Investing

Selling talents and skills and maximizing assets have become tricky business in a rapidly changing world economy, but three new finance books empower amateur investors to take charge of both the bottom line and their destiny.

New books help put your money to work

REVIEWS BY DEANNA LARSON

Even the most downtrodden corporate drones will believe that they have the ability to turn their unknown assets into limitless prosperity after reading the wildly optimistic and inspiring Cracking the Millionaire Code: Your Key to Enlightened Wealth. Popular authors Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen (The One Minute Millionaire) have developed the 101 Day Plan, which posits that everyone is destined for a more prosperous, abundant life right now, and that the secret lies in cracking the code to our own "wealth vault." The authors examine the practical avenues—sometimes populated by angels—in "enlightened entrepreneurship" and take "a bold look at how a Higher Power would run a business." Their advice is often needlessly complicated by corny and confusing acronyms and coined words like "loverage," "soulstorm," "hundredfolding" and "the millionairium." But the overall ideas lead to a paradigm shift in viewing personal power, from the insight that every item in your house made someone a million dollars to the idea that only a few tiny adjustments or tweaks to any idea or business stand between okay-ness and greatness. Cracking the Code prepares people not for the get-rich-quick sprint, but for the millionaire marathon, when endless streams of brilliant ideas sparkle in infinite prisms of uses and applications, bringing personal wealth and more than enough to share with the world.


Reading Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World is like overhearing a barstool monologue by a streetwise MBA from the School of Hard Knocks: if you interrupt with a dumb question, be prepared for a blunt answer that may blow your assumptions clear out of the proverbial water. Cramer is co-founder of TheStreet.com, author of Confessions of a Street Addict, columnist for New York magazine, and hyperactive host of CNBC's "Mad Money" and the nationally syndicated radio program "Real Money." In Real Money, Cramer presents a "regimen to riches" for investors with bloated theories who feel defeated by every decline in the stock market. Cramer doesn't believe in the current "if you can't beat the market become the market via index funds" mentality. Instead, he sets about teaching how he made hundreds of millions as a professional investor using common sense and "simple arithmetic precepts that no longer stump my 10-year-old." He punches back at some arrogant and dumb theories in his "Ten Commandments of Trading" (tips are for waiters; don't trade headlines; never turn a buy into an investment) and "25 Investing Tips to Live By" (look for broken stocks, not broken companies; why discipline trumps conviction; hope is not part of the equation). Cramer's cocky style retrains the amateur in how stocks are meant to be traded and how to spot stock moves—as well as those topping or bottoming out—before they happen, perhaps turning some of this century's reluctant investors into people who might actually enjoy managing their own retirement fund.


Those investors still recovering from the burst of the dotcom bubble will appreciate Active Investing: Take Charge of Your Portfolio in Today's Unpredictable Markets. Author Peter Sander, an MBA who has written Value Investment for Dummies, among other finance books, believes that the new and forever-changed financial climate requires active investing, which means staying "on top of the bull no matter which way it bolts." This guide is written for the highly motivated amateur who has the time to check into the markets a few times a day, but doesn't want to get caught up in trends and excesses. Active Investing includes chapters on solid print and online investment resources; trading tools and techniques; designing a portfolio of blended vehicles including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options and value investing; as well as day trading, swing trading and a specialized "investing potpourri." Sander's approach isn't for the casual or lazy investor, but could help the time-compromised find a way to keep their fingers in the market without getting burned.


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