by Matt Seto with Steven Levingston
Kids say the darnedest things: "People who favor diversification are investors who lack confidence in their ability to pick stocks." The speaker, 18-year-old Matt Seto, suffers no such absence of backbone. At the tender age of 15, he founded his own mutual fund. Open only to family members (a condition set by his Confucius-quoting engineer father), the Seto Fund has gained an average of more than 30 percent per year, whipping the bulk of Wall Street's big boys. It's a good thing. His uncle joked that Matt would spend a lifetime behind a lawn mower if the whiz kid lost his money.
A Troy, Mich., native and freshman at Babson College in Boston, Seto was captivated by the 1987 crash, deciding then "to learn everything about stock investing." Comparing equities to baseball cards (you knew that was coming), Matt walks readers through easy-to-grasp explanations of everything from chart analysis and penny stocks to book value and initial public offerings. Bottom line, Seto's common-sense approach may charm novices, but true investors would be better off sticking with marketmeisters like Peter Lynch. (Morrow, $22)
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