Trading the World Markets (Wiley Traders' Quest) Book

Most people who have caught the investment bug and have any common sense should know that success is never quite as easy as it seems when markets are rising as furiously as the stock market has done in the past few years. Only the most foolish and naïve of DIY investors will not want to try and find out what they can learn from those who have been successful investors in the past. Trading the World's Markets, by Leo Gough, features eight "great global investors" several of whom have already been featured in other books: one, the eccentric motorbiker Jim Rogers, a former partner of George Soros, was featured as long ago as the second of John Train's books. Two others, the emerging markets expert Mark Mobius and the Hong Kong-based professional doomster, Dr Marc Faber, seem to have been in every book and magazine ever published on investment. The whole point about such books is not to discover specific investment ideas but rather to discover more about the mental and intellectual disciplines which are needed to sustain a record of investment outperformance over any long-ish period of time. There are some stimulating and interesting bits here. Two of the most pertinent pieces of advice are ones that are currently being widely ignored. One is: "Most of the time the best thing that you can do is do nothing but look out of the window, go to the movies, drink beer". In other words, only invest when you are reasonably confident that you know why and what you are buying. The second is directed at the Internet: "Just because an industry changes the world, it doesn't mean you are going to make any money if you buy that industry at the wrong time in the frenzy". All in all, then, the general advice to be gleaned from the book points almost entirely in the opposite direction to that in which most investors are currently headed. As a result, the chances are it will look quite prescient in years to come. But will anybody who should be taking notice today in fact do so? Of course not. That unfortunately is one of the phenomena of markets that never changes. As Sir John Templeton first pointed out years ago, the only sure-fire way to make money in the stock market is to do something that most other people are not already doing. ----Jonathan DavisRead More