Product Description

from the best-selling author of the next big investment boom, this book provides everything you need to know about making the world's money markets work to your advantage, enabling you to turn basic investments into a winning portfolio.

big money, little effort shows you how a straightforward, manageable and stress-free investment system, if properly applied and monitored, can protect you from the volatility of the world's stock markets while ensuring consistent returns on your original investment. in an industry awash with different (and often very vocal) opinions, the author removes the mystique that often surrounds stock market investment and explains his own tried-and-tested system for managing your investments – a system that can be operated and maintained in a short amount of time, once a week.

the book includes a glossary of financial terms and a list of further reading resources. whether your investment is large or small, big money, little effort is the essential guide if you want to make positive returns from the stock market.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #239391 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Review

reviews, etc, for 'next big investment boom':

“shipman has succinctly distilled his mindset… in his view, the correct temperament for successful investors demands they see things as they are and evaluate everything with cold, unemotional logic.”

the sunday times

“shipman used a disarmingly simple trend-following technical approach to retire rich in his thirties. like all good ideas, shipman’s approach is deceptively simple. he buys when it is clear that an asset is moving upwards and he sticks with it until it is clear that it is no longer doing so…really impressive.”

the daily telegraph

“mark is a shrewd, disciplined and unemotional observer of the investment scene.”

fullermoney.com

“mr shipman is a highly successful investor and has invested in many different asset classes over the past 20 years. his trick is to spot an undervalued asset class, buy into it and stay with it as a “momentum investor” until prices first show sign of significant weakness and then sell out.”

ame info – middle east finance and economy

“mark shipman made a fortune for himself since leaving school at the age of 16, and is now investment adviser to a range of prestigious uk clients.”

money week

“mark shipman is a successful investor with a lengthy track record of doing what he preaches: essentially identifying a trend and following it as long as it continues and exiting when the trend ends. mr shipman writes in a tidy concise style without the waffle that many other investment books seem to be padded with.”

a private portfolio

“in an ongoing jousting match with the markets, mark shipman uses a disciplined technical approach to keep from being unseated. he has garnered some peerless returns.”

futures magazine

“his personal style could only be described as cautious. confident that his strategy will make money, shipman simply follows with impunity the signals he receives.”

futures market alert

Review

“removes the mystique that often surrounds the workings of the international markets in an easy to read style with many anecdotes.”

pensions world

Management Today, April 2008
"A bright, breezy read. The style is chatty and approachable. There's plenty of solid common sense."

Customer Reviews

More of a vanity exercise than investment advice!
Along comes another book which talks of a winning and profitable investment strategy. In fairness it contains some sound tips and most of the advice is not half bad. Some of it may even hold given the current economic malaise. However, it is not something exclusive to this book by Mark Shipman and I must admit after having read and rated his previous work on commodities trading, this title does not cut it for me at all.

As a journalist, I attribute this book's failure to engage with my critical eye down to a number of factors. First of all, Shipman raised the bar quite a bit with his last work which was a solid book. In contrast, this work comes across as a downer courtesy of its ordinariness. Secondly, it offers advice which albeit sound, does not stand out. Pretty much the same tips can be found pro bono on the Internet, minus fancy quotations and a pointless barrage of graphs. If you doubt their authenticity, the author of this book is not exactly betting his house on you making big money with little effort.

Thirdly, even though written in 2008, astonishingly there is nothing of value on short selling and treatment of downside risk is inadequate. Fourthly, there are many more in-depth and free-of-charge avenues available for information on tax issues such as capital gains tax than this book. Finally, in my opinion it has been hurriedly written to piggyback on the success of his last work by Shipman. Backing this assertion of mine is the fact that I found the index to be very poor. It is so brief that some of the copy-pasted "Glossary of terms" on financial websites that flood cyberspace would beat it.

Shipman's last book added to my knowledge and gave me a fresh take on the subject at hand. This book fails on both these accounts. Rather at times it comes across as a bit of a vanity exercise to gloss over and present trend assessments, trading strategies and general investment information already very firmly in the public domain.

5% content and 95% padding.
The really useful information contained in this book is so sparse that it would be more appropriate to write it on the back of a business card rather than fill a book with it.

Buy and sell signals are simply the crossovers of 30 and 50 day moving averages and these are used to trade the indices such as S&P500 and the FTSE.

In a blatant attempt to pad the book out the author fills 20 pages with the name of every company within the S&P500, the FTSE, the DOW etc.

After reading the book, I can't help but feel that the title of Big Money, Little Effort refers to the reasoning behind the writing of the book itself.

A little knowledge can be dangerous
I give this book one star to balance out the other inflated scores. (I would give it zero if I could - Amazon how many times have you been told this?) Early in the book, the author says "I reveal my systems and strategies because I can." The implication being he did it for enjoyment not money. He could have of course posted them on the internet for free. There is not enough in the book on downside risk, transaction costs, income tax and capital gains tax. (In my opinion beginners should not start here - try "Smarter Investing" by Tim Hale.) Also the index is too brief with key words not listed. Two pages in the book provide detail of the author's system, the rest is quite interesting but not that "new". Overall the book just prompted me to research several issues for myself. If you want to save yourself the cost of this book you should first perhaps undertake research on "moving averages" - simple, weighted and exponential. I am not sure the author goes into enough detail on the differences in these three. You may also like to research "Chartists" and "Quants". These revealed "systems and strategies" are by no means new and should perhaps not be used in isolation of other investment analysis/research particularly by novices.