WHEN was the last time you laughed about money? Did you even realise it was possible to do so? To people in this city, where money is taken terribly seriously, John Rothchild's A Fool and His Money: The Odyssey of an Average Investor (John Wiley & Sons, US$19.95) adds a welcome light touch.
Ostensibly writing a book about personal finance, Rothchild (a journalist who has written several books with Peter Lynch, former manager of Fidelity Investments' flagship Magellan fund) has whipped up a rather funny account of an investment ingenue wandering lost in the supposedly sophisticated world of finance. Like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes, the apparently artless Rothchild points at schemes touted by investment gurus and says, 'but they're all scams to rip you off'.
So, if you suspected as much all along, you can now see your apprehensions confirmed in black and white, making you glad you left your savings in the bank, where they gather dust and negligible amounts of interest. At least your nest-egg did not go up in smoke at the hands of some 21-year-old fund manager, or even some 45-year-old fund manager.
As the fine print always says: funds can go down as well as up.
P.J. O'Rourke says pointedly in the book's introduction: 'So, in the end, we are left with the one great lesson that A Fool and His Money teaches us, a lesson that does not vary with time or circumstances, a lesson that is wise, powerful and true: give your money to your wife.' Rothchild took a year off during a massive bull run in the market (that was nearly 13 years ago now . . . this new edition is a reprint of the original, which came out in 1988). With US$16,000 in hand, he devoted himself singlemindedly to investing.
Thinking about money, Rothchild says, has become a new national pastime. He was referring to the United States, but by happy coincidence, the comment applies equally well to Hong Kong.