• How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street

  • Golden Rules Any Investor Can Learn
  • By: Allan S. Roth
  • Narrated by: Scott Peterson
  • Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (129 ratings)

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How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street

By: Allan S. Roth
Narrated by: Scott Peterson
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Publisher's summary

Investing is simple, but never easy. We carry a lot of investment baggage, including hot tips from friends and the financial media, as well as complicated financial recommendations from Wall Street "experts". Yet the biggest obstacle we face is the tendency to outsmart ourselves. In order to overcome this obstacle, you need to follow straightforward strategies that will consistently push your portfolio ahead of the pack by an additional three to four percent annually.

These are strategies that work in up markets and especially in times of market crisis and panic. Most importantly, these strategies are basic enough for even a kid to understand.

Follow the story of Kevin Roth—an eight-year-old who was schooled in simple approaches to sound investing by his father, a seasoned financial planner—and discover how simple it can be to become a successful investor. Learn how to create a portfolio with the widest diversification and lowest costs; one that can move up your financial freedom by a decade and dramatically increase your spending rate during retirement. Hear about fresh new approaches to investing. Listen as they debunk the financial myths and legends that many of us accept as true and show you what it really takes to build long-term wealth with less risk. You'll also learn how not to confuse the unlikely with the impossible.

Whether you're young or young-at-heart, the straight-talking advice found here will help you:

  • Design a portfolio composed of a few basic building blocks that can be "tweaked" to fit your personal needs
  • Go beyond indexing, which owns the entire market, and actually beat the market
  • Reengineer your portfolio to stop needlessly paying taxes
  • Increase your return, regardless of which direction the market goes, by picking the "low-hanging fruit" we all have in our portfolios.

Engaging and insightful, How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street takes you through Kevin Roth's real-life story, while driving home key strategies and tools you can implement in your own portfolio. With just a little time and a little work, you can become a better investor. With this audiobook as your guide, you'll discover how a simpler approach to today's markets can put you on the path to financial independence. For more information, visit www.SecondGraderPortfolio.com.

©2009 Allan S. Roth (P)2010 Gildan Media Corp

What listeners say about How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street

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waste of time

If you invest in unit trust/indexs across the market and do not pay high commision rates you will bet the market. That is the book. If ever I wanted my credit back it would be for this book. And I have read alot of rubish.

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Good starting point

This book sparks a lot of great ideas for the buy and hold investor. Allan's interactions with his son are priceless and has pushed me to help my kids understand money.

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How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street: Golden Rule

I have over 200 books in my library and I went back just to write this review. I hope you read this before purchase it can save you credits and or money. Please dont purchase this book worst financial book i've ever tryed to listen too.

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Loved it.

This was a wonderful book. Really enjoyed it and listened a few times. The concepts are drilled in which make sense and are not complicated. What is complicated is the multitude of investment information and media noise that confuses and stifles one from getting started or making decisions. Maybe change the allocation % or international exposure etc. but this explains the why. Audio reader was very good as well. Thanks.

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Truly excellent book!

I’m a fairly new investor and this has been the best book and explanation on how to invest effectively.

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Wish He'd Write Another Book

I've listened to this book now three times and learn valuable information and get key reinforcements each time (even with taking copious notes). His arguments are importantly backed up by data, facts, & tax code considerations. In my opinion, the most valuable lesson is his continual emphasis on analyzing your after-cost, after-tax annualized return. This MAY mean even paying more taxes along the way (listen to his discussion on muni bonds), but you STILL end up with more money at year's end. His portfolio (re)engineering advice on holding bonds/REITS in tax protected accounts, ie Roth IRAs, and index funds (ie VTI, ITOT) in taxable accounts is very useful too, as this address taxes too.

Overall, this book contains a lot of practical incremental steps one can take to maximize returns, which will be more important than ever given his comments that stocks/bonds may not return as much as in the past (which sadly for all investors is a sentiment shared by Mr. Bogle, who even predicted they'll be even lower given dividend yields are lower nowadays).

Mr. Roth also has a subscription email which is useful & I daresay entertaining to read each month. Luckily, his articles are filled with performance benchmarking (with dividends reinvested I might add) and understandable data analysis which helps me with emotionless investing. These emails will continually enforce the principles of this book (for me, remembering to buy bonds no matter what age when people practically beat into me to be 100% stocks and that buying bonds is "being weak.").

P.S. His emphasis on how individual retail investors can also maximize their bond returns via bankdeals.com & bankrate.com with 2% alpha that FDIC/NCUA ensured is an area I need to look further into. AND the facts the author has fiduciary status & this book is peer-reviewed/fact-checked should never be underestimated. Mr. Roth also mentions A Random Walk Down Wall St (12 edition) which also is a great in tandem read.

Overall, I cannot say enough about this book. I hope he writes another book BUT I've heard book writing is akin to kidney stones, so I'll stick close to his newsletters & Stay the Course.

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Fantastic Book - highly recommend.

This book is a little beauty in simplicity and clarity of its message and style of writing. Narration is excellent. Overall package, in my opinion - fantastic.

I was very skeptical when I read the title. I usually feel like vomiting when parents start glorifying "brilliance" of their children. I thought for sure this was another one of "those". But on the contrary, the author played it so elegantly well that listening was a true joy. In its style it almost sounds like a reversed and purified version of the "Rich Dad Poor Dad" book.

I can't say I learned something revolutionary and eye-opening that will make me the next Warren Buffett. But to me the book did provide a great deal of useful information and clarifications making me understand things a bit better now.

To be honest, I think I like the best author's witty and informative style of writing and excellent narration. Those two alone would have been well worth my money and time.

Bravo!!!

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I liked it

Great Book !! Almost to good to be true !!! But simple to understand !!!

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    5 out of 5 stars

Great book on investing

This is a very great book on the investing. Very practical and fun to read.

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