BOOKS I recommend:
LEARN ABOUT EXCEL AND SPREADSHEETS
Online Investment Hacks
— Bonnie Biafore (This the Bible of using spreadsheets, with examples of how to do most anything financial using the spreadsheet as a tool)
Excel 2010–the missing manual
–Matthew MacDonald (871 pages of how to get along with Excel.)
Excel 2010–Formulas & Functions INSIDE OUT
–Microsoft Press (All about Formulas and Function tools. A little pricy at $60 but invaluable if you want to learn to use ALL the formulas and function tools.)
LEARN ABOUT INVESTING
Decoding Financial Statements
— Tom Taulli (A great text if you want to learn about financial statements–clear and understandable.)
The Little Book of COMMON SENSE INVESTING
— John Bogle (It is about common sense investing. Very revealing information on index funds, compared to managed mutual funds. An easy but informative read. This is a “must read” for investors–beginners and experienced–particularly those with a 401(k) or other type of retirement plan.)
Personal Investing–the missing manual
–Bonnie Biafore (Bonnie is a very talented writer and her writing is understandable) A great book for the beginner investor and serves to confirm what the experienced investor should know. Excellent!
A Random Walk Down Wall Street
–Burton G. Malkiel (This book amplifies what is in John Bogle’s book above. A little wordy but very much worth reading.)
The Elements of Investing
— Burton G. Malkiel and Charles D. Ellis (A little heavier reading.)
Bear with me and read the information below about the spreadsheets on this site–there are multiple options.
ABOUT SPREADSHEETS: You must have a “spreadsheet” program installed on your computer to run a spreadsheet — Microsoft Excel. MS Office is available as a Student version, at a reasonable cost which I recommend. Some of my spreadsheets will run on older versions of Excel–Excel 2003 or newer. Some will not, and the version of Excel required is indicated next to the download link for each tool.
The downloadable investment tools on this site call for the inputting of various company data–taken from the Annual Report, the Stock Selection Guide, etc. By manually entering minimal data, or simply the ticker symbol for a company, calculations are automatically made and results are compared to selected investing standards. Results are displayed on the screen both in text form and through changing colors in data cells and verbiage, as well as graphs.
Each tool contains “help” comments which pop-up when the cursor is held over certain cells. These explain how a result was determined or indicate the importance of the result. Most tools also contain a page of step by step instructions.
You must download the file on this site which will operate with the version of Excel installed in your computer. Mac users must use the manual form. Sorry, the Mac cannot download the required data from the various Internet sites.
I recommend the purchase of the Student version of Microsoft Office. If you are a serious investor, the cost is reasonable, considering the ease of use and time saved.
ABOUT PDF FILES: Some files are in a PDF format (Portable Document Format). These are mainly informational files containing text. If you are unable to open a file with the PDF extension, download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Once it’s installed on your computer, double click on a PDF file and it will open automatically. The Reader doesn’t allow changes to be made to the downloaded file, but printing and saving it to your computer are allowed.
Whew! You made it! Now click on the tabs at the upper left of this page and take a look at the descriptions for each tool in each area.