Rating: 
Summary: Laymen's Fun
Review: Well, maybe this was a 2 star book, but to me it was hopeless from the start. "Fred Schwed", a jokester of a name to begin with talks about Wall St just as naively as anyone who barely knows it. His viewpoints are clearly from the beginner's point of view, or rather the beginner intermediate- the guy who has just accepted that trading is luck only and that long term investing is simple diversification. He hasn't quite accepted that there are true winners out there and that there is something of an art to the game and eagerly puts any down who attempt to play it. Clearly he has associated with those who are not "in the know" [...] Anyways, I started at page 1 and read almost to halfway through the whole book before I could bare no more. I really did try to read it through, thinking that I could squeeze something worthwhile out of it. No, I can stand it anymore. I think I'll leave it at the train station on the way to the coffee shop right now! Waste of $[...] and an hour or so of my time.. Definitely not deserving of "Wiley Investment Classic" with the likes of Fisher and LeFevre.
Rating: 
Summary: 'Cos stocks (...) and all the bankers are crooks
Review: Where are the customers' yachts is the funniest send up of the stock broking industry that's ever been written - by miles. The thing that strikes you is how nothing has changed since he wrote his memoirs in the late 1930s. (Allegedly, he lost a packet in the 1929 crash and decided to call it a day - from where he went on to write childrens' books). His writing style is so nimble, so comic, that you can't help reading this book from cover to cover in a single sitting. You've got to read it, just for his description of the (...) world of short selling and analyst reports. It's old fashioned prose of the very best kind. No bizno-speak or MBA twaddle. Just colourful characters and lots of laughs. Schwed may have been a broker, but everyone is a target. Clients... rarely do their homework and are always impressed by analysts/sales telling them what will happen. One pitiful tale involves a client asked for $500 margin in a falling market. He runs around all day raising funds to try and head off the deadline. But in the end he comes up short by 15 dollars - after paying the broker 485... Where are the customers' yachts is a fabulous book. Schwed has managed to heap ridicule on everyone and yet spell out, very clearly, why the only winners are the bankers and the brokers.
Rating:
Summary: A classic!
Review: While you are wondering what to do with your money after the 2001/2002 stock market crash, Fred has some ideas...mostly how about cash? Since mutal funds have the best advice money can buy and are still falling, what's wrong with just having a bit of cash? Anyway its hilarious! Should be a gift for college graduates/first jobers who have an extra buck in their pockets and are eyeing the stock/bond markets.
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