Investing QuickStart Guide: The Simplified Beginner’s Guide to Navigating the Stock Market, Growing Your Wealth, & Creating a Secure Financial Future

by Ted Snow

The book you wish you'd had before you began investing.

The Investing QuickStart Guide offers a simplified but expansive introduction to the world of investing. Author Ted Snow brings 30 years of experience in the finance industry, much to the benefit of novice learners and experienced investors alike. Snow provides readers with the complete picture on stocks, bonds, treasuries, ETFs, mutual funds, indexes, REITS and several other investment securities.

Snow’s intrepid but practical asset-allocation investment philosophy is marvelously
communicated and highly appropriate for market newcomers.

The key insights of Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Burton Malkiel, and James Altucher all play important roles in this seminal investment resource. But unlike most of today’s books on investment, the Investing QuickStart Guide threads the needle between thorough and simple.

You will learn the market from end to end, while also enjoying Snow’s fascinating personal stories and insights from the front lines of the finance industry.

Genres: Finance, Nonfiction, Self Help, Business, Money

200 pages, Paperback

Published September 10, 2018

About the author

My roots in the financial services industry started in 1987 when I began working at a well-known investment company based in Boston, MA. Over the next ten years, the best education I received was learning the securities industry while helping customers with mutual fund investing, individual securities trading, financial planning concepts, and learning to provide superior customer service.

In the last year of my career at this company, I grew uneasy. I had the desire to advise people with much more depth than I was allowed to. I saw too many people making emotional and risky financial decisions because they chose to “do it themselves”.

They simply didn’t know what they didn’t know.

Coordination of retirement, investments, insurance, business, estate, and taxes was how I could truly help these customers, which they were in desperate need of. While earning my MBA in Financial Planning at the University of Dallas, I developed a desire for entrepreneurship and decided it was time to take a huge leap of faith to start my own practice. With no clientele and armed with industry knowledge and the skill of great customer service, I set out to build a financial planning practice.

After spending eight additional years with independent firms building my practice, I founded Snow Financial Group, LLC in 2006 with the purpose of offering true “personal” service to my clients. We focus on two primary “values”.

First, offering great client service. To this end, and relative to other financial advisory firms, we keep our client list small to provide clients quick access to me and staff while cultivating great relationships.

Second, creating a comfortable and easy atmosphere where people like to come and talk about their financial lives.

The industry has changed so much since 1987; however, my passion around these core values have proven to be successful formula. Snow Financial Group, LLC starts with being personal.

Reviews

[Constantine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Investing is usually thought of as a complex and difficult thing that many people tend to avoid. They avoid it due to the fear of loss and because they think it is too complex and hard to understand. Here comes the requirement for a proper education and by education, I do not mean the traditional school thing but to read and read to learn. This book is very well written. The chapters are neatly structured and each topic is clearly explained with multiple examples and tips. Even though this is a beginner's guide for investments and stock markets, I feel even those who have some expertise or are professional can benefit from it. There are some very useful tidbits and reminders we tend to forget as we become more aware of investing. So this has been very helpful to me personally even though I am not a beginner.

For a beginner, this book is ideal because of the ease of language it was written. The author has successfully included all the main subjects that need to be covered to have an overall understanding of investing in stocks. bonds or derivatives. Many examples are included to make things easier to understand. The use of charts in different subjects was very appreciated too. The included glossary is very helpful too.

When you read this book you should expect yourself to understand the difference between investing in bonds vs investing in stocks, how to read stock tickers and stock tables, how the trading process takes place in a simplified language. You will also get an understanding of the various stock buying and selling orders like a market order, a limit order and stop loss order. The book has also a small part talking about the different market indices and the way we should react to a bull or bear market cycles.

I found the chapters talking about decision times and investment strategies to be very interesting and important at the same time. Many investors even those who are professional in their field tend to forget some of these and need to be reminded from time to time. In one of the chapters, the author has successfully highlighted two important problems that many investors suffer from when they tend to invest in the stock market and they are timing the market and treating the stocks as their children! That was an important read in my opinion because I have seen many investors do these mistakes.

If you are a beginner or a newbie to investments then grab this guide. It will help you a lot. It is very easy to understand and grasp, you will learn a lot from it and it will make investing much less intimidating than before for you.

I would like to thank Clydebank Media for providing me a copy of this book along with other digital materials including modules, video contents and free access to all these great materials on their website in exchange of an honest review of the book. I give the book a solid 4.0 out of 5.0 stars.

[Glen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this book in a goodreads drawing.

A wonderful book that gives a clear look on how investing works, and what stocks, bonds, and all the rest actually are. Filled with tips and strategies for building wealth.

Highly recommended.

[Mike Iacolino · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was skeptical about this book at first. I was offered it for free in return for a review. It turns out my skepticism was well-placed. There are a lot of typos and errors in this book. Some explanations of concepts are flat out wrong. Others are almost right, but technically wrong, which can be misleading. There is also an entire chapter thrown in the middle of the book about how one should hire a human financial planner instead of going it alone or using a robo-adviser. This can be good advice for many people. However, the chapter read like an advertisement, not unbiased advice. The author, a financial planner himself, was urging pretty much all beginners to hire a human financial planner. He also did not miss the chance to include his own website at the end of the chapter after he made his case for hiring a human financial planner.

The book is also disorganized and poorly written. It seemed to want to have a theme of value investing, but then would divest into other value-destroying methods of investing as well. In my opinion, the book tries to do a lot of things but really struggles to do any one thing well.

The good part of the book (which saved it from a 1 star rating) is in the first few chapters, where the author does a great job of explaining various metrics in the markets and different types of securities and funds. However, you can get all of this information in more detail through any investing website such as Investopedia.

Overall, I'd recommend not reading this if you're coming into it with no previous investing or economics knowledge.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an easy to read and understand guide to investing in stocks, bonds, and commodities for the novice. There are clear definitions of investment terms. The author gives tips on dos and don'ts, The one drawn back is the reliance on some kind of financial advisor. This was a free review copy offered by the author through Goodreads.com.

[Aisling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm always on the lookout for a book that can make complex information understandable and this one delivers. Much like its long title, this book packs a lot of info into its pages.

The brilliant thing about this book is that it hits every aspect of the stock market and investing but also that it hits every learning style. The book is full of not just explanations, but history, personal reflections, graphs and examples and even links to websites. As a whole, it is an incredibly comprehensive book. Because of this variation in approach this book is good for an absolute novice right up to a fairly seasoned investor.

I highly recommend this book. Definitely one of the best I've seen.

[Kirill · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a very broad book about investing, but at least it tells you a bit about PEs and dollar cost averaging and so on. Also touches on options and puts - all the fun Robinhood stuff.

[Kenny Kidd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serves its purpose thoroughly and well (even if its purpose is systematically stealing the surplus labor value of workers in the most secure and comfortable way to develop savings for your family and retirement because America doesn’t do social security and I don’t want to be homeless when I’m 65 😶)

[Amin Rezaei · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not an investor but I always follow Investing and money related news, when I first noticed that I won this book in exchange of my honest review, I was so excited and couldn’t wait for it to be delivered.

Let me start off with it’s cover, it has a nice design and color, good quality of paper and printing, and very smooth in my hand which I really liked.

In the beginner-friendly book has some sort of historical examples about $12 Apple’s share back in 2008 and Wal-Mart stocks when it first went public in the fall of 1970.

It tells you about not just the benefits and how to wisely invest but, The Risks of Not Investing
Many would-be investors stay away from the stock market because they do not want to put their hard-earned money at risk. Risk is a very important factor that should be considered very seriously by investors. This book has 9 chapters: The Language of Investing, Brokerages or Robo-Advisors, Strategies, Psychology, Time management, Beyond Profit and Investing Your Way to Financial Freedom.
In “Chapter 3: How to Use Time to Your Advantage, Grow Your Wealth, and Fund the Perfect Retirement,” which I really liked because you’ll learn how to protect not jus your future but your family.

This book’s topic says it’s for begginers but I found it even usefull for experienced investors, as there are some very useful tips and reminders we tend to forget as we become busy in professional life. it tells you how to react to a bull or bear market cycles and the difference between investing in bonds and stocks, how the trading process happens and how to read stock tickers and stock tables, in a simple language.

Some times I read a book and spend a day but I learn as little as of a page, which I’d appreciate because I believe what you’ll learn even as short as a sentence is priceless, and you will find that useful when you use it in your life.
I give trully 5 star out 5 because of all those reasons that I mentioned above, and I truley suggest you to order it today even if you’re not an investor or it’s not your interest. It is very easy to understand and grasp, you will learn a lot from it.
I’ll write my review on Amazon, Goodreads and Librarything where I won this book.
I’d like to thank John Donnachie and Clydebank Media for providing me a copy of this book along with other digital materials including modules, video contents and free access to all these great materials on their website in exchange of an honest and unbiased feedback for the book.
http://3ee.info/investing-quickstart-...

[Lady Brainsample · Rating 3 out of 5]

Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, ClydeBank Media!

Oh, boy. This was a good book overall, but I definitely have some Opinions on it.

First, the good.
1. This is truly an absolute beginner's guide to investing. When many books say that they're a beginning guide to fill-in-the-blank topic, a lot of times they're only sort of right in that they expect you to know some definitions and some basic idea of the topic already. Not so with this book. Probably the book's greatest strength is that it starts from the very beginning. In that vein...
2-3. I loved how the first few chapters had really great fundamentals of investing, including really great definitions and little story problem math examples on how the various items worked.
3. The chapter on various financial statement analysis metrics was another very good introduction to the topic.
4. He had a really good emphasis on not freaking out when your investments are down and selling off based on feelings. Buy low, sell high is a fundamental that you cannot go wrong on. It's just figuring out the highs and lows that can get ya, as is the way that "traditional" investing works.

And the weaknesses. For the sake of full disclosure, many of these items I consider to be weaknesses because I do not agree with the author's strategy of investing. I'll explain as I go.

1. Throughout the book, I felt really confused as to whom this book was meant for. The beginning chapters had all the great definitions and story problems. There was another chapter where he talked about how he as a financial advisor wasn't snobby enough not to want to advise middle class people (vs those advisors that only accept people with over a certain threshold to invest). Those things made me think that this was for the Average Joan like me who wants to save for retirement. But then, there was this whole long chapter on derivatives, futures, options, etc. His warning about how risky these instruments are was not as fear-inspiring as I felt it should have been had this truly been a book for the Average Joan like me. Which also leads into...
2. YOU CANNOT HAVE A DISCUSSION ABOUT ROTH IRAS WITHOUT DISCUSSING NOW VS FUTURE TAX RATES. I'M SORRY, BUT YOU CANNOT. Seriously. The author does not misstate the benefits of Roth IRAs in that their growth is not taxable, but you also have to take into account that if you're waiting until retirement to pull from the Roth, you will PROBABLY have a lower tax rate by then (in which case you should think about putting the bulk of what you can into traditional IRA so that you pay less money in taxes OVERALL IN YOUR LIFETIME.
3. Here's where we get into critiques because I do not agree with the author's overall strategy. The author believes that "The mark of an excellent investor is to consistently outperform the market." Over time, the total stock market average growth is 8%. Why shouldn't I just come up with a good asset allocation and just invest my money in a total stock market index fund?? As the Average Joan investor, I don't have time to perform fundamental analysis for every stock I pick, and I am certainly not going to have any sort of information that gives me any insight that people who actually do this for a living will have. The author briefly mentions indexes, but he doesn't present a compelling case either for or against them. Which brings us to....
4. Fees. There is a short discussion of mutual funds/index funds, but there is NOT ENOUGH EMPHASIS on how actively traded funds include all sorts of micro fees and commissions and everything that absolutely DEVASTATE your investment growth over time. There is no discussion on the numbers behind why you want a fund that has 1% or less in fees as well as being a fund that doesn't generate a high trading volume (back to point 3: as the Average Joan investor, I buy and hold because I'm literally investing in the ENTIRE stock market with my low-cost index fund. Unless the literal apocalypse comes, I'm betting with my money that the market will rally over the long term, and I'd rather have the stability of the entire stock market than have to make guesses about what's going to go up and down in an attempt to beat the market).
5. The author overstates the benevolence/effectiveness of financial advisors. To be fair, he did mention that you should expect your advisor to have an ethics statement as well as to be fully transparent about their fees. However, he did not emphasize enough that they need to be EXPLICIT about whether they are legally required to act as your fiduciary or not. If they're not your fiduciary, there is no incentive for them not to push you into riskier investments where they might have a commission you don't know about. I do concede his point that advisors potentially help keep a client from selling off in times of panic, but you have to have the right advisor.
6. There is a cursory chapter on FIRE at the end of the book. Which is fine, but....due to his own interests of being a financial advisor (and therefore wanting your business to come to his company) there is no discussion on the actual fundamentals about how most FIRE people go about it. There's no discussion of the benefits of index funds and no discussion on safe withdrawal rates (which I consider to be two of the most fundamental parts of most FIRE plans).

So there you have it. As a "traditional" investment book (i.e. pick your specific stocks, use an advisor, etc.) this is a good book. But when there's so much data out there on how likely it is that you will consistently beat the market with your individual investments You won't. I'm just not convinced that my total stock market index fund will be any worse than the alternative. In the words of John Bogle in The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, “Don't look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!”

[Robert Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I received an advance e-copy for free in exchange for a review. In general, I really liked this book because it does offer the beginner some sound advice about approaching investing from a logical and businesslike point of view, rather than an emotional or haphazard approach. I have two minor quibbles with the book; the first is about inflation and the second is about technical analysis. Up front, the author mentions inflation as a motivation to invest but then omits any discussion about why there is inflation in the US to begin with; this is pet peeve of mine because I recently spent the last three years of my life returning to college so that I could teach economics in high school. The US government has a direct, tangible interest in perpetuating inflation because of the size of the national debt, which is currently over $21 trillion; that's over $65,000 for every man, woman and child alive today in the US. Simply put, inflation benefits debtors and Uncle Sam is the biggest debtor of them all and if you are going to invest your own money you need to understand this.
My second quibble is how dismissive the book is of technical analysis, which involves charts and graphs. Fundamental analysis, which concerns the company itself, the industry, how the company is run, who the CEO is and all that and more, is great but also very time consuming. At any one time there are well in excess of ten thousand different investments available to investors and there simply are not enough hours in the day to do fundamental analysis on all of them. But if you use technical analysis as a screening tool in your tool box of many tools, and not as a Holy Grail, technical analysis can be an enormous time saver and valuable asset.
I worked for over five years at Weiss Research and Weiss Ratings in the early 2000s and I spoke to many investors during that time and I learned a lot about investing. This book is a good starting off point but I would still recommend the more traditional route of learning economics from the ground up and then, and only then, consider investing. But for the average person with no patience for that, this book provides a good beginning and sound advice about panics and timing and the like.

[Danielle Urban · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Investing QuickStart Guide by Ted D. Snow is an excellent introduction into investing. I have not yet started to invest in anything as of yet. Part of the reason is the amount of income I do have and receive and the other being the bills I have to pay. I wished I had taken classes that taught me more on how to invest like some high schools have started doing. However, I do not have to real or practiced experience in this field. Therefore, I cannot debate on anything this author says, without doing some extensive research. But I have found a lot of his information to be accurate. Just not fully in-depth. It is a beginner guide into the basics and does mention some non-basic knowledge that had me confused at times. Simply because I wasn't sure what he was talking about nor what it all entails. All in all, this gave me a great gateway into what investing is. I can recommend this book to others, who like me, don't know anything but investing. If you need more, I recommend looking into more advanced books on the subject. 

I received this copy from the publisher. This is my voluntary review.

[Rob Weir · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an investor with decades of experience and knowledge, I am naturally skeptical of most introduction to investing books. So many of them hype risky strategies, pushing more speculation than sound investing.

This is not one of those books. I found it to give a good, solid overview of the investing landscape, from the perspective of an individual investors. The author provides appropriate guidance regarding the risks of options and penny stocks.

The perspective is certainly that of the active, self-managed portfolio, which matches my inclinations as well. But it is probably worth reading this along with Burton Malkiel’s “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” for the efficient-market, pro-indexing perspective, to get both sides of the story.

(I received a review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.)

[Brittany Staples Dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Investing QuickStart Guide", does help with some introduction to lingo and understanding how it works. It discusses investing 12,000 waiting a year and making 6,500 profit. Which are to me large sums of money and a that you can for sure profit, but that you already need a hunk of money to start out. So, I just feel it's out of my leauge. Should I ever come into a large or even moderate lump sum that isn't needed for well... life, Ill give it some consideration because the evidence here shows it does go up if you can hang in there when it drops and buy the right stock. I received this ebook for my opinion. I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. It makes the way it all works understandable, but I feel Its for someone with alot of spare money who is already very secure financially.

[Joey Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall this book has many good insights. However, the author uses several terms and phrases that he assumes the readers “should know.” The book is called “Investing QuickStart Guide” so I think it would be better to assume his readers are new to investing.

He also makes a few discrediting claims. Like that Cokacola is one of the most moral companies in the world…. I encourage anyone who believes this to look into what Coke has done in Mexico, China and most horrifically, India.
And this idea that the average person should be investing 50% of their income is incredible naive. The “average person” cannot afford to invest 50% because rent, cost of living, loans, healthcare are all sky high

[Wise Panda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written book on investing for the long haul

The first thing I check when reading a book on investing is to check it's copyright date which is 2018. I'm writing this review on October 2020. So the laws is still current.

The author is well qualified as he is writing from a CFP's point of view which takes a holistic view towards investing for life instead of get rich quick scheme that promotes trading instead of investing. His emphasis is on maximizing quality of life instead of quantity of money. He even ended the book on social investing for the benefit of the next generation.

[Sherry Westendorf · Rating 5 out of 5]

People tend to shy away from things they don't understand or that scare them. And in this is something that you need to do to help plan retirement and many other things. I highly recommend this book and all that goes with it. It explains how, what, when, where, why and so much more on investing. There is no need to buy anything else for the information as this walks you through it. I loved reading this and I learned so much. I am excited to get started even at my age. I was given a review copy and voluntarily review it.

[Susan Liston · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was offered a copy of this book my first thought was to turn it down, because I have no need of such a thing, I know nothing about the financial world. Then it occurred to me that I DO need this book, desperately, BECAUSE I know nothing. Took me awhile to get through it, and I will no doubt have to read it again, because there is a LOT of information here, but it is presented in a way that is perfectly possible to understand, with lots of simple examples. If it can help a ignorance dunce like me, it can help anyone.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a useful overview of explaining the stock markets, bonds, shares for lay investors.

Whilst aimed primarily at the American investor, many of the terms still apply in the UK. It covers what a bear and bull market is, penny stocks, futures to name but a few.

I certainly thought it was useful to dip in and out of and the calculations provided to give more information was very helpful too.

I received this book from netgalley in return for a honest review.

[Kaila · Rating 4 out of 5]

im going to admit.. this is not my cuppa tea at all but... that being said this was a well written book. it wasn't hard for someone who knows nothing about this stuff to follow. i understood most of what the author was talking about and it was well informative.. i cannot promise whether the stuff is right or not because as i said i know nothing about this stuff but i think it would be an amazing book for those starting out and want to learn about investing. very well written book.

[Darya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have got and advanced reader copy of this book as a disclaimer. The book is very good overall if you are looking to understand the concepts of investing. It does provide a very good overview on investment options and types of investments from stocks, bonds to commodities. This book t can bring a value of you are looking to understand what is the investment for. The overall investment strategy suggested in the book need to be carefully considered.

[Maddie Stapulionis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catch me on the Forbes 100…

I bought this book to help gain some knowledge in investing for a project at work as well as personal investments and it was exactly what I was looking for. The concepts are broken down to be digestible, a wide variety of topics are touched on, there are many interesting examples, and the author gives his advice without throwing it in your face. Would definitely recommend to anyone looking to get an easy introduction to investing!

[James W. Lanning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ripped through this book in a few days and was better off for it as somebody who knew basically zero about investing and the markets. Great as a super high-level overview of investment products available today, but you will immediately want to start reading deeper books on various topics of interest.

[Aujé · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. I learned a lot. I wish there was more information on trading methods like swing trading and ways to better conduct technical analysis on stocks. Nevertheless, Mr. Snow does a great job introducing topics to new investors such as myself. I recommend this book to anyone just starting out and want a general overview.

[Stanley S. Frazier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very Effective Overview of Investing

Having invested in only long term retirement accounts, this was a good overview of all types of investing especially for those from a more novice perspective. It was a very enjoyable, well balanced approach and read. I feel it has given me a good foundation for strategy as I am now ready to open a taxable brokerage account.

[Kevin Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

If a stock goes down by 25% from the highest point it has attained since you bought it, then you should sell it off.

Parameters were set whereby the investment would be pulled out of the market whenever the balance dropped by 25 percent. The investment would reenter the market as soon as the market rose again by 15 percent.

[Tabby Shiflett · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect introduction to investing. Seriously, if you're not familiar with the general concepts of investing and need a solid and easy-to-read guide on the subject, read this book. It's more comprehensive than most and you won't get bogged down with investing terms and language. If you like this one, also read the author's retirement planning book. Recommended.

Net Galley Feedback

[Darlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good guide book for learning how to invest your money in the stock market. It is explained in easy to understand words and graphs. I really learned a lot from this book, it makes the stock market seem less intimidating to me.

[Scarolet Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great book to read. It was very imformative about trading things I never knew about. I highly recommed this book to everyone who wants to learn about trading.
This is my honest and unbias opinion of the story.

[Jobin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid basics on investing

A good compact book for beginners. It was very well explained and terms were defined as well. I would recommend it for anyone looking for a basic but thorough background that is also a short book.

[Alexandra Grimes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because I had limited investment knowledge prior to reading, the examples and author's personal insights were key attributes to making this an interesting and understandable read...I would highly recommend.