Jim Cramer’s Getting Back to Even
Jim Cramer’s Getting Back to Even
- ISBN13: 9781439158012
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
In his new book, Cramer offers the most detailed guidance he has ever given on how to invest in a changed market. Savvy investors will not just survive; they will thrive. Cramer begins with six rules for protecting the money you have and making sure that you have the money you need. (Rule Number 3: Skip the first four stages of portfolio grief: denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.) Your portfolio won’t fix itself; you have to do that. It’s easy to close your eyes and pretend that it all never happened, but you’ll never get back to even that way, much less profit from the opportunities that this new market offers to investors who know where to put their money. One key to making investment decisions is to watch what the mutual-fund managers are doing and — better yet — to anticipate their moves. Cramer tells you how to do this. Their decisions will move markets, and you want to profit from these moves. Cramer explains why dividends may be another key to picking winners in the post-crash stock market, and he introduces a category he calls the accidental high yielders — stocks whose prices have taken a beating, boosting their yields. Some of these stocks could make a major move upward; Cramer tells you how to spot the ones that could take off. For the first time in any of his books, Cramer offers a portfolio of twelve stocks that he says are poised to profit from the economic recovery. And he gives investors a list of five regional banks that could make big moves and return a handsome reward to shareholders. As always, Cramer explains why investors can’t just take his word but have to “buy and homework” on these stocks to make sure that their stories don’t change.
List Price: $ 26.00
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Basic Options Trading: Options Strategies For Beginners
One of the top contributors to the financial website, Seeking Alpha, Rocco Pendola covers the most basic options strategies in this tightly-packed, accessible eBook. With a focus on covered calls, long calls, long puts and cash-secured put writing, Pendola argues that options, generally, present no more risk than stocks. In fact, when used as part of a relatively conservative game plan, options can mitigate risk. After reading this eBook, even new investors will have developed an understanding of basic options concepts and strategies that they can apply, when they deem themselves ready, in portfolios of all sizes.One of the top contributors to the financial website, Seeking Alpha, Rocco Pendola covers the most basic options strategies in this tightly-packed, accessible eBook. With a focus on covered calls, long calls, long puts and cash-secured put writing, Pendola argues that options, generally, present no more risk than stocks. In fact, when used as part of a relatively conservative game plan, options can mitigate risk. After reading this eBook, even new investors will have developed an understanding of basic options concepts and strategies that they can apply, when they deem themselves ready, in portfolios of all sizes.
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Financial First-Aid – Cramer Style,
First a caveat, Jim Cramer seriously annoys me. I rarely ever watch his show (especially after the notorious “melt-down”) and less frequently read his books. However, as a college instructor and business writer, I read a lot of business books and make a point of keeping up with what is in the popular press since it tends to come up in daily questions etc…admittedly, I was also curious how well a book claiming to help people “Get back to Even” was going to do in the ratings…it’s certainly a modest proposal at best and a constant reminder of financial pain at worst. Much to my surprise, Cramer actually mentions this early in the text so score one for Cramer!
The book is easy to read with a purely conversational tone; those that enjoy Cramer will feel right at home while those such as myself will still manage to get through it without constant irritation like listening to him on television. There is an abundant use of examples to explain any all all technical terms no matter how simple or complex but they do not (usually) insult the readers intelligence but rather enhance the reading nicely. The author assumes the reader has minimal prior exposure and takes little for granted so even novice investors or those that have always had their portfolio managed by someone other than themselves will not need to read with references in hand.
Now, as to the core of the concepts covered in the book itself. Cramer begins by presenting 8 new rules which are more or less “common sense” but well worth repeating given the typical lack of financial savvy of most “investors”. I suspect most people will enjoy the statistics and rationale more than the actual “rules” themselves but it effective presents a foundation from which the rest of the book is written while acting as the typical disclaimer for all financial related books (ie, get your basics covered first).
Like any investment related book, there are likely areas to agree and disagree with…but if one manages to pick up a few nuggets it is well worth the time and effort to read. This book is no exception. Cramer is Pro diversification, gold/precious metals, dividends, performing your own research and weekly updates for stocks that you select. He goes into more detail than usual in how to research these stocks, his rationale for selection criteria and examples from both sucessful and non-successful examples in his own past.
For those that are well versed in reading/understanding financial statements, most of this will be rudimentary but as a person that routinely deals with people in various stages of financial literacy – there is a strong need for user-friendly information that can be applied directly to one’s own portfolio. Cramer earns an “A”…he keeps the information direct, relevant and easy to understand while covering the flaws and limitations of everything from valuation to growth rates and the impact of “big money”.
After a fairly robust section on dividends (like a dividends 101 abbreviated course), Cramer goes on to name 12 stocks to watcch for the recovery including a few well placed plus for his show and newsletter. As a general rule, I despise books that are thinly veiled marketing materials but in this case, didn’t dock a point from the review because he showed quite a bit of self restraint and kept it to a minimum. Each recommendation is supported by a full rational including areas serviced, history, future potential etc as would be expected. Whether you agree or not, each is well worth the time for consideration and/or to use as a foundation for your own selections.
Bottom line – worth the time and effort to read. Novice investors will appreciate the examples and conversational style, more experienced investors will appreciate the actual stock selections with rational behind each even if you disagree. I suspect one of the largest complaints will be on what is NOT included in this book as well as the typical (and expected) diagreement surrounding Cramer’s general investment advice…of course, readers should not expect a radical departure and will get what is expected in terms of Cramer’s general investment orientation, style etc…
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|Ignore the short, angry critical reviews,
For prospective purchasers, hopefully you read the reviews to items before you buy them. In the case of this book, Getting Back to Even, I want you all to know that you can safely ignore the vague, uninformative, and unhelpful reviews left by some members (who probably haven’t even read the book). You should not be purchasing this book unless you know something about the author, Jim Cramer. He has a daily show here in the US, every week day at 6PM EST on CNBC where he discusses stocks and their companies. If you have aren’t familiar with Mr. Cramer, don’t buy this book. Buy his earlier books. Though they are not cataloged or described as a series, the different books focus on different aspects of investing. They all provide general investing information, but it loosely breaks down like this (I am not listing all of his books, just the ones I’ve read):
Real Money: One of his earlier books, it explains his methodology in an overview fashion. This is where I would recommend starting.
Mad Money: This book follows Real Money and goes into more detail on many aspects of Real Money, such as his prescribed homework for your stock picks.
Stay Mad for Life: This book focuses more on investing for retirement, so it’s not as suited to younger folks such as myself (25/male). But it is still a great guide with a ton of great information on preparing yourself for retirement at almost any age.. except perhaps if you’re already retired!
Getting Back to Even: Despite what some of the sensibility-impaired critics have implied or outright accused, Cramer never suggests that he is infallible, nor does he ever give you the illusion that if you do what he tells you that you will never lose money. He always makes it clear that investing in stocks, especially speculative stocks, has inherent risk attached to it and that no matter how good you are, you WILL lose money. The goal of his books is to help teach you how to minimize your losses and maximize your gains, with the only limit being the amount of effort you are willing or able to put into the process. Getting Back to Even is for helping those whose portfolios have been hit hard by the global recession. Again, this isn’t the right book to purchase as a starting point; read his earlier books first.
And just for the record, if all you did was listen to Cramer recommend a stock on his show, Mad Money, and then went and bought the stock without doing the homework he RELIGIOUSLY instructs you to do, you deserved to lose your money because you ignored EVERYTHING he has told you to do to make money. Mad Money, the show, is not a stock-picking show. He doesn’t just say the name of stocks he likes. He tells you WHY these stocks are good, in his professional opinion. He helps you with your research but he is NOT a substitute for it. Don’t attack him because you were too lazy or impatient to do it properly. All he teaches you is to basically learn as much as humanly possible about the stocks you own or want to own– how can that possibly be a “scam”?
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|Mixed bag of advice,
I liked this book better than some of Cramer’s past books on amateur investing and trading. The first few chapters provide a long-winded explanation of how economic recovery inevitably follows recessions, and Cramer explains how he learned lessons from past market declines. He also repeats his past message of ‘buy and homework,’ meaning that buying a stock requires a commitment of an hour a week of reading about the company, economic outlook and industry trends. He again cites the virtues of diversification.
This book may only have a shelf life of four or five months to take advantage of his recommendations, but he tells readers to put money into cyclical stocks that will snap back in the early stages of a recovery, such as Caterpillar, J.P. Morgan, Visa and Hewlett-Packard, among others. He provides a short list of regional banks that he says have strong balance sheets and will be well positioned to take over weaker financial firms. The chapters on options are somewhat oversimplified. He basically recommends buying deep-in-the-money calls on stocks you think will rise in the near future–of course, finding those stocks is the biggest challenge for any amateur investor.
Some of the best advice I ever got from any investment books is knowing when to sell, which often divides winning traders from losers. For that, I would recommend the book “What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars.” It’s an autobiographical account of a Chicago futures trader who discovered that he never was a real trader, only a buyer of long positions that happened to make money during a bull market.
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|Perfect Options Book for Beginners,
This book does exactly what the author intended it to do – provide a starting point for beginning option traders. Mr. Pendola was asked by a number of individuals that read his articles on Seeking Alpha to provide them with an easily understandable book on basic option fundamentals and strategies. After reading his book on my morning commute I believe he has more than accomplished his goal.
The book covers options basics, covered calls, buying naked puts and calls and selling cash secured puts. For the price, the easy read, and the options information he is able to get to the reader in short order, this book is a great starting point for someone interested in using options as a way to potentially increase their income.
One additional note concerning a few of the other reviewers. Mr Pendola took an bearish view of a widely followed stock (Sirius XM) on the Seeking Alpha website in a few of his articles. Because of his contrary opinion he received continual personal insults from a number of those bullish on the stock who disagreed with his opinion. It appears some of those have followed him to Amazon. Mr Pendola has written and continues to write articles which are posted on the Seeking Alpha website so if someone is uncertain about buying this book go read a few of those articles and then decide. Then again, we’re only talking about 9 bucks.
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|Ideal, concise book for beginner-intermediate investors,
To make this review more helpful, I figure I should I give a bit of background about myself. I am a 24 year old who started trading and following the market daily about 3-4 years ago. Moreover, I recently became more interested in options about a year ago and had been relatively successful, primarily through the use of selling puts (well described in the book). As someone who is quantitatively driven, I tried more complex option strategies through a simulated account but was not nearly as confident or successful with them and have yet to employ these strategies for real.
As I can assume was the case for many others, I discovered Rocco and his articles through Seeking Alpha. In particular, his articles regarding the use of options to double a simulated portfolio over a month, caught my eye. I have learned a lot through his articles and have done quite well using his research/insight as part of my analysis for various tech stocks. After reading his articles on Seeking Alpha, I became more comfortable with taking long positions in puts and calls. I enjoyed reading this book as it builds on the strategies his articles go over on Seeking Alpha and goes into the detail required for many of us. Personally, I enjoy his writing style and will recommend it to others I know looking to get into options trading.
However, just like investing in general, you should do your own research. Make sure you read the preview for the book and maybe read an article or two of Rocco’s from Seeking Alpha. After looking over the negative reviews for this book, I can only assume that these customers did not do their research or have some personal issue against Rocco stemming from the Seeking Alpha message board (fairly common situation). If you read what I suggested above and are still interested, then you won’t be surprised by the book’s contents and should enjoy it too.
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