For stocks, this book tells you where to find out about each market in the world, stock picking and trading strategies (including day trading), research and analysis, IPOs, and quotes. A similar level of detail is available for bonds, options, commodities, and mutual funds. Other sections cover important topics like money management (debt, savings, financial planning, tax planning, banking, and insurance), on-line security, and investment clubs.
Each section lists a large number of sites. You can obviously go to all of them if you want to. But for some, a brief summary is provided in the back of the book. These are marked, so you can decide if you want a little more information before going to a site. Probably, though, it would be faster just to go to the site. One of the beauties of this information is that it will save you a lot of clicking, because you get the right page reference for the part of the site that you are interested in. That was really neat!
In all but a few sections, the author has picked out 1-3 as an "Editor's Choice Site" meaning that these are more highly recommended. Many of these are reproduced in the book so you can get a sense of what's there. This can save you futher time.
I spend a lot of time looking at investments on the Internet, but this book introduced me to a large number of helpful sites that I had not been to before. If I make just one invetment better, the price of the book will be a pittance compared to the benefit.
If you are an investment beginner, I recommend that you read books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad; How to Buy Stocks; ChangeWave Investing; and Common Sense about Mutual Funds before using this wonderful guide.
If you are an experienced investor, dive right in. Undoubtedly, there is some part of investing that you are skimping on. With these on-line resources, you can fill in those gaps profitably. My one quibble with the book is that it could have done a little more to make it clearer about which sites are free for which services, and what you have to pay for. In general, this is described, but being a cheap investor (see my review of Scrooge Investing) I just like to use the free resources. So I will spend some time here at sites that cost money, before realizing that I need not return.
Obviously, a book like this will quickly become obsolete, so get it now and use it now!
After you start using this great guide, I suggest that you think about other areas in your life where you may not be fully using on-line resources. How about career planning, job hunting, starting a business, buying items you use everyday, planning trips, getting custom products, and solving problems? You should then find ways to make the Internet help you in those areas as well. Otherwise, the loss is yours! The Internet can provide the basics for developing many 2,000 percent solutions!
The relationship to the Faust legend and the role of Goethe in the development of the early modern economy makes this book a very interesting read for anyone who may be baffled by the current system of value creation in our modern economy.
The real insight of this book lies in its illumination of humankind's quest to gain mastery over time and our own mortality. Here the author demonstrates how science is used to gain predictive control over time by use of the past (the evidence of scientific method). Economics is used to master time via control over the future (money as "value" stored for future use). And the arts overcome the constraints of time by stretching out the present (the transporting nature of the sublime). The alchemical means by which this is accomplished is demonstrated clearly. Magic turns out to be very real indeed.
List price: $15.00 (that's 30% off!)