Description:
Beardstown Ladies, move over. From the sassy, wisecracking wife of pro hockey player Phil Housley (and mother of four) comes an investment-club how-to for all those postboomer, pre-X women who not only bring home the bacon (in an SUV, most likely) and fry it up in a pan, but who want to find greater financial autonomy and profits than mutual funds can provide--and in the process do some "You go, girl!" bonding that would put those chatty gals of The View to shame. Granted, when you cut out all the schmoozing and gabbing in here, the actual take-home advice and guidelines on group online investing could be reduced to the size of a TV-listings blurb for Ally McBeal (to which Housley refers with near-obsessive frequency). But having said that, it's admirably straightforward and explained in plain English, especially for a genre glutted with so-called "easy-to-follow" volumes that are nonetheless incomprehensible. And, since this is a guide to starting and maintaining a fun and social investment club as much as it is to mastering the stock market, it's got just as much kitchen-table advice on putting together a gang of gals, convening them via Internet bulletin boards, and keeping club communication and camaraderie alive as it does on picking the right stocks, finding a broker, following their progress against the S&P 500, and knowing when to buy, sell, and hold. Housley's writing style is caffeine-charged, bordering on insane, and the bulletin-board conventions and online meeting notes she shares from her own group are so full of references to maternity due dates, hectic suburban-mom itineraries, and free-floating cravings for everything from Quarter Pounders to Tom Cruise that you sometimes feel like you're trapped in a programming loop from the Lifetime Channel. In truth, though, it's that very jotty, gabby style that actually makes the book as least as much fun to read as Housley makes starting up a club sound like. And lest you're thinking only the wives of NFL hockey players have the spare cash for such hijinks, Housley actually gears most of the book toward women who can only invest as little as $50 a month. If you can't set aside that much toward your future financial autonomy, you're probably putting it all in the hands of some man who's gonna stiff you anyway, girl, Housley seems to be saying. And it's that blend of sisters-doin'-it-for-themselves practicality and pop-level empowerment that makes Chicks the kind of smart, fun group-investment guide that even some of us NYSE-illiterate roosters out there would do well to read. --Timothy Murphy
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