Rule #1: The Simple Strategy for Successful Investing in Only 15 Minutes a Week! by Phil Town (2006)

has Jim Cramer quoted on its cover, which should have been a warning sign. The author presents a confusing mix of approaches from Peter Lynch's One Up On Wall Street : How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market and Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor sprinkled with some basic technical analysis. A claim of turning $1000 into $1000000 in only five years comes early in the book, representing an annual return of 300%, although the best case scenarios presented in the book might bring a 50%+ annual return. And the key expression to stress here is best case scenario. Basically the author selects a short list of companies with brands liked (including Harley Davidson and Starbucks), then demonstrates some basic historical financial filtering to arrive to preferred investments. It is suggested, that it is appropriate to invest in one and only one company at time, which makes this not dissimilar to casino gambling. It is not exactly clear based on what criteria the nicely performing examples were selected either, as some of them are not listed in original list of "strong brand name" companies. It is also not clear, if the author's offerings perform better than the Berkshire Hathaway stock price, considering the similarity of selection criteria. In this case, even those 15 minutes a week are wasted, as one could simply buy Berkshire Hathaway stock. While some discussions on the little benefit added by the various advisors offer value, other portions of the book have limited practical value. I would not recommend to anyone to try to follow the confusing directions given with their hard earned money.