Rule #1

By: Phil Town

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's Summary

Before I became "Phil Town, teacher of investing principles to more than 500,000 people a year", I was a lot like you: someone who viewed individual stock investing as way too hard to do successfully. As a guy who barely made a living as a river guide, I considered the whole process pretty impenetrable, and I was convinced that to do it right you had to make it a full-time job. Me, I was more interested in having full-time fun.

In this book I'll show you how I turned $1,000 into $1 million in only five years, and then proceeded to make many millions more. I came to investing as a person who wasn't great at math, possessed zero extra cash, and wanted a life, not an extra three hours of work to do every day.

Fortunately, I was introduced to The Rule. Rule #1, as famed investor Warren Buffett will tell you, is don't lose money. Through an intriguing process that I'll clarify in this book, not losing money results in making more money than you ever imagined. What it comes down to is buying shares of companies only when the numbers, and the intangibles, are on your side. If that sounds too good to be true, it's because the mind-set I'll be introducing you to leads not to bets but to certainties. Believe me, if there were anything genius-level about this, I'd still be a river guide collecting unemployment much of the year.

What I won't waste your time with is fluff: a lot of vague parables reminding you of what you already know and leaving you exactly where you started. This is the real deal, folks: a start-to-finish, one-baby-step-at-a-time approach that will allow you to retire 10 years sooner than you planned, with more creature comforts than you ever imagined.

©2006 Phil Town (P)2006 Books on Tape

Critic Reviews

"Town's ability to break down that philosophy into a detailed, step-by-step program that can be understood by any reader with basic math skills is unique....Will leave readers feeling empowered and ready to manage their money themselves." (Publishers Weekly)

Buy the book - not the audio!

5 Stars for the content; 1 Star for Audible.
Great stuff! I'm excited about becoming a Rule#1 investor and have ordered the book. So I recommend you consider learning these skills and practicing this approach to investing.
Unfortunately - for me at least - there are too many critical references to calculations, tables and lists of numerical data that make Rule #1 entirely inappropriate for an audio book. I might feel otherwise if the author and Audible were to make this key information available in downloadable PDF format (the way that "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins does on this website). Imagine someone reading the financial tables of a newspaper to you while you try to draw a chart of it in your mind and you'll understand what I mean.
That said, the segments that are less focused on numerical calculations and analysis offer some great learning value in the form of an audio stream.

I can't wait to get my hands on the book!

- Hope this helps!

50 of 51 people found this review helpful

excellent book but...

Again I would give the hardcover book five stars but the Audible format 3. Not that the Audible format isn't well done and the narration is excellent. It's just that you need the book too. If I were to buy again I would buy the abridged version and the hardcover.

Anyway, I found myself up 'till 5:00am with my MP3 player, the book, and my laptop browsing msn.money.com and the website given in the book. It was a bit of an overload but enjoyable information. I'll start paper trading in a few days and see how I do. It's an exciting prospect.

23 of 23 people found this review helpful

Excellent book, Fair listen,

Rule #1 investing is an excellent book however the content requires a hard copy to follow all the charts and numbers. I will end up buying the hard-copy before I listen to the audio a second time. This is somewhat of a workbook that requires pen and paper note taking.

17 of 17 people found this review helpful

Good; but need the book as well.

This is an excellent book covering the basics of investing. I found that I needed to order the hardcover book as well, as much of the data on the audiobook is difficult to follow just by listening (a number of charts, formulas, and tables). Paired with the book, this is an excellent listen. As an audiobook alone, it is an enjoyable listen, but you won't get the full benefit of the text.

16 of 16 people found this review helpful

glad i listened...wish it had a pdf for the tables

easy to understand for someone with no background. feel that i learned a bunch. but wish it had a reference guide to download for all the charts, graphs and examples. may buy the physical book for further understanding.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Investing Bible

I have gone through dozens of books on investing lately and this is by far the best. The entire process of finding, buying and selling exceptional stocks is outlined step-by-step. This is not about some magic formula, this about finding stocks that have meaning to you, and would be proud to own, then doing a little homework to determine whether the stock meets fundamental criteria he believes crucial to growing companies. He shows you exactly where to find this information and the tools he uses to get in and out of market. A lot of his ideals are based on those of Warren Buffet and Benjamin Graham but updated for the modern age of internet.

After being a somewhat of a day trader over past couple of years, I believe this is a great compromise between old school buy hold and short term investing. I cant wait to get started...

19 of 21 people found this review helpful

The perfect way to get started

Like so many others, I thought there was something mysterious about investing, something I would never fully understand. After listening to "Rule #1" and learning the techniques, I'm now able to analyze and calculate a stock's intrinsic value with no sweat! I now watch CNBC News and other business programs with great interest & understanding. I'm now in the market, and so far so good... the best part is that I'm ENJOYING this new way of making money! Many thanks, Phil Town!

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Absolutely the BEST!

OUTSTANDING BOOK... Like other people that wrote reviews, I had to buy the hard back for detailed STUDY, but the audible download allowed me the time to listen once through to get the main ideas. I read the hardback twice. Must have book... Simply the best book on investing i have ever read and one of the most useful books of all time. Phil Town has masterfully guided this boat down some treacherous waters. (listen to chapter one and you will know what I am talking about)... Can't write any more, I have to go research three companies ;-)

9 of 10 people found this review helpful

Value Investing

If you are looking for a book to help you take control of your own financial destiny then I can't think of one better than Rule #1. Take Phil Town up on his offer to show you, step by step, how to invest like Warren Buffet and Benjamin Graham.
Hey,I am never going to have the time to be a day trader. Neither am I willing to sit back and hope that my mutual fund manager does better than last year. Instead, this book offers a no-nonsense approach based on finding great values and waiting for your opportunity to buy them at a discount. I was immediately impressed by the logic behind this method, though I had lots of questions. Questions like: "How do you know what the true value of a company is?" and "How do you know when to make your move?" Sure enough, all of my questions were answered by the time I finished the book.
I am frankly excited about trying this for myself. I see very little downside (after all, rule number one is "don't lose anything!") and I see the upside as being very, very good indeed.

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

Good but needs data sheet

This is the first financial book that I have downloaded here and was quite impressed. As with most investment books it could probably could be summed up in 20 pages (max) but then why would anyone buy it be it either in print or download.
I found the information quite useful but it's one big (huge) failure is to include a data sheet(s) like the Jim Crammer books. I ended buying the book so I could get the formulas etc.
I haven't made my millions yet but the information is useful and relatively simple once you are able to extract it.

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

I learnt a lot

I've been looking at starting to invest and I found this book a good starting point, it has a decent amount of things to teach.
This book is aimed more at the American listener with some of the terms used but still very valuable.
I will definitely listen again and will buy the hard copy as a reference guide

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Nice Combination of Value Investing and Technical

Nice combination of value investing and technical analysis. It teaches a strategy that's too conservative in my opinion, but creates a nice understanding of stock investing.

Best book I have seen in a long time

Strongly suggested to everyone who is interested in investing and stocks
Thank you Phil Town for explaining everything in such an simple language

waste of time and money

waste of time and money. There isn't much else to add. I would not recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about investing money.

2 of 13 people found this review helpful