How to Smell a Rat: The Five Signs of Financial Fraud

Ken Fisher is a good writer and an excellent financial advisor. The advice is excellent for all levels of investor. I've been at it for 30 years and still learned quite a bit from Fisher's advice. One of the characteristics he fails to get to is the greed factor. Most "marks" of scammers wouldn't have been caught in the scam web if they weren't into greed. Getting more return than the other guy -- getting more return than the market -- looking the other way when the scammer is doing things they know are wrong, etc. The book is generally well done, but the number of repeats of the same advice/information could have been reduced.

Certainly the title to this book suggests that it might have some interesting stories and some sound advice. It was disappointing because it was sort of a single page of excellent advice followed by about 200 pages of marginal "filler."It makes FIVE good and valuable points, all listed on page 5 of the introduction under the title: "Better yet, Here are the Five Signs" (that you may be dealing with a RAT).The first is, that your adviser "has custody of your assets." The book correctly says NEVER, Never, Never let that happen. This is excellent advice. It is great advice even if your advisor is NOT a rat. That is because giving custody of your assets to your advisor is not necessary in the first place, so don't EVER take the chance. That seems like very sound advice.If the Bernard Madoff investors had read and followed that advice they collectively would have saved BILLIONS and the price of this book would have been the best money they EVER spent.I note that in one sense that this ONE SINGLY MOST IMPORTANT RULE is less about how to "smell a rat" as much as it is "how not to set yourself up for a financial advisor to easily take advantage of you." It is sort of like the question: "Would you give a stranger a key to your safe deposit box containing lots of gold and money?" Of course not.The book itself is about 200 pages long (including the index). The five rules summarized on this single page are discussed over and over and over again. Granted that reading it in this form does leave the reader with the well emplanted memory that THESE RULES ARE IMPORTANT in ways that a shorter treatise that did not repeat the lesson 100 times might not accomplish.But for FAST LEARNERS not adverse to following this advice, the "filler" in the book gets boring real quick.This book is some sound advice constituting a single page with about 200 pages of FILLER. This does mean that if you are about to hand over a big chunk of your money to some investment company, and you are not following the five rules, then this book is a bargain. But if you know these rules and can follow them, then buying and reading this book is not a good use of your time.Another way of what I am saying is that "This book is a Five Star book if you are really gullible, really trusting, and not too cautious (and possibly not too bright)" and is a one star book for the the cautious, prudent and intelligent investor. Another way of saying this is: " Spend five minutes at the library with this book; it will be five minutes well spent. But don't take the time to read the whole thing unless you otherwise can't absorb and apply the five rules spelled out on page 5).Please note that this Review is sort of like "one good sentence of advice followed by 99 sentences saying the same thing." Does THIS annoy you? If so consider what YOU will suffer by reading this book where the same process is repeated for almost 200 pages.Good luck with your investing.

Thankfully I've never been duped (knock on wood) out of my hard earned investments and I can only express sympathy to those who have. However, if you asked me to come up with a sure fire way to sniff out individuals with nefarious intentions I could come up with maybe one or two. I believe most people would say the exact same thing. However, Ken Fisher and Lara Hoffmans provide FIVE key traits, which I believe help uncover the entire gamut of possibilities that unscrupulous investment firms design to grift money from honest and hard working investors.This book is invaluable and straightforward. It was incredibly easy to understand and is written in a way that any everyday investor can understand. This book doesn't try and masquerade as anything other than a deeply honest and telling account of the financial scandals that occurred over the last 2 years.Anyone looking to avoid being misled should use this book as a manual for interviewing their next money manager. "How to Smell a Rat", could have been titled "Choosing the Right Investment Manager - Things to Ask and Look For In an Advisor".

While the most famous book by the author, "The Only Three Questions That Count: Investing by Knowing What Others Don't", is dedicated for investors with background in economics, who make investment decisions by themselves by buying directly stocks, bonds, real estate, businesses and commodities, this book, "How to Smell a Rat: The Five Signs of Financial Fraud" is for those who hire a money manager or financial advisor. The author presents an easy to understand, clear and straightforward toolkit of how to distinguish between a real money manager and a fraudster. The framework laid out in this book is highly practicable.Another valuable point of this book is that Fisher also includes suggestions for further reading. This is very uncommon for such kinds of books. I would like to give great respect to Fisher for that. The author encourages to increase your financial IQ. Some people rely on SEC and other agencies and get cheated. You can help SEC by not allowing to be cheated. Fishertells you thoughout the book that it is not gambling if you know what you're doing. It is gambling if you're just throwing money into a money manager and praying. The idea in anything is to use your technical knowledge, wisdom and love of investing to cut the odds down, to lower the risk. Of course, there is always risk. It is financial intelligence that improves the odds. Thus, what is risky for one person is less risky to someone else. That is the primary reason why the author encourages the readers to invest more in their financial education than in the stock, real estate or other markets. The smarter you are, the better chance you have of beating the odds.

Good advice

Everybody that allows a company or person to handle their financial affairs needs to know how to spot a fraud that's trying to steal their savings. This book will show you how to spot bad guys.

Must read before investing in the Stockmarket.

This book should have been written a long time ago! This is a top notch book that gives reference to the five general rules to avoid financial pitfalls and snares! This is especially true if you have to deal with cheaters/con artists on a regular basis!