Rory Gillen's free book: "A guide to sound investing"

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Brendan Burgess

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Rory Gillen has a book which people can get a free copy of by email.

http://www.gillenmarkets.com/

I haven't read it yet, but he usually offers sound advice on investment and risk:

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Anyone with the time to write a review?

Brendan
 
I just liked the way he said "when she invests her money" for lots of examples. I thought Rory was speaking to me directly!
 
The book was given away free in hard copy with the Sunday Times a few weeks ago. If you are not willing to supply Mr Gillen with an e-mail address you can, at present, download it for free in Kindle format from Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Start-Thy-Purse-Fattening-investing-ebook/dp/B01M8I1YPU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1479984911&sr=8-2&keywords=rory+gillen
 
The book was given away free in hard copy with the Sunday Times a few weeks ago. If you are not willing to supply Mr Gillen with an e-mail address you can, at present, download it for free in Kindle format from Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Start-Thy-Purse-Fattening-investing-ebook/dp/B01M8I1YPU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1479984911&sr=8-2&keywords=rory+gillen

Email no problem................it was the extra details.......... :rolleyes:
 
Well I got the booklet from Kindle and had a read.

Its quite a basic background discussion of some things that anybody investing should be aware of. It does try to stimulate investing and points out some pitfalls and risks. As a very short summary it points out the benefits of investing and the value of compounding over the years, the advantages of diversification and the need to stay away from spread betting and day trading. It does this in a nice conversational style with quite a few examples. It also describes some of the various types of investments and explains that markets go up and down and the hidden but substantial cost of guaranteed returns.

I would be very worried if somebody was investing anything other than exploratory sums without being aware of these matters.

However, the book is certainly not a 'how to invest' type book.

Apart from avoiding the general pitfalls mentioned above, it gives few pointers towards selecting investments. For example, there is nothing about how to compare shares, no explaination of terms such as p/e, dividend yield, cover etc, reading the financial tables, fee structures on funds, avoiding churning etc etc. I would consider these items as essential knowledge for anybody investing for themselves and also for anybody who wishes to discuss investments with an advisor.

Clearly the booklet is designed to drum up business, and i'm not knocking it for that. But perhaps this is where the above limitations spring from.
 
Could be compared to buying a book titled, "Learn to read", without being able to read, so a bit of a conundrum there really. Mr Gillen is, I believe, quite successful in his line of business and imagine this offering is a way of (as the last writer said) drumming up a bit of business. Guess there's no harm in that but there's an awful lot of the same type of offering all over the internet.
I found it contained plenty of basic information that most people would know so could be called informative just for that, but short in detail. What makes Coca Cola a buy and lets say, Providence a very chancy investment is never explained, etc, etc. Ok to read but nothing else and barely holds the attention to be honest.
 
I profoundly disagree with the idea that this is basic stuff. We live in a country where gombeen investments have devastated people's wealth. It is vital that investors are educated around the basics. Otherwise the gombeenery will continue.
 
I profoundly disagree with the idea that this is basic stuff. We live in a country where gombeen investments have devastated people's wealth. It is vital that investors are educated around the basics. Otherwise the gombeenery will continue.

I agree with you on the gombeenery element of investment, but do remember a massive amount of the money lost through that very same gombeenery was done by professionals in the economic field working in our very educated banking industry.
 
I signed up and got the pamphlet. I have no issue with the writer or Davy Stockbrokers having my name and address.

I didn't have to move past the introduction before I was given pause for thought by the startling announcement that "three good quality Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) have listed on the Irish Stock Exchange". REITs are the latest derivative to land on stock exchanges.

"What's a derivative?" you may ask. A derivative is a bond (some would say a junk-bond) that in and of itself has no value because its value as such depends on the value of the underlyings. Underlyings are, generally speaking and in order to keep things simple, currencies, precious metals, stocks, shares or other assets that may rise or fall in value on their respective markets. A derivative spreads risk, theoretically, by varying the assets a bond-holder invests in. BUT buying a derivative bond does not give you access to or ownership of the underlying assets. If you buy shares in a company, you own that amount of the company's assets on the day you buy them (let's not get into A or B shares, special shares, preferential shares, etc.) You share in the profits or losses accumulated by the bond over the time you own the bond. So if the currencies, and precious metals making up your derivative or bond earn money, and your oil shares, for example, take an equivalent or deeper dive in value and declare no dividend, you earn nothing, but you must still pay your brokerage fees.

As with other derivatives, buying into REITs gives you no access to or ownership in the assets, i.e. buildings, building sites, rentals or leases, etc. in the property portfolio managed by the Trust and your share of any profits (or losses) depends on how well the company does after all costs are deducted in line with standard accounting practices. As with other derivatives, naturally you pay the piper whether he plays a tune or not.

So what happens to the money you pay out for the bonds / shares in the Trust and brokerage fees? They have probably been invested in the real underlying assests and may earn a decent return, particularly at this time and in this market.

So there you have my 2p worth based on reading as far as the derivative part of the pamphlet.
 
In response to the above observation, you may be misunderstanding what REITs are; they are funds that exclusively focus on owning a portfolio of properties - as opposed to shares - and they are listed on a stock market (they are listed funds)......that's explained later in the booklet, but not in great detail as the booklet is aimed at being an introductory overview to what constitutes sound investing. In Ireland, our knowledge of investing is well behind that of the US and UK. In both those regions, there's a long history of wealth so it's not unsurprising that the average person in the US and UK is more clued in regarding investment matters than perhaps we are in Ireland.

REITs - Real Estate Investment Trusts - have been around in the US since the 1960s and the UK since the 1990s (I think). In my view, REITs are superior to the life company open-ended property fund structures, which are unsuitable for holding/owning illiquid assets such as property. REITs, which are closed-ended funds are more suitable for holding illiquid assets, such as property. This is outlined in more detail in an article I have written for this week's Sunday Times.

There'll be a Featured Article on the same issue on our website next Monday. For anyone on AAM who has downloaded the 64-page booklet, you are now on the GillenMarkets database and will automatically be notified when we publish new Featured Articles. They can be accessed by members and non-members alike. It's all part of our marketing for (potential) new subscribers to our weekly newsletter, the only one in Ireland. Like any database, you can unsubscribe at any stage.

I'll send Brendan the link to the upcoming Featured Article and he can post it if he wishes. If you have an open mind, there's always something new to learn about investing. For myself, it's a bit of a hobby, too. I'll read an investment book just for one good line, one good observation. Apart from improving one's knowledge, it can also improve how to communicate key messages better. There's many times when I have come away from reading a new investment book with no new knowledge, but an example of how to communicate a complex issue simply. The Coca-Cola chart on page 36 in the booklet is a case in point. In that case, the chart does paint a 1,000 words!

To understand what risk is took me years; not sure why, maybe there's so much noise in markets that it's more difficult than one envisages at the outset to see the wood from the trees, or maybe I could have benefitted from a mentor earlier in life. Thankfully there's plenty of good investors who have written their knowledge down and for a few pounds or dollars one can benefit from another's life experiences. Thank God for that, as I certainly have benefited from others' writings. Action, of course, is also a learning tool and there's little substitute for practical investing. Some on this website have previously said that there's nothing to learn in books. I beg to differ, but each to their own.

The 64-page ebooklet should be particularly useful in the providing an understanding of risk and how an investment plan can mitigate those risks. My aim was to articulate that in a way readers can understand.

The 64-page booklet is available for download for Free only until next Friday. Someone on AAM observed that it's available on Amazon for Free. That was an error, and it'll be taken down from Amazon shortly. It will be on Amazon again at some stage in the future, but at a fair price.
 
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Sorry I forgot to say the pamphlet makes the point about buying into real assets by investing in stock markets and then springs REITs on you in Paragraph 2, Page 3 in the Introduction. A Page 3 proposition?
 
Thanks for your response. Would you be happy with my (brief) explanation of derivatives?

If I invest in a REIT, and a REIT is not a derivative, what do I get?
 
Thanks for your response. Would you be happy with my (brief) explanation of derivatives?

If I invest in a REIT, and a REIT is not a derivative, what do I get?

Shares in a company that specialises in renting out property and gets a corporate tax exemption if it compiles with certain rules to distribute most of its earnings by way of dividends
 
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