Survival of the Fittest for Investors

by Dick Stoken

I read two thirds of this book on a flight back from Mexico. I was disappointed to find that the bulk of the book comprised charts and past data which the author showed supported his theories and investment ideas. Of course, that’s easy when you get to pick the data. More than that, however, this book has some other problems.

Although , I won’t argue against anyone, including this book’s author, who says the stock market is a living system and can be analyzed scientifically using biological theories and methodologies, I will argue that diversification (of investments) is not the same as biological variation, and portfolio re-balancing is not the same as adaptation. Stretching the definitions may be a good investment angle, but it won’t necessarily make you money. Also, several elements seemed out of place, like starting off with a discussion of Newton so that he could show Darwin to be “more applicable” to investing, or his tendency to resort to describing bubbles and how they could be avoided as defense of his methodologies. I just kept wanting to say, yeah, the ten years from 1929 on were a bad time to be investing, we get it. So, now what?

If I had read this entire book, it is possible I may have found some useful nuggets at the end, but the first two thirds of the book were so drab, I just had to put it down. There is stuff to be learned in this book, and I really like the author’s original idea, but overall, it’s just not that useful and really only worth two dollar marks.

Income Investing

 by Jason Brady

Normally, when I review a book in this blog, I write a review that I usually adapt from one that I post on Amazon.com. This time, I happened to wake up in the middle of the night the day after reading this book in one sitting, and the words came to me naturally and flowingly, so I typed them into my phone at 2 in the morning. I liked what came to me in my sleep, unbidden yet inspired, so this time, I’m reproducing my Amazon review verbatim. Here it is:

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Brace yourself for reality

This is one of the soundest, solidest books on investing that I've ever read. It covers all the basics in an almost advanced overkill sort of fashion. The author draws on his many years of experience as a fund manager to explain the major classifications of investments and the subtle differences between the average guy’s understanding of the instruments and what they really entail. The object of these explanations is to make it easier for the investor to understand where profit comes from and how better to avoid losses that erode that profit. That’s all well and good and it is very useful and sound information.

The book does go a little bit astray, however, because even though the subtitle says " an intelligent approach to profiting...", there is no strategy outlined and there is certainly nothing resembling an "approach" to investing in this book. The latter chapters serve mainly to expound on the former, driving down a road that basically says, if you understood everything so far, you should also understand this. And if I understood the author correctly, “this” is his personal investing mantra, which in a nutshell is: buy dividend paying stocks with a growing dividend, buy bank stocks, and diversify into other categories of investments (bonds, options, etc.). Mr. Brady takes just a short 200 pages to explain why this makes sense and will be profitable. You’ll get no argument from me. I’ve owned dividend stocks forever and bank stocks of late and I’m not rich, but I’m doing okay, thank you very much. I think this is a sober, useful book, and even had I not received a gratis copy for purposes of writing this review, I'd have been genuinely glad to have read it in any event. I thought about giving it four stars, but even with the misleading subtitle, this is five star material.

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Or, on this blog, five dollar sign material.