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TheStreet.com Guide to Smart Investing: Everything You Need to Know to Outsmart Wall Street and Select Winning Stocks - Softcover
The first year of the new millennium has brought profound changes to the landscape of America’s financial markets. Understandably, investors are feeling increasingly wary when it comes to choosing stocks. Now more than ever, TheStreet.com Guide to Smart Investing is the guide no investor can do without–an invaluable resource to help you regain your confidence and ride out today's difficult market. TheStreet.com, the exciting on-line financial news center, has become one of the most trusted news sources–and the go-to investment site–in the world of finance. Featuring contributions from TheStreet.com’s premier columnists and specialists, the book discusses how to research stocks; how to use the extraordinary resources of the Internet in screening stocks and deciding which stocks to invest in; how to build a portfolio; what the effect is on a stock in the case of a merger, management change, acquisition, or change in the company’s profile; and penetrating insights into how the economy has changed and what that means in terms of future stock performance.
Written with clarity, verve, and attitude, and drawing on unparalleled expertise, TheStreet.com Guide to Smart Investing is destined to be the investment bible for anyone weathering today’s New Economy.
Written with clarity, verve, and attitude, and drawing on unparalleled expertise, TheStreet.com Guide to Smart Investing is destined to be the investment bible for anyone weathering today’s New Economy.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Dave Kansas, the founding editor-in-chief of TheStreet.com, helped to build the organization from its first publishing day in November 1996 to its current position as a premier financial news operation, with offices in New York, San Francisco, and London. Kansas has written articles about investing and business for numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and The Industry Standard. He lives in Manhattan.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
1
The Investing Revolution
If you had fallen asleep in 1995 and awoke on the dawn of the new millennium, you would have missed much more than a worldwide fireworks melody. In that half decade, a revolution swept through the investment firmament, with online brokers, online news outlets, and online data providers paving the way for a new chapter in the do-it-yourself world pioneered by outfits like The Home Depot.
That investing revolution coincided with the emergence of all sorts of strange companies that swiftly became enormously valuable. Yahoo! for a time leapfrogged General Motors, and America Online gobbled up venerable media giant Time Warner. Wireless outfit Qualcomm defied the loftiest expectations, and optical networking firm JDS Uniphase made a name for itself in the span of a quarter. It all occurred at lightning speed. And it still does. Funky companies pop up, grab our attention, and soar into the stratosphere. Sometimes, as in the case of Qualcomm and JDS Uniphase, they are dragged back toward earth by hard realities.
The way we invest has been radically transformed as well. Trades can be placed from our desks, at work, for less than the price of lunch. And where it once was a huge leap to get a delayed quote online, now investors insist on real-time portfolio tracker updates, real-time news, and after-hours trading to boot.
Unlike the old-time, smoke-filled country club world of investing, the new arena sparkles with increased access, opportunities, and risks for the small investor. Individuals can get rich, 20-something entrepreneurs can become famous (at least briefly), and the rest of us search desperately for a game plan that will work in this topsy-turvy world.
If the late 1990s marked the early part of the revolution, we are now in the teeth of the transformation. Each day more people venture online, taking a stab at controlling their financial destinies. Wall Street and the keepers of the institutional flames scramble to maintain an advantage. But the people keep coming. They continue expecting more, and they devour new learning at a ferocious pace.
Despite all the fancy electronic footwork and online stock market research, books that can synthesize and make sense of the cacophony remain an essential tool in gaining confidence in the investing process.
But most investment books offer either not enough or too much. On the dummy end of the spectrum, guides are so basic as to be useless for anyone except, well, dummies. Our book aims to be understandable and usable for newbies without skirting the meatier material that really anyone can grasp if it's explained right. As for the books aimed at more sophisticated readers, you'll find blather so incomprehensible that even the wizened professionals are left scratching their heads. Or at the very least, they're put to sleep.
TheStreet.com Guide to Smart Investing aims to walk the untrod middle ground. We know from our experience at TheStreet.com Web site that millions of investors have picked up some learning and at least a patchwork sense of the market. What they are looking for is some guidance that will give them a firm footing, take them to the next level when they're ready, and help them put it all together. Written in the spunky, shoot-straight style of our online news operation, TheStreet.com Guide to Smart Investing provides just that information and help. We take you on a journey of learning that will help you cast off understandable fear. Wall Street may be jammed with big institutions promising you sage advice. But Wall Street's size--and the conventional thinking that can tend to accompany it--is as much a liability as a strength. We help you figure out how to pick the spots where the giants might stumble, so you can go toe-to-toe into the investing marketplace with confidence.
When you've finished reading this book, you will understand the market in the same manner that a pro understands the market--or better. You will understand how to decipher the wild mood swings that have become a regular feature of the investing world. You will be able to arm yourself with the information that will help you enrich yourself and your family.
It's important to tell you what this book is not. It is not a book that will give you a paint-by-numbers approach to wealth. It is not a book about some statistically perfect formula. We believe many of those kinds of books are inexcusable sucker-plays aimed at taking a little more money from you and putting it in the pocket of the authors.
We've set out to do something different. We want to make you smarter and wiser. We want to give you the savvy that the pros guard so jealously. We want you to have the ammunition to forge your own successful path in an arena that is not nearly so simple to conquer as some of the pundits would have you believe.
This is also not a book that defends the bull market or declares that the Dow should be at 100,000. But hyperventilating nervous Nellies will not hold sway in this book either. Though it has struggled lately, the stock market enjoyed a remarkable run in the late 1990s, and we still believe that over the long term the market has tremendous strength. We will not tell you how to cash in on the coming crash or instruct you on the merits of gold or other "safety" commodities. We believe the technology revolution has revolutionized American business. And while there will always be bumps and periods of uncertainty, we believe the stock market will reflect that revolution for some time to come.
What's behind our conviction? Much of what's driven the market boom of the last 20 years has been the diminished impact of the business cycle. Expansions have grown longer and deeper, while recessions have become narrower and shorter. The resulting long-run growth has created a New Economy, an economy that's forcing stock market analysts to redefine how they view investments and long-term earnings.
Dismissed as blarney by old Wall Street hands, the New Economy rests on several real changes. Productivity gains have improved profits while keeping inflation largely in check. Corporations, benefiting from improved technology, have become more adept at utilizing global capacity to evade the problems that arise with market tightness. Toss in increasing fiscal discipline among the developed countries, and you have a recipe for long-term growth.
For a time, technology played the starring role in the New Economy's emergence, and we believe its importance will once again come to be recognized by the market. The Internet has helped keep inflation at bay by slashing costs and improving the efficiency of individuals and corporations conducting transactions on it. Technology itself has benefited from rising productivity and healthy competition, with the cost of hardware and software falling sharply for consumers and business and keeping inflation in check.
The New Economy paradigm has not spelled an endless period of growth, but we've seen the dips in the United States become less pronounced. And low unemployment and low inflation have now coexisted for several years, leaving the economists dumbfounded--much as they were during the impossible days of 1970s stagflation, when high inflation and high unemployment persisted together for a time.
Given the backdrop of benign inflation, a technology-driven productivity revolution, and sound fiscal policy, it becomes easier to see why a number of high-growth companies once received mind-boggling valuations. Of course, there will be corrections. And, as we've seen, not every wunderkind of the Internet will justify its valuation. Most won't. But new technology has fueled a remarkable period of growth, and we believe there is more yet to come.
It is our intention in this book to help you understand the New Economy and its valuable intersection with the stock market. We'll help you figure out which companies stand to benefit, and which companies may have great stories but weak prospects. Though the New Economy has many beneficiaries, it is not the guarantor of universal success. Optimism must be tempered with realism, and we won't flinch from telling the harder truths too.
Finally, this book won't cover all types of investing. You won't find an analysis of the art market or much about heating oil futures. We'll talk a bit about bonds and whether you need them for diversification. But mostly this book is about stocks. We've got no particular beef with other investments. But this book is for New Economy investors with the inclination to make their own decisions about stock picking, with or without the help of a broker. And it's for investors who share our view that over time, equities are well worth the risk.
I will take you on a tour of the key issues you need to understand in today's investing firmament. With the help of some of TheStreet.com's most experienced writers, we will explore several areas of the market. We'll help you become a more confident, less fearful stock picker. And for those of you ready to test your mettle, we'll even introduce you to options and shorting!
In this middle ground, between the dummies and the self-proclaimed savants, there's much we feel we can offer. This, in a real sense, is how I and many others have learned about the stock market and investing. Back in 1994, I was assigned to cover the stock market for The Wall Street Journal. At the time, I knew more about hat tricks (hockey) than Red Hats (Linux software firm). So, I went to work. I read books, I talked with professors and hunkered down with traders and strategists, trying to absorb their knowledge. This kind of self-teaching is an invaluable way to learn about something, and it is how many on Wall Street, and now Main Street, have learned their trade.
Our efforts to help you master the market will, in some respects, mimic my own crash course on the markets. We'll start with the economy and work our way through fundamental analysis, researching stocks, and how to read charts. We'll help you figure out when to buy a stock and when to sell ...
The Investing Revolution
If you had fallen asleep in 1995 and awoke on the dawn of the new millennium, you would have missed much more than a worldwide fireworks melody. In that half decade, a revolution swept through the investment firmament, with online brokers, online news outlets, and online data providers paving the way for a new chapter in the do-it-yourself world pioneered by outfits like The Home Depot.
That investing revolution coincided with the emergence of all sorts of strange companies that swiftly became enormously valuable. Yahoo! for a time leapfrogged General Motors, and America Online gobbled up venerable media giant Time Warner. Wireless outfit Qualcomm defied the loftiest expectations, and optical networking firm JDS Uniphase made a name for itself in the span of a quarter. It all occurred at lightning speed. And it still does. Funky companies pop up, grab our attention, and soar into the stratosphere. Sometimes, as in the case of Qualcomm and JDS Uniphase, they are dragged back toward earth by hard realities.
The way we invest has been radically transformed as well. Trades can be placed from our desks, at work, for less than the price of lunch. And where it once was a huge leap to get a delayed quote online, now investors insist on real-time portfolio tracker updates, real-time news, and after-hours trading to boot.
Unlike the old-time, smoke-filled country club world of investing, the new arena sparkles with increased access, opportunities, and risks for the small investor. Individuals can get rich, 20-something entrepreneurs can become famous (at least briefly), and the rest of us search desperately for a game plan that will work in this topsy-turvy world.
If the late 1990s marked the early part of the revolution, we are now in the teeth of the transformation. Each day more people venture online, taking a stab at controlling their financial destinies. Wall Street and the keepers of the institutional flames scramble to maintain an advantage. But the people keep coming. They continue expecting more, and they devour new learning at a ferocious pace.
Despite all the fancy electronic footwork and online stock market research, books that can synthesize and make sense of the cacophony remain an essential tool in gaining confidence in the investing process.
But most investment books offer either not enough or too much. On the dummy end of the spectrum, guides are so basic as to be useless for anyone except, well, dummies. Our book aims to be understandable and usable for newbies without skirting the meatier material that really anyone can grasp if it's explained right. As for the books aimed at more sophisticated readers, you'll find blather so incomprehensible that even the wizened professionals are left scratching their heads. Or at the very least, they're put to sleep.
TheStreet.com Guide to Smart Investing aims to walk the untrod middle ground. We know from our experience at TheStreet.com Web site that millions of investors have picked up some learning and at least a patchwork sense of the market. What they are looking for is some guidance that will give them a firm footing, take them to the next level when they're ready, and help them put it all together. Written in the spunky, shoot-straight style of our online news operation, TheStreet.com Guide to Smart Investing provides just that information and help. We take you on a journey of learning that will help you cast off understandable fear. Wall Street may be jammed with big institutions promising you sage advice. But Wall Street's size--and the conventional thinking that can tend to accompany it--is as much a liability as a strength. We help you figure out how to pick the spots where the giants might stumble, so you can go toe-to-toe into the investing marketplace with confidence.
When you've finished reading this book, you will understand the market in the same manner that a pro understands the market--or better. You will understand how to decipher the wild mood swings that have become a regular feature of the investing world. You will be able to arm yourself with the information that will help you enrich yourself and your family.
It's important to tell you what this book is not. It is not a book that will give you a paint-by-numbers approach to wealth. It is not a book about some statistically perfect formula. We believe many of those kinds of books are inexcusable sucker-plays aimed at taking a little more money from you and putting it in the pocket of the authors.
We've set out to do something different. We want to make you smarter and wiser. We want to give you the savvy that the pros guard so jealously. We want you to have the ammunition to forge your own successful path in an arena that is not nearly so simple to conquer as some of the pundits would have you believe.
This is also not a book that defends the bull market or declares that the Dow should be at 100,000. But hyperventilating nervous Nellies will not hold sway in this book either. Though it has struggled lately, the stock market enjoyed a remarkable run in the late 1990s, and we still believe that over the long term the market has tremendous strength. We will not tell you how to cash in on the coming crash or instruct you on the merits of gold or other "safety" commodities. We believe the technology revolution has revolutionized American business. And while there will always be bumps and periods of uncertainty, we believe the stock market will reflect that revolution for some time to come.
What's behind our conviction? Much of what's driven the market boom of the last 20 years has been the diminished impact of the business cycle. Expansions have grown longer and deeper, while recessions have become narrower and shorter. The resulting long-run growth has created a New Economy, an economy that's forcing stock market analysts to redefine how they view investments and long-term earnings.
Dismissed as blarney by old Wall Street hands, the New Economy rests on several real changes. Productivity gains have improved profits while keeping inflation largely in check. Corporations, benefiting from improved technology, have become more adept at utilizing global capacity to evade the problems that arise with market tightness. Toss in increasing fiscal discipline among the developed countries, and you have a recipe for long-term growth.
For a time, technology played the starring role in the New Economy's emergence, and we believe its importance will once again come to be recognized by the market. The Internet has helped keep inflation at bay by slashing costs and improving the efficiency of individuals and corporations conducting transactions on it. Technology itself has benefited from rising productivity and healthy competition, with the cost of hardware and software falling sharply for consumers and business and keeping inflation in check.
The New Economy paradigm has not spelled an endless period of growth, but we've seen the dips in the United States become less pronounced. And low unemployment and low inflation have now coexisted for several years, leaving the economists dumbfounded--much as they were during the impossible days of 1970s stagflation, when high inflation and high unemployment persisted together for a time.
Given the backdrop of benign inflation, a technology-driven productivity revolution, and sound fiscal policy, it becomes easier to see why a number of high-growth companies once received mind-boggling valuations. Of course, there will be corrections. And, as we've seen, not every wunderkind of the Internet will justify its valuation. Most won't. But new technology has fueled a remarkable period of growth, and we believe there is more yet to come.
It is our intention in this book to help you understand the New Economy and its valuable intersection with the stock market. We'll help you figure out which companies stand to benefit, and which companies may have great stories but weak prospects. Though the New Economy has many beneficiaries, it is not the guarantor of universal success. Optimism must be tempered with realism, and we won't flinch from telling the harder truths too.
Finally, this book won't cover all types of investing. You won't find an analysis of the art market or much about heating oil futures. We'll talk a bit about bonds and whether you need them for diversification. But mostly this book is about stocks. We've got no particular beef with other investments. But this book is for New Economy investors with the inclination to make their own decisions about stock picking, with or without the help of a broker. And it's for investors who share our view that over time, equities are well worth the risk.
I will take you on a tour of the key issues you need to understand in today's investing firmament. With the help of some of TheStreet.com's most experienced writers, we will explore several areas of the market. We'll help you become a more confident, less fearful stock picker. And for those of you ready to test your mettle, we'll even introduce you to options and shorting!
In this middle ground, between the dummies and the self-proclaimed savants, there's much we feel we can offer. This, in a real sense, is how I and many others have learned about the stock market and investing. Back in 1994, I was assigned to cover the stock market for The Wall Street Journal. At the time, I knew more about hat tricks (hockey) than Red Hats (Linux software firm). So, I went to work. I read books, I talked with professors and hunkered down with traders and strategists, trying to absorb their knowledge. This kind of self-teaching is an invaluable way to learn about something, and it is how many on Wall Street, and now Main Street, have learned their trade.
Our efforts to help you master the market will, in some respects, mimic my own crash course on the markets. We'll start with the economy and work our way through fundamental analysis, researching stocks, and how to read charts. We'll help you figure out when to buy a stock and when to sell ...
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherDoubleday Business
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0385500955
- ISBN 13 9780385500951
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages368
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TheStreet.com Guide to Smart Investing: Everything You Need to Know to Outsmart Wall Street and Select Winning Stocks
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Doubleday Business
(2002)
ISBN 10: 0385500955
ISBN 13: 9780385500951
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