Taming the Lion: 100 Strategies for Investment, by Richard Farleigh
Many stories about investments and making money from the stock market make it all sound so easy- you do a bit of this, a little of that, and the next thing you know you're living in Monaco and spending all of your free time jet-setting around the world.
Richard Farleigh, one of the people who brought you Home House, does none of these things in his book, Taming the Lion: 100 Secrets for Investing. He makes it clear just how difficult it is and how much hard work is put into making money in the stock market.
Friends
of Mr Farleigh persist in asking him what his secrets are, how he works
the market and has been so successful. Approximately five years ago he
decided to sit down and give these strategies to everyone via a book.
His book ends up being not only a set of guidelines and common sense for
the investor, but also a rags-to-riches story about how hard work put
an adopted child from Australia into the ranks of the top ten angel investors
in Europe.
The book is broken down into ten chapters, each of them outlining words of wisdom for stock, bond, derivatives, currency and angel investment, along with anecdotes about times when he gained, lost, and/or the fascinating people he came across in the meantime.
One theme that repeats itself throughout the book is, have a comparative advantage, or an edge, before investing in anything- "be wary of starting a business selling ice cream on the beach if there are hundreds of sellers there already".
And write down your comparative advantage in order to go back later to review it. Mr. Farleigh identified his advantage in trading and investments, and these advantages over the years became the 100 Strategies that he shares in this book.
A few of these strategies are:
- Assess risk- and then double it
- Big ideas offer big opportunities
- Crisis situations almost always offer an opportunity: "a falling price triggers more panic selling than it does bargain-based buying"
- Chartists are nothing more than astrologers
- Small companies offer more opportunities than large companies
- Avoid trading in options if you do not understand their pricing
- It is not true that markets usually overreact
- <Don't buy falling markets
"Taming the Lion" shares with traders and investors one extremely successful man's story fear of trading after losing a significant amount of his own money to not only conquering that fear but rising so far above it as to become one of the top European investors. This book has inspired me to learn more about trading, to start doing some research, and potentially invest my own money into one of the markets. And with Christmas coming up, I'll also be buying this book for my New York City bond-trading brother.
To find Taming the Lion, go to www.amazon.co.uk
For more information about Richard Farleigh, please go to www.farleigh.com
 |
Amy Chiaverini is an Analyst at Ariadne Capital