I received an invitation to review this book from a publishing company, TCK Publishing. However, I did not receive any monetary compensation in return for this book review. I only got a free e-book copy.
The author of this book is Vishal Reddy. One Hour Investor is aimed at readers who have no experience with investing. It explains the basics of investing, the different types of investment instruments and investing strategies in plain and simple English. As the title of the book says, it aims to impart this information in the time of an hour. The primary target audience of this book is US residents but I believe basic investing knowledge is usable anywhere.
Layout of One Hour Investor
There are 11 chapters in this book with an introduction and a conclusion.
Chapter 1 to 8 discuss the basics of investing, from the basic financial concepts to the instruments themselves. These instruments include stocks, bonds, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Chapter 9 and chapter 10 are about taxes and retirement planning respectively. I feel these two chapters are unrelated to Malaysians, so we can skip these chapters.
The final chapter is about three types of investing strategies.
Highlights
The author introduces the time value of money (TVM) in the beginning. It simply means that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future. TVM works together with compound interest in investing to build up our wealth. This means that the earlier we start investing, the better the outcome we will achieve, provided that our returns are positive.
Even for beginners, I guess most people heard about fundamental analysis and technical analysis. They are two different styles for analysing stock investments. The author does not favour one over the other but instead recommends the combination of these two analytic styles when picking stock.
In the final chapter, the author talks about three investing strategies, namely aggressive, moderate and conservative. He prescribes a rough allocation for each strategy but advises that we adjust the allocation based on our own needs.
One useful feature that I found in this book is the glossary section at the end of the book. This section neatly presents the terms with their definitions. It can serve as a quick reference guide.
Conclusion
Although this is One Hour Investor, I spent more than one hour (but less than two hours) to finish it. The book is fairly straightforward as it is written for beginners. Nonetheless, I still learned a few things from this book, especially about bonds.
I would recommend this book if you are new to investing. However, if you already possess basic investing knowledge, maybe this is not the book for you.
Let me ends with some memorable quotes from the book.
“Given enough time, compound interest means the majority of your investment gains will come from interest, not principal.”
“ETFs are better for short-term investing and trading, while passively managed index funds are better for long-term investors who plan to buy and hold for many years.”
“Investing is best used as a long-term strategy to build wealth and financial freedom.”
“In the modern age, financial literacy is more vital than ever.”
Links
As part of the deal, I have to share a few links of the book, TCK Publishing and the author. So, if you are interested in One Hour Investor, you can click on the links below.
Here is the link to the book: https://geni.us/onehourinvestorm
Here is the link to TCK Publishing: https://www.tckpublishing.com/
TCK Publishing Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/tckpublishing/
Vishal Reddy’s official site: http://www.vishalreddyauthor.com
Vishal Reddy’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/vreddyauthor
