The author of The Women’s Guide to Successful Investing is Nancy Tengler. She has experience of managing tens of billions of dollars globally. She is also a columnist, author, financial news commentator, and university professor. This book’s primary audience is women and the author wants to increase the readers’ financial IQ.
Layout of The Women’s Guide to Successful Investing
The Women’s Guide to Successful Investing consists of a foreword, a preface, 14 chapters, and an appendix.
The first seven chapters are the basics that the author wants the readers to learn.
The next four chapters contain the analysis of some stocks and her stock recommendations.
The last three chapters contains the lessons and advice from the author.
Highlights
The main point of this book is the 11 Intelligent Investing Rules. I will summarize them in my own words.
We should have an investment discipline that meets our objectives. Do not invest in a company that we do not understand. Be fearful when everyone is greedy and vice versa. Diversify but do not overdo it. Do research before buying a stock and remain diligent after purchasing. Make adjustments when new information becomes available. Focus on price and yield.
In short, the author wants us to understand our risk tolerance and develop an investing discipline that suits our goals. The author states that the necessary traits of successful investors include discipline, a respect for risk, and lower levels of trading, which I agree.
The author also talks about her investing style which is growth at a reasonable price, a mix of growth and value investing. She also adjusts her portfolio based on market weightings. For example, she does not allow a sector in her portfolio to appreciate over 50% more than the S&P sector weighting. Her criteria of selecting stocks include great management team and corporate culture, brand and industry dominance, and innovation or adaptability (qualitative factors) and the dividend as management’s proxy for earnings growth, price/earnings ratio, price/sales ratio, and price/earnings to growth ratio (quantitative factors).
One statistic that I find important is the long-term average annual return for the stock market in US over the last 100 years (in 2014) is around 9%. The author also introduces a few financial websites such as Bloomberg (where we can get the price-to-earnings ratio of S&P 500), Yahoo! Finance, Stock Rover, and Guru Focus.
Conclusion
Though the title of this book clearly shows that it is meant for women, I think it is a good book for investors of both genders. There are not many technical knowledge in the book but the author really makes a case for long-term investing.
I will end this with some quotes from the book.
“Investing is a long-term discipline that will generate excellent returns for patient investors.”
“Remember that there is one tried and true investing tenet: Things are rarely different.”
“Buying early is one of the occupational hazards of being an investor.”
“Arrogance is the first step down a slippery slope to potential losses.”
“Investing is as much about taking risks as it is about knowing your limitations.”
“Investing is akin to building equity – to buying a portion of a corporation and waiting for it to appreciate.”
Recommended book
I borrowed this book and could not find a store selling it online in Malaysia. So, if you know where to get this copy, kindly let us know in the comments section below.
