Intelligent Investing
The #1 Wealth Building Strategy
The education-minded economic guide Intelligent Investing introduces the stock market from multiple angles.
John Cousins’s financial guide Intelligent Investing draws upon personal experiences and the wisdom of business giants like Warren Buffett and Marc Andreessen to instruct individual investors on methods of researching and managing their investments.
The book begins with an overview of the stock market before diving into specific instructions, as on how to read three core financial statements: the balance sheet, the income statement, and the cash flow statement. It also speaks to the importance of diversifying one’s portfolio. It includes definitions and historical context for key terms, specific formulas and theories, and frequent quizzes to assess what’s been learned from its recommendations.
This educational text achieves tonal balance: its work is thorough and instructive, combining basic knowledge (as with information on what the stock market is and how it functions) with advanced insider tips (as with advice for reading a company’s annual report and listening to earnings calls). Its examples show financial formulas and scenarios in action, and it builds upon its analogies well to explain its concepts. For example, homeownership is used to explain asset, liability, and equity, and a simple analogy on the opposite sales conditions for umbrellas versus suntan lotion are used to explain diversification.
Insights abound, with the book declaring that “anyone claiming they can time the market consistently is lying” and “knowing finance is power.” It also asserts:
Perhaps the most crucial assets of all, a talented work-force and productive culture, aren’t considered assets by accountants. They’re an expense. There is a vast difference between how financial statements portray the world and reality.
However, the text’s delivery devolves as it progresses. It is undermined by pervasive formatting issues, including problems with punctuation and capitalization. Its bullet points and paragraphs don’t line up, and headings and subheadings repeat. One chapter consists almost in total of an interview with another investor, and references to a possible early working title confuse its work. Late in the book, whole pages are duplicated in their entirety. One chapter promises to be “a riveting ride through the history” but ends after one page and does not include such information. Further, the text’s abrupt ending is conclusion-free, intoning that the 1980s set the stage for modern finance without a true sense of finality.
The education-minded economic guide Intelligent Investing introduces the stock market from multiple angles.
Reviewed by
Hannah Pearson
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
