The use of the Internet for investing in stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments is rapidly coming of age. Michael Thomsett's Mastering Online Investing is a complete, "user friendly", instruction manual for making diverse, timely investments through online resources. Thomsett draws upon his considerable and impressive expertise to explain why and how online investing differs from online trading; how the rules for sound financial investing practices have and have not changed with reference to online investing; how to effectively utilize the Internet to study a company's fundamentals; how to avoid speculation fever; how to find the right information for personally identified investing needs; and how to protect both self and investments when investing online. If you are considering online investing, begin with a thorough and careful reading of Michael Thomsett's Mastering Online Investing!

All the basic information on music terms, symbols and theory , and all included in one book. Very helpful, indeed

As a begginner to real estate I found this book to be a great primer on the fundementals of real estate. It explains some of the factors one must consider in valuing real estate, such as confrmity. It explains the basics of loans and the pros and cons of using an accelerated system. It also explains the real estate investment cycle and how it evolves. This book is just a primer it promotes no particular investment philosophy but just the basics one must know in order to be real estate investor.

This book is great because it gives you a detailed look at real estate investing from an "investor's point of view". It discusses cycles, timing, knowing your numbers, etc. that all other books I have read have either completely left out or barely touched on. To be well-rounded on this subject, this book is an absolute must.

I read this book over a year ago and now i'm training to be an options trader in the CBOE pits. It opened a whole new world for me. The options world is enormous and this book is the best intro for someone who wants to learn about options. Prior to reading this book, I had heard that trading options is the way to make a lot of money but I didn't have a clue as to what options were. A friend suggested I read this book and I did. This book will not teach you everything about options nor will it make you an expert on options. What it will do is explain the basics of options and some strategies that are commonly used. And it does this magnificently! Its an easy read and everything is explained very clearly.

I read this book over a year ago and now i'm training to be an options trader in the CBOE pits. It opened a whole new world for me. The options world is enormous and this book is the best intro for someone who wants to learn about options. Prior to reading this book, I had heard that trading options is the way to make a lot of money but I didn't have a clue as to what options were. A friend suggested I read this book and I did. This book will not teach you everything about options nor will it make you an expert on options. What it will do is explain the basics of options and some strategies that are commonly used. And it does this magnificently! Its an easy read and everything is explained very clearly.

If you don't know stock options from a hole in the ground, you'll hit pay dirt with "Getting Started in Options."

Thomsett breaks down the complex terms and leaves you with a good understanding of just what stock options are, how they work, and how you can use them to your advantage in investing.

You'll never have trouble understanding what Thomsett is saying because for every concept, two or three easy to follow examples are provided helping you to easily understand the lessons.

Getting Started starts out by explaining just what stock options are in layman's terms. Next it presents how they work and how you can purchase and sell these options. Then later in the book, advanced strategies are presented.

If your a greenhorn when it comes to investing get started on the right foot with getting started. Or if your a seasoned investment pro, consider Getting Started for its overview on more complex option strategies.

Want to invest in options or just protect your current stock options? This book is for you.

I think I was cheated by the name. This is NOT a good book, at all, IMHO. The book didn't provide any pratical means to do the fundamental analysis. Most of the contents are explanation of concepts, things like company report, definition of ratios, which you can find a lot on the internet. Another feature of this book is its fake examples, which means there is no real example to illustrate how to do things in real world.
I doubt if the author ever made a penny through his "approach", if he had one. He must have made a lot through writing books. 50 books like this?

The fundamentals deal with numbers, so a lot of books on the subject read like accounting primers. But this one led me through the green eye shade stuff and explained what it meant and how to put it to work to study companies. A good overall treatment of the topic, nice illustrations too.

If you want to get in the stock market and want to choose stocks properly, this book will help a lot. However, it would be a lot easier to master the techniques if you have a little accounting background. Good book with simple and direct-to-the-point explanations and illustrations.

Here's my quicky summary of this book:

1. An overall budget predicts income, expenses, and cash flow.

2. Don't bother building a budget if you're not going to look at actual spending and try to determine the cause of any variances. If the variances come from reasonable causes--as they almost always do--the budget must be changed to reflect the new conditions.

3. Researching and documenting assumptions are the key to good--and justifiable--forecasts and budgets. Don't budget based on pie-in-the-sky sales wishes or broadly-stated percentage increases over previous periods. What's going to increase and why?

4. An expense can be estimated from current and historical information, reasonable growth projections and timing estimates. It should include the effects of current or improved controls (approval processes, expense reports, centralized purchasing, appropriate categorization, etc.).

5. Working capital matters: set aside reserves, collect accounts receivable promptly, plan inventory and capital purchases, use controls. Use a Cash Flow Statement to project cash balances and avoid running out of cash.

6. When a variance occurs, determine whether the problem is due to a false assumption--in which case the budget must be revised--or a failure of controls--in which case, processes may need to be introduced.

This book is a bit dated. It seems unaware of spreadsheets and other computerized financial management tools. Even forgiving that, its proposed forms for changes and documentation seem a bit simplistic and therefore unhelpful.

On the other hand, it's a very good introduction to budgeting, and the main message ("Document your assumptions!!") seems like a great one to learn.

--Eric

recently needed to create a large budget and discovered that i bought this book in May 1990. it never leaves my desktop. great insight into creating budgets that really work. and what to watch for before they break. great examples. excellent index!

A couple of years ago, I decided it was time to move out of my parents house. Because I didn't plan on having a family of my own for some time, I decided that a condominium was the best choice for me. After about 5 months of searching and not coming up with everything I wanted for the price I was willing to pay, a friend gave me this book. After reading it, I knew what questions to ask to who(and what answers I needed to hear),how to research the people and situations I was dealing with, what to watch out for, and how to really find my dream condo. It made me realize that I wasn't only getting my own place, I was investing in my future! It took me almost a year, but I finally found what I was looking for AND paid MY price. The best part was that it was easy to read and understand,got to the point, and stayed interesting from the first page until the last. Anyone who is looking to invest in a condo NEEDS to read this book!

First of all, the book is over 10 years old at this point. Second of all, it's based on industrial project management concepts from the 70's. Third, it accomplishes very little besides completely boring the reader for 170 pages. It dispenses useless advice such as "make a budget," "make a schedule," written in a stilted format apparently designed to numb the reader's brain. You will not refer back to this book as a reference at any point after reading, I promise you.

If this book has sold well, I imagine it's because of the clever title and black cover. It's certainly not because of the contents. Try "Project Management for Dummies" instead--it's got a silly title, but has much more useful information inside. Or at least buy something sold more recently than this paperweight.

If there is only one book you want to read and you don't want to spend more than a few hours to get up to speed on project management, this is that book.

We were introduced to this book in graduate school at Georgia Tech while taking some Industrial Engineering classes that had a lot of team oriented projects. The Industrial Engineering graduate program at Georgia Tech has consistently ranked No. 1 in the nation for at least the last decade. So, when they recommended that we buy, read and keep this book for a long time to come, I didn't question their judgment.

I wasn't too thrilled with what the book had to say when I first read it a few years back. My first impressions were - why are they making such a big deal about these simple concepts? The theory in the book seemed too simplistic at the time. But over the last few years as I started gaining experience as a project manager, I discovered the reasons why this book is so popular.

The reason why this book is so valuable - most people when first introduced to project management are not interested in reading a lot of material on the subject and want to get a Cliff's notes version of the subject. That's when you can get the most benefit from this book. It is better to read this book than not read anything at all on the subject. And it is a very easy book to read.

Over the years, I have been able to convince several people to read this book and gain project management skills because it is not that much of a commitment to ask from people. I have even led weekly project management learning sessions using this book as the main tool. It worked and people learned quite a bit more about project management than they knew before reading the book.

After years of project management experience and passing the PMP, I now realize what a gem this book is even for an experienced project manager. It can act as a refresher if you read it once a year. Sometimes, we all tend to forget the simplest and most obvious things and this book helps us remember the basic project management principles.

Don't be fooled by this 170 page lightweight, it packs quite a powerful punch! A lot of professionals who are not project managers have thanked me for recommending this book. It helped them understand what I do as a project manager without having to spend too much time. It may be an excellent idea to distribute copies of this very inexpensive book to members of your team so that it can enhance team communications.

If project management is your career, you should definitely move on to other books after finishing this book. You can keep the copy as an annual refresher though.

I was looking for a book that would get me going fairly quickly. I had a project with a tight budget that was going to take the better part of a year. I needed to start managing it, and I needed to start then. Those 600+ page college-text style tomes were not going to help. Then I found this little gem, and I was off and running.

Thomsett starts at the beginning--organizing-- then in 11 chapters and 182 pages describes planning, team-building, budgeting, scheduling, communication, documentation, review, and even tips for eliminating common problems. The most important (and common) tools such as PERT and Gantt charts, flow diagrams, etc. are all here. There are even exercises after each chapter (with answers in the appendix) so you can test yourself and make sure you've got it.

This book helped me get it, and gave me the tools I needed to be able to manage my project successfully. If you're an accomplished project manager, this book will seem basic (although it may be a good review). If you're starting down this path or want to share the basics with your team members, you'll find it to be quite helpful.

This is NOT a book that will help you pick stocks using TA, it is about (as far as it's about anything) working out general market sentiment, ie will the DOW go up or down. For individual stock picks, how to tell from a chart which way the price is going, it is completely useless. Given that Technical Analysis, in most investors' minds, involves chart reading, and understanding indicators (RSI etc), this book is misleadingly labelled - there is one (short) section with a few OHLC diagrams, not very useful at that. There are many books that cover the topic, this isn't one of them.

This book really explained how technical indicators work. I have bought several books before this but didnt understand because the treatment was not practical. This book explains things clearly. How refreshing!

Written in clear, concise language and covers the topic well. I have bought several tech. analysis books and none others cover the topic as well or with such clear explanations. Recommended for the novice and non-tecky reader.

Manual bookkeeping in lot of detail but we live in a computerized world. Better books show how to use QuickBooks and other automated programs, this one is designed for doing everything by hand. Outdated! Recommend looking for more up to date books with computer emphasis instead.

I think this book would be very helpful for those small to medium builders who have not come up with an acconting system, or need to improve it. It deals with many different topics of which builders need to be aware. In some cases, the book seems very elementary in its accounting terminology, then becomes technical in other cases. Some builders would not be able to follow the terminology in this book. I read this book from the perspective of an accounting professional who needed some basics in building accounting. There were some chapters that were very helpful for me, but others that dealt with such basic accounting, that I lost interest. However, this book is geared toward the builder, and I think it achieves its purpose.