Stephen L. Weiss

This book surprised me.
Normally this type of book wouldn't interest me as I have no celebrity type fascination with legendary investors. Nor do I have any illusions of becoming a Buffet or a Soros (neither of which is featured in this book) so why would I want to know about the mistakes these types of investors would make? But the book kept popping up to the point where I finally decided to give it a shot. Well..... turns out the mistakes the Big Boys make as the exact same mistakes that the humble of us make - the scale is just different. Author Weiss does an excellent job of describing each individual investor and the details what went into making their biggest financial error. While the author does a commendable job of writing the sketches he goes a step beyond with by putting a "Lessons Learned" section at the end of each chapter. This, to me, is the real value of the book. A beginning investor could do worse than learning the lessons of each chapter to avoid some of the pitfalls and cons out there. And the more experienced investor could use this book as a reality check to make sure he/she isn't falling into some bad habits. Personally I intend to use this book as a New Year's resolution type device - re-reading "Lessons Learned" every Jan. 1 as a checklist of optimal trading.
Another aspect of the book that bears mentioning is the section on short trading (chap 9). Shorting has always been confusing to me but this author not only cleared up the confusion but suggested alternative methods to get some of the benefits of shorting without all of the risk (shorting carries unlimited risk but in certain instances it can be a very useful and profitable strategy). Outstanding. The book also contains a short but very nice glossary explaining general trading terms.
The reason the book did not receive a full 5 star rating from me was due to the fact of there being no 'further reading' section. While the book is complete without it, there were topics that I would have liked to research more deeply and I would have enjoyed the author's suggestions.
Great book and one I will reference time and again. What a very pleasant surprise!… (mais)