Investing Essentials
How to Make Extraordinary Investment Decisions Using Your Own Unique Investment Filtering Scorecard
The enthusiastic beginners’ guide Investing Essentials examines different investment methodologies with clarity.
Drawing on personal principles, Robert S. Olsen’s business guidebook Investing Essentials explains the fundamentals of investing—and introduces a unique investment tool.
The book’s first section discusses the investment decision-making process, from the ideas and standards that investors consider before investing, to how people should prioritize the factors that are most important to them. It tracks these using its own investment scorecard. In the second section, the book analyzes different investment models, including the flaws of the asset allocation investment strategy and a model that can overcome such drawbacks.
The book draws engaging parallels when it comes to familiar events within the investing process, as when it compares the ability to overcome the psychological effects of financial markets to a musician, soldier, or athlete’s capacity to keep calm in dire situations. Quotations from movies and historical figures further enliven the work. But though it aims to reveal creative and alternative investment techniques and ways for selecting between different investment options, its information trends familiar, including around the differences between saving and investing, and what an ideal investment looks like. The Tactical Wealth Multiplier, the main investment methodology discussed in the book, is also based on basic investing concepts around risk management.
While the book is consistent about guiding and addressing its audience, its constant praise of the audience for selecting the book and wanting to make better investment decisions is too officious. It applauds readers for overcoming despair, procrastination, and self-doubt; for reading through the material and being willing to learn; and for other tasks that are proclaimed difficult. The result is that it seems most suitable for beginners, rather than for the knowledgeable investors it also aims to reach.
The book also promotes Olsen’s products and services to excess; it promises in-depth discussions about the risks of loss and volatility with regards to asset allocation, as well as detailed information about investment methodologies, but these are only available through an educational course and a web presentation. The book comes to seem like a promotional tool, marketing other products and services rather than delivering comprehensive, useful discussions on its own merit.
The investment scorecard is the book’s most consistent feature. It appears throughout, and is used to evaluate a range of investment choices at the end of each chapter. It, combined with the overall straightforward structure, as well as the tables and mathematical calculations regarding risk management that are included, reveals that this is a text that strives for clarity. Still, its graphics regarding the Fidelity Freedom target date 2030 funds and the S&P 500 stock market index are blurred.
The enthusiastic beginners’ guide Investing Essentials examines different investment methodologies and discusses a useful, foundational score card system for selecting among various investment options.
Reviewed by
Edith Wairimu
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.
