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Category: Personal Finance/General Nonfiction
Description: When Karin Housley asked the financial expert who was handling the family investments to explain his strategy to her, he said, "You just wouldn't understand." Grrrr, she thought, and with that an investor was born. But Karin didn't want to head into the stock market's uncharted fiscal wilderness alone. She called ten friends--ten women ranging in age from twenty-nine to sixty scattered across the United States, all concerned about their financial futures--and urged them to start an investment club with her. They called themselves the Chicks Laying Nest Eggs Investment Club, held their meetings in an online chat room, and used the Internet to research, buy, and sell their stock choices. After two years in action, the Chicks are beating the pants off Wall Street's wise men. Their philosophy: Girls just wanna have fun, but Chicks want to learn something--and make a few bucks--along the way. Chicks Laying Nest Eggs is all about doing it all! Okay, okay. The Chicks know what you're thinking: "Yeah, right. An investment book that I can understand. Like that can happen." Never fear! The Chicks didn't know a stock from a stocking when they started their club, but that didn't stop them from learning (fast) or beating the market (big!) right out of the coop. And they didn't know a thing about computers, either. Here in Chicks Laying Nest Eggs, founding Chick Karin Housley starts right at the beginning and recaps everything the Chicks learned on the way to becoming Dow Jones divas. * What this thing called the market is and how it works; * How to start your own investment club, buy stock in some good companies, and build your own Chick-worthy returns; * All the essentials (and none of the double-talk) about the S&P, NASDAQ, market cap, mutual funds, bears, bulls, and all that other stuff that you always thought you'd never understand; * How to get a computer and get your club online so you can meet anytime, from anywhere--without crashing your too-busy schedule, or even getting out of your pajamas; * And, most of all, how to have a blast while getting your money to work harder for you than it ever has before. Chicks Laying Nest Eggs is the simplest step-by-step guide to investing in the stock market ever put together. It is for every woman, because the time has passed (if it ever really existed) when any woman could afford to be ignorant about her finances.
eBook Publisher: Random House, Inc./Crown, 2001
Books By Dames Release Date: June 2002

Available eBook Formats [Secure Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader/eReader (recommended)/Adobe PDF - What's this?]: SECURE MOBIPOCKET FORMAT [1.5 MB], SECURE MICROSOFT READER FORMAT [1.3 MB] - Requires Microsoft Reader 2.1.1 for PCs, SECURE EREADER (RECOMMENDED) FORMAT [1.1 MB], SECURE ADOBE PDF FORMAT [1.9 MB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [1.0 MB]
Words: 150000
Reading time: 428-600 min.
All formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"Chicks Laying Nest Eggs was the most popular investment club at Fool.com, having generated thousands of notes between members. This book builds off the excellent work that was done there, providing teams of investors the tools, the logic, and the sense of fun needed to beat the market."--Tom Gardner, coauthor of The Motley Fool's Rule Breakers, Rule Makers

I know what you're thinking: Yeah, yeah, another investment book. Another author peddling ten steps to becoming a financial wizard -- another "You Can Be a Millionaire" infomercial in print. I'll bet you're already figuring that this is going to make finance sound exciting for the first four pages, then lose you right after page five. That's not going to happen. I've read those "other" finance books. Lots of 'em. The last thing I want to do is be another dust collector on your shelf. I've done my darnedest to make sure this book isn't like anything you've ever read before. Here, you're going to watch ten women change their lives by changing the way they look at investing. How'd we do it? We started an investment club, studied a bit, and laughed a lot as we helped one another over the tough spots.

Starting or joining an investment club is going to be the most eye-opening experience you've ever had. You're going to figure out how to make your money work for you in ways you never dreamed of, without spending a lot of time. We've learned that the stock market has been the greatest engine for wealth creation on the planet, and "the guys" have been keeping it to themselves for too long. It's our turn, and an investment club is the perfect way to learn to safely navigate it. (Oh, and it's kinda fun... but don't tell the guys that part.)

This book is designed to be the simplest-ever step-by-step guide to learning how to invest in the stock market. It has to be, because it's the way my investment club learned. And I guarantee you that we made every mistake, every misstep conceivable, before we got together. I'm going to start from day one of the Chicks Laying Nest Eggs Investment Club and show you how we got to the point where our portfolio (don't worry, you'll find out what that is) has more than doubled the market (and you'll understand how great that is).

I'll teach you the basics of what the market is and how it works, how to start your own investment club and eventually buy stock in some good companies. So you don't have to worry about how you can fit this into your too-busy schedule, I'll show you how to get a computer and get your club online. Getting online will enable you and your club to meet anytime, anywhere, without even getting out of your pajamas (not that I don't ever get out of my pajamas. Come on. Not me. Puh-lease).

You'll learn how to make your monthly meetings fast and investing fun. This, mind you, while you are still able to watch the Today Show, put in a fifty-hour workweek, read your People magazine front to back, nurse the baby, and whip up dinner.

Buying a stock is actually just buying or owning a piece of a company. Instead of buying a pair of Gap jeans and feeling like you own a part of the company, you can actually buy a piece of the Gap (that's a share or shares of stock) which will make you a part owner of the company! Your goal is -- and if you have invested in or bought a piece of a good, strong company, your end result should be -- for the piece to be worth more the day you sell it than the day you bought it. That's a profit, and that's what this book is all about (with a couple of song lyrics thrown in.).

We are not going to talk about realizing the profit potential of market upticks due to metaeconomic gobbledygook. What did I say? Metaeconomic upticks? The Chicks talk about investing in everyday English. We have to, because this is the only language we know.

This book is for every woman, as the time passed long ago when any of us could afford to be ignorant about our finances. Need I go into the story of my auntie Eileen, who was widowed and clueless at the age of forty? Or should I tell you of my twenty-three-year-old baby-sitter, who's looking for a rich man to marry, and until she finds him, will continue to spend every penny that she's earned? How about my girlfriend who has let her financial situation spiral so out of control that she doesn't even know if she and her husband have any investments because he supposedly takes care all of that "stuff"? Or my neighbor who left his wife with only $65 in the checking account and moved out of the state with the perky young thing who lived next door? If I didn't get a move on it, this could have been me. Don't let it be you. (Tip: try to stay perkier than your neighbor.)

I don't want to scare you, but you have to do something now. I was so panicked a few years ago that I bought every investment book I could find at my local bookstore. I wanted to learn it all, every last thing about investing. Peter Lynch, Warren Buffett, Charles Schwab, Suze Orman, and the Motley Fool: I read them all. And yes, I did learn some things... but there I sat.

Even after I finished reading, I didn't do anything. I sat on my duff and let our "professionally managed" investment portfolio and our professional investment manager continue to intimidate me. I had the knowledge but didn't have the nerve to use it.

That reminds me of how I learned to knit. (Lame, I know, relating investing to knitting. If I could relate it to chess, I would.) I could have read four hundred books on how to knit-one, pearl-two, but until I actually picked up the needles and yarn, I never would have made that sweater with the yellow smiley face in the center. I had the book with the sweater's pattern; I just wasn't doing it. You have to do it to learn.

Which brings me to why an investment club is the best way for a woman to learn about investing by doing it. We are women. We need human contact and validation. We like to know that others think like us, and we need their feedback. God gave us the gift of gab, and here is the perfect place to use it. I needed to talk about investing with someone like me before I could make a move. So I gathered a bunch of my girlfriends and started the Chicks Laying Nest Eggs Investment Club. This was the only way I could have gone from on-my-butt-and-doing-nothing to learning and doing: I was on my way to becoming a Chick! Girls just wanna have fun, but Chicks wanna learn something along the way. And when it comes to investing, we'd like to make a few bucks as well.

Chicks are confident in their knowledge of both past and future investments; we can make sound decisions regarding them and have fun doing it. This book is for any woman who wants to learn how to invest in the stock market and has no idea where to start.

You're going to learn how our group went from ten fairly clueless women to a bunch of Chicks able to answer, without hesitation, "What stock would you invest in tomorrow?" I'll share our story and teach you how to start yours. You might even end up watching financial TV in the morning and understand what they are saying! It's a struggle at my house -- Katie and Matt or Maria Bartiromo and Joe Kiernan. (CNBC personalities are becoming cult icons, at least inside my four walls.)

Even if you don't think this is the best time for you to invest in the market, it is. There never is a "best" time, and how long have you waited already? How has all the waiting worked for ya? I know you've already tried these techniques: "I'm going to read that book and figure this out all on my own... next week" or "I'm going to sit down with a financial planner and have him explain what he does" or "I'll start putting money away after this paycheck." Forget it. Get your friends together and just do it. You'll learn about the stock market, and what your investments could and should be doing, faster than you ever imagined. Even if you have no money right now, invest a little through the club every month, whether it's $10 or $50, and simply learn about the market. Then when you do have some cash to put away, you'll know exactly what to do with it.

With this book, you won't need a lot of time to learn about the stock market. I'll give you enough basics to get started, and as you go, you learn more -- on your way to becoming another investment club success story, or retiring when you want to. Start with this book, a three-hour read, and then spend a little time each month on your research. You'll be amazed at your results. With a club, your research time is multiplied by the number of members in the club, so you get the benefit of their research too.

What snowballed out of our club knowledge was that each of us now uses the Chicks as our think tank for personal investments. We invest on our own, in addition to the club, but we get our information from club discussions and figure it into our own personal purchases. What better than real-world women discussing their beliefs about a company and bouncing ideas off one another? Would you rather discuss with a man behind a desk who has no idea what kind of jeans his kids wear, whose wife does the back-to-school shopping, or still doesn't have a home computer because he sits in front of one all day at work? You make the call. I cannot begin to tell you what investing in the stock market -- without the guidance of a broker, husband, father, or so-called expert -- does for a woman's self-esteem. Bring it on, chica!

I am not going to teach you how to read and track a stock hourly, how to buy and sell a stock within the same day, or become so obsessed with the stock market you don't have time for dinner with your dad. Those books are probably on the bookstore shelves next to mine, but stay clear. They're not for you, as you want to continue to have a life. I will not pretend to know everything about the market, because I don't, but the beauty of it is, you don't have to. Just learn the basics and start doing it is the best advice I can give. I wish I had figured this out ten years ago and written this book then for me to buy and read.

Many people will claim that the individual investor or little investment clubs of the world can't possibly do better than the big Wall Street firms. But you can, and we are. The Chicks Laying Nest Eggs Investment Club has consistently beaten the market since we began -- a feat 90 percent of the mutual funds are unable to boast. The funny thing is, it was easy. (What the market is and what the percentages mean is explained very plainly later in the book.) The investments that I have made on my own, because of the club, have also beaten the market. Thank you, Chickies!

Of course, there will be skeptics. The last thing the financial world wants to see is the individual learning too much, asking too many questions, and demanding answers.

If this were another "Read my investment philosophy and good luck to you" kind of book, it would not have been worth my time to write, or yours to read. This book will get you into action. By the end, you will be running for the hills with your girlfriends in tow, ready to take the plunge and invest in the stock market. Like the Nike ad says, just do it. Just get going, get started, buy the yarn, and see what happens from there. It's a continual learning process, but when you put that sweater on, whoa, baby... strut it.

Now go, go, just do it. I'll be the needles, you be the yarn.

Copyright © 2001 by Chicks Unlimited, Inc.