Mutual Funds For Dummies, 6th edition Paperback – January 1, 2010

Mutual Funds for Dummies - Eric TysonAs an individual who has traveled down the well trodden pathway of mutual fund investment and have stumbled and admittedly lost my way this book has proved to be extremely valuable.Certainly much of the practical investment psychology offered in this guide is just plain common sense - the one thing that many of us through out the window or never give thoughts too.Let me summarize: determine your goals, study the risks and rewards, steel yourself for the ups and downs of the market, periodically review your investments, made carefully adjustments to your portfolio as required and sit back, take some deep breaths and relax.This is your typical Dummies book as far as basic format is concerned - including those wonderful Tennant cartoons. Author Tyson writes with authority on the subject and provides a mini encyclopedia of mutual fund information that I believe many seasoned and novice investors will find useful.

I like "Dummies" books and specifically chose this one after looking at several available on investments. This book's content was written in an easy to follow manner and is full of helpful information. I used what I learned from the information available to get my 401k mutual fund selections in order. I am already noticing a decent increase in return on my investments. I prefer my books in Kindle Ebook format and found it easy to navigate on each of my Kindles. I will use the book now as more of a reference since I have read it.

This book has very good content! Eric has a talent for making a complicated subject easy to understand. I love how he starts from the beginning with explaining what stocks and bonds actually are. I have learned A LOT from this book and I recommend it to everyone who wants to save up for retirement or buying a house in the distant-but-near future. I would have liked some more into depth economic info (alpha, beta, sharp ratio ...) because I'm an engineer and I like numbers :).Grade AAA book.BUT I bought the "Kindle" version of this book, the layout is completely messed up in my opinion. It is just a "flattened" version of the normal "For dummies" layout which, in my opinion makes it more difficult to read sometimes. A few examples, the little "Tip" or "Remember" icons appear IN the text causing a lineshift instead of appearing in the margin like they should. And the shaded extra info parts (like "A (brief) history of mutual funds") it has a note "begin sidebar" and "end sidebar" but there is no proper layout apart from the box around it. Everything looks too flat. I would have prefered a 1-1 conversion in a PDF instead of this!This is why I subtracted one star, the content of the book is AAA.

I just retired and life has been a whirlwind. I know it;s late to start the investment game and the banks are paying next to nothing on what little money I have. But it is time to make a move and enjoy what so many other brave people have done. I was terrified of loosing what little money I have my cousin gave me the push I needed to get started. He suggested this book and I am so grateful he did. Investing is such a scary thing in todays economy and this book gave me the information I needed to begin playing the game. Mutual Funds for Dummies calmed the fears and was an invaluable took in choosing between minimal and middle of the road risk accounts. I feel confident in my investments and have been watching the money grow over the past week! I'm sure there will be bumps in the road for my investments but so far the accounts I invested in are making profits much more significant than a bank. At the rate my money is compounding I;m sure I can weather a financial storm and still be ahead of the local banks offerings. I wouldn't have made the conservative investments without the information in this book. I would recommend this book to anyone who feels apprehensive about investing outside of their local bank or for beginners of any age.

The book is repetitive and could have been trimmed down to at least to its quater size. It needs a concise information in easily presentable form instead of lengthy chapters after chapters on why people cheat you, what kind of people cheat you etc. Also the tables and figures in the "latest" edition are old dated. I bought the kindle edition and the tables are very difficult to read because the figures are so small and blurry.This book did clear some concepts for me but the information was difficult to hunt between a lot of unnecessary information. It spends so much time on why you should not believe your fund adviser, broker etc. so many times in so many different chapters. What I was expecting was to-the-point no BS kind of a book. Instead I got this boring sermons which distracted the attention from useful stuff. I spent around $15 on it. $5 should have been the right price. Or just buy a used previous edition .

Although I started this book, Mutual Funds for Dummies, in self-defense when a financial issue came up while settling the family estate, I found I actually liked reading it. Not only is Eric Tyson clear and uses real-world examples, he defines vocabulary which is important for any field of study.As an early techie, no one could understand me when I babbled off about mounting diskpacks, aseembler language, and integer strings unless they were also in the field.Knowing the relevant vocabulary lets you "get" what you see on the news, in your investment statements or hear from professionals.I can check the impact of my operating expenses (now that I know what they are and what their impact is) against those funds the author mentions and can have a "more adult" discussion with my broker.Mind you, I'm no dummy. The nuts and bolts of investing have just come to me late in life which is perfect -- now I have the time to study it, and spend the profitable results.Thanks Eric.