Rating: 
Summary: A humourous book
Review: 5 stars if this were a humour book, but it only gets 3 stars as in investment book.I enjoyed the cheeky ragging that professional fund managers received from the authors. It's nice to know that small investors can beat professional fund managers and achieve better returns if we adopt a cautious and common sense approach to investing in stocks. However, it seems to me that the fool's ratio was formulated by looking at the historical performance of the Dow component stocks, and then coming up with a selection criteria which would yield a better-than-Dow-average return. I just don't have the confidence that the fool's ratio will prove to be just as successful in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best investment books I have ever read!
Review: This book was not only very funny to read, but very educational as well. I would recommend this book to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent! Perfect for the would be investor.
Review: I knew this book was for me when the Gardner brothers identified a list of things that bad investors do wrong and I could account for every one of them. The book steps the reader through mutual funds, the Dow Dividend strategy and investing in small-cap growth stocks - in that order (increasing potential return). They're strategies are well grounded and seem sound to me - only time will tell. Either way the book is amusing and presents a lot of basic information about investing, understanding financials, and investing in the on-line world.
Rating: 
Summary: A BOOK FOR FOOLS
Review: The title is appropiate, it's for FOOLS! I actually made more money byselling my positions based on the MOTLEY FOOL METHOD and investing intomutuals. I think most people would fare better if they put their money intreasuries or balanced mutual funds. If you are ultra conservative, alreadyhave lot of money and just want to hang on to what you've got, this bookmay be for you--CAUTION---there are alot more good books out there---youdon't need MOTLEY FOOLS, unless you are just a book collector.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Excellent,excellent, if you have never played the stock market this is a great book for starter guidlines. Would highly recommend this book to the beginner as well as the novist investor.
Rating:
Summary: Invaluable for the novice like myself
Review: I've been reading and rereading this book since I purchased it a couple weeks ago. It provides the kind of information that permits the new investor to move forward with some confidence. The writing style is fresh, particularly for a subject I would previously have considered dry. The book is a great source of basic information useful to anyone wanting to use the Motley Fool web site.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting but somewhat "fluffy" book about investing
Review: I picked this up because I'd heard that these brothers had written a very interesting and irreverent book and website about investing and money. Basically the book is devided into three parts. The first talks about their "Dow Divident" strategy. Actually, they do give credit to others for coming up with the idea, but add some new tweaks to make it supposedly more profitable. They claim this is a very easy and safe way to invest because you are dealing with only 4 stocks which you will have to change at most once a year and which are all Dow stocks, so they are all large well-established companies that won't go broke any time soon. They claim that this technique would have netted the invester an average of 25% annual growth of the last 25 years, and 19% over the last 38 years, both well above the 10.5% that the market (S&P Index) would have given. They then go on to talk about a way to outdo even this growth by investing in small caps and in shorting stocks. So the 2nd third is about small caps and how to research them, how to read financial statements, how to understand trends, etc. The third section is on shorting stocks. Apparently if you put your money into each of these three philosophies in a certain ratio, you maximize your profits and minimize risk. However, they want you that if you don't have a lot of free time, you should just do the Dow Dividend approach as the other two can eat away a good deal of time and energy. I thought the first section of the book could have been written in about 10 pages, instead of the 100 or so that it took the Gardner brothers. Not only do they go on and on about hypothetical examples, but they also write about what they're about to write about. It's just very repetitive. Perhaps they were trying to be entertaining and trying to ease the complete novice into things, but unless you don't even know the very basics of what stocks are, you will probably get as annoyed with this part of the book as I was. The second part picks up the pace and gets into the nitty-gritty much more so in this sense it's actually useful if you want to make investing a hobby.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for anyone who isn't making excellent returns.
Review: Because of this book, I made 4 million dollars in just 5 weeks of playing the stock market!! No, but really... I discovered this book as well as the Motley Fool site on AOL a couple of years ago. No matter what anyone tells you about how they are a guru in regards to the stock market, listen to us Fools: ANYONE can read books (if they are the right ones to read), watch the market and become an excellent investor. With inflation at 3% a year, it's a SHAME for anyone to put their money in a savings account! As the Fools put it in their book, the stock market has become the most sound and reliable investment vehicle, with an average of 10% annual returns. This book dashes away the myths of the inpenetrable Wall Street Wisdom that too many people listen to, only to become shocked when they see what their money has become. The book's humor is a refreshing dose of personality and the book goes beyond where many "you don't need a stock-broker or a P.h.D to make money, just follow your heart!" books have skimped. It offers a very adequate step-by-step method of investing and researching that I thought was so helpful that I felt I owed the authors this review that I'm writing. Now, don't get me wrong, this book does have its flaws. The Gardners prove their point by backing up investment theories with historical stastistics, which amaze the reader by themselves; the commentary after they proved their ideas almost gets to the point of gloating. After you've read the book once or twice, you'll probably will have an aversion to reading it again because of this reason, but would LOVE to recommend it to others. But still, the sections that outline the method of selecting stocks is highly understandable and readable, and you'll be sure to review this whenever you decide you have the time to invest. In regards to the above person from Boston, MA, who is furious about the stastistical inconsistencies about the Foolish method, there's not much to be said. Has anyone seen the movie "Good Will Hunting"? None of us have taken the courses that he so readily spews out, so I guess that just makes the Fools as well as we investors ignorant to Harvard Statistics 101.. The Foolish method isn't just outlined in a book -- their online reputation is at stake; they manage 5 portfolios ONLINE, in view of everyone, that have consistently outperformed ANY mutual fund I've ever heard of. If anything, simply EMULATE their portfolio and you'll see what I mean! Exellent book for all beginners.
Rating:
Summary: A good starting place
Review: Investing on one's own is a scary business, especially in a time of unexpected IPOs, booming markets, near-infinite mutual funds, and tons of theories. This book makes the statement that math, common sense, and moderation can pay off. In other words, you can follow every fad, or use some thought and realistic goals. The book walks you through various investing ideas, from the simplest to the more complicated. Most of it is based on doing your math and not following fads. There's good numbers to back up the ideas as well. The book isn't perfect. It can be a bit unserious or a bit arrogant. Still, it's a good starting place, and a bit of a boost to show you that you can control your investments.
Rating:
Summary: Liked Fool's humorous approach, and the book does inform.
Review: The book gives great ideas for the how-to of investing. Iwished they listed more of their resources & cost for findinginformation on stocks. Also, the most important part of an investing guide is locating likely stocks is glossed over in the first few pages. There's gotta be an easier way to pull candidates stocks from the Market's 12 thousand listed stocks, before researching a stock in-depth with their 8 common sense indicators. Maybe the Gardner's next book will address this issue. J.R.
| 
