I highly recommend this book.

I have read literally hundreds of books on investing and have been an invester since 1982. The approach described in this book (and also The Intelligent Asset Allocator, by William Bernstein) is the most practical, sensible, way of investing I have found. It shows why market timing doesn't work, stock picking doesn't work, but asset allocation does. One of the great things about this approach is that once you're invested, there's almost nothing to do! Stop worrying, relax and know you're ideally invested for the long haul. Also, see Armstrong's website at www.investorsolutions.com.

The Informed Investor: A Hype-Free Guide To Constructing A Sound Financial Portfolio by Frank Armstrong III (Founder and Principal of Investor Solutions, Inc. and a frequent contributor to CNNfn.com) is a straightforward instructional guide to avoiding uncertainty and pitfalls in the world of modern investing. Of special interest is the presentation of the "Modern Portfolio Theory". From options specifically for the purpose of saving up for college, to expertly gathering intelligence and assessing risk before one leaps, and so much more, The Informed Investor is an expert "must-read" guide for nonspecialist general readers and aspiring investors from all financial backgrounds.

There are an awful lot of investment books out there which say that they are going to give you absolute advice on how to make your fortune. Most of these wind up in some way of promising how to tell you how to beat the market. And then there the investment e-mails that I seem to get three or four times a day. The promote everything from stocks I never heard of to currencies, to metals.

Beating the market like this requires that you predict the future. And predicting the future is really quite easy -- it's being right that's hard.

This book lays out a philosophy that says that the maket is pretty smart. Basically everyone knows everything that anyone else does. If you really know something that other people don't know, that's typically insider information and the Feds say nasty things to you about using insider information -- ask Martha Stewart about this.

So here's a book with a solid explanation of how the market works, how to judge risk, how to balance investments to cover just about whatever happens in the economy. It's good solid advice, it's information about how the world really works, it's the inside scoop on what the author calls Mother Market.

This one is on many must-read lists, and I'm not exactly sure why. Not that it's a bad book...in fact it's pretty strongly OK.

There's a general discussion of virtually every intro-to-investing topic. If that's what you're looking for, it's a good choice. It seemed a little generic and dry to me, without any big ahas or new info, but maybe that's what you're looking for.

This guy Frank Armstrong III runs a company called Investor Solutions, Inc. That means he's probably a CFP, and makes money by telling people what to invest in. There are two kinds of financial advisors in the world...those with guns, and those with shovels. Actually, that's my favorite paraphrased quote from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. There are two kinds of FPs though- good and bad.

The good ones are after your money. The bad ones are after a more unfair cut of your money and likely fees or kickbacks from fund companies. This guy seems to definitely be the former. This book is like sitting down for about 4 days with a good CFP that explains everything he knows about the market and sound investing planning to you for 12 hours a day. It's like reading a proprietary 300 page brochure from a reputable financial planning specialist. That's good, if that's what you're looking for.

So, I give this book thumbs up, with the caveats above. It's better than I could do, but there are more dynamic, hard hitting, aha books out there you may want to catch first. I'll get around to reviewing those soon.