A continuing hot stock market, coupled with baby boomers in a cold sweat about how they will be able to afford to retire, is behind the industry's decision to keep flooding the market with new investment books, and to bring back the old ones.
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If you are a novice investor looking for help, begin with "The Dean Witter Guide to Personal Investing" by Robert M. Gardiner. This revised edition continues to take a broad overview. Gardiner points out the importance of being realistic in establishing your financial objectives, why it is never too early to begin investing -- thanks to the wonder of compounding -- and why diversification is key. Surprisingly, for a book that lists the former chairman of Dean Witter as its author, it is actually funny. An example:
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Where Gardiner paints in broad strokes, "How to Invest $50-$5,000: The Small Investor's Step-by-Step, Dollar-by-Dollar Plan for Low-Risk, High-Value Investing" by Nancy Dunnan works on a much smaller canvas. The sixth edition of the primer continues to do an excellent job of not only giving financial newcomers a solid grounding about your investment choices, but suggests simple, straightforward strategies for investing conservatively the amounts listed in the title. There are no discussions of puts and calls; derivatives, or going short. Instead, Dunnan, a financial analyst, spends a lot of time on CDs, money market funds and the like, before even getting to a discussion of buying stocks, bonds and mutual funds.
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With the basics covered, you might want to think about the argument William H. Gross makes in "Everything You've Heard About Investing Is Wrong!: How to Profit in the Coming Post-Bull Markets." The current hot stock market is an aberration, contends Gross who believes we are destined to enter an era when a six percent return on your investment will be typical. In the kind of environment projected by Gross, who runs bond funds, investing in fixed income investments is bound to look pretty good.
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