Beware of This "Magnificent 7" Stock — It's Not So Magnificent

Many enterprises come and go, but visionary companies endure for generations. These companies are the gold standard in their respective industries, remaining prosperous throughout many decades and at the hands of many different leaders. Beyond attaining financial success, they’ve also become household names, ingraining themselves into our collective psyche—it’s hard to imagine a world without them or their products, from Band-Aids to Post-it Notes to Mickey Mouse.

But what is the key to these companies’ longevity and tremendous success? Bestselling author Jim Collins and Stanford professor Jerry I. Porras embarked on a six-year research project to answer this question. In this book, you’ll find the fruits of their research, learn the important concepts behind enduring success, and get practical advice for building a company that lasts.

Has Big Tech made our lives better or worse? In The Four, entrepreneur and marketing professor Scott Galloway takes a hard look at four technology companies that dominate the modern marketplace: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google (the “Four”). He argues that the success of the Four has had a profound and decidedly negative impact on our society, affecting everything from our privacy and our opportunities for career advancement to our free-market economy and even the functioning of our democracy.

In our guide, we examine the Four’s outsized influence on our personal lives as well as on society at large. We contrast Galloway’s ideas with those of other experts on Big Tech and provide additional background information to contextualize Galloway’s opinions.

In business, as in life, the only thing certain is uncertainty. How, then, can companies survive—even thrive—when the future is unpredictable? In Great by Choice, authors Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen shed some light on why some companies weather great adversity better than others.

Using nine years of research and offering plenty of real-world examples, the authors debunk long-held myths when it comes to highly successful companies and present the tools that these enterprises use to help them weather tumultuous times. The book’s overarching message: Luck doesn’t determine your fate—you do. And you can make the choice to become something great, whatever the circumstance.

Has Big Tech made our lives better or worse? In The Four, entrepreneur and marketing professor Scott Galloway takes a hard look at four technology companies that dominate the modern marketplace: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google (the “Four”). He argues that the success of the Four has had a profound and decidedly negative impact on our society, affecting everything from our privacy and our opportunities for career advancement to our free-market economy and even the functioning of our democracy.

In our guide, we examine the Four’s outsized influence on our personal lives as well as on society at large. We contrast Galloway’s ideas with those of other experts on Big Tech and provide additional background information to contextualize Galloway’s opinions.

Some market watchers are seeing signs of a growing bubble in the stock market reminiscent of previous bubbles like the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and the commodities bubble of the 2000s. However, there are fundamental differences, too.

To the outsider, the world of investing can seem daunting to enter—if not outright impossible. But according to investment professional Howard Marks, anyone can learn the basics needed to invest successfully.

In his 2011 book The Most Important Thing, Marks outlines the key tenets of his approach to investing. He argues that the best approach for investors is value investing, which involves determining securities’ intrinsic value and purchasing below it. To practice it successfully, you must learn the nature of market cycles to find opportunities for purchasing mispriced securities, while also learning how to mitigate the risk entailed by investing.

In this guide, we’ll outline the fundamentals of value investing, discuss market cycles and how they’re useful to the value investor, and analyze the common mistakes that often leave investors exposed to unnecessary risk. Throughout the guide, we’ll also examine recommendations from other investors that supplement—and occasionally challenge—Marks’s investing wisdom.

The electric vehicle (EV) industry is limited by the lack of a national network of charging stations. Tesla leads the market by a large margin, but it'll likely open up its proprietary network to rivals to prevent them from investing in their own networks. The government will also likely help build a national charging infrastructure.

The market for electric vehicles (EVs) is exploding, even in the middle of a global chip shortage and ongoing supply issues. Battery limitations are holding the industry back. Without a national, dependable network of charging stations, EVs risk remaining a luxury product bought by wealthy suburbanites who can outfit their garages with personal charging stations. Plus, the eventual disposal of batteries threatens enormous environmental damage.

Hailed as this one of this generation’s most innovative entrepreneurs, Elon Musk has built several industry-disrupting businesses, and he’s known for shooting for the moon—or more literally, Mars. Technology journalist Ashlee Vance spent almost 50 hours interviewing Musk and talked to around 300 people close to him to produce this biography, which presents new insights into Musk’s life and businesses.

In this guide, we’ll discuss Musk’s childhood and early companies. Then we’ll talk about his roles in SpaceX and Tesla, and later, in SolarCity. Finally, we’ll discuss the traits and management methods that helped Musk succeed throughout his entrepreneurial career. Along the way, we’ll provide updated information about Musk and his companies, as well as perspectives from other experts on business success and key management strategies.

In Beating the Street, famed mutual fund manager Peter Lynch explores how ordinary investors can outperform the market—and the pricey Wall Street fund managers who assemble stock portfolios—through hard work, diligence, and persistence in picking the right stocks to build a winning portfolio.

In this guide, we’ll explore Lynch’s strategy by which non-professional, individual investors can beat the pros, looking at:

• Why bonds, despite their reputation as a low-risk investment, offer poorer returns than stocks over the long haul
• Why it’s crucial to do your homework and understand everything about the companies you’re investing in
• The importance of being patient, persistent, and willing to endure the inevitable short-term losses that come from investing in the stock market

Throughout the guide, we’ll supplement Lynch’s insights with investment advice and perspectives from other investors and financial experts. We’ll also provide some historical context for Lynch’s ideas and explore how the investment world has changed since the book’s publication in 1993—and how those changes might affect today’s investment strategies.

Have you always wanted to invest in the stock market but felt too uninformed or inexperienced to do so? In One Up on Wall Street, legendary investor Peter Lynch argues that you not only have all the tools you need to become a savvy investor but that you actually have a better chance of investing successfully than professionals and firms: You can act independently and based on your own good information.

Lynch describes a no-nonsense approach to the stock market that involves examining your daily life for investment opportunities, doing your research, and diligently monitoring your portfolio over time. Rather than following the complex predictions of so-called professionals or leaping on the latest and greatest overpriced stock, he advises you to keep your own counsel, be self-reliant, and see yourself as your greatest resource.

Alongside Lynch’s investing advice, we’ll present the varied and sometimes opposing recommendations of other investors and experts, 21st-century updates to some of his ideas, and clarifications on certain concepts.

To the uninitiated, investing can seem daunting and inaccessible. But according to investment professional Robert G. Hagstrom, it doesn’t have to be. Hagstrom argues that novice investors should emulate the greatest investor in history—Warren Buffett—so that they too can earn above-market returns.

In his 2013 book The Warren Buffett Way, Hagstrom outlines and explains Buffett’s approach to stock market investing. Hagstrom argues that, rather than deferring to financial analysts, investors should follow suit with Buffett and assess companies along four dimensions—their financial prospects, their market value, their business model, and their management—to identify promising companies to invest in.

In this guide, we’ll examine how Buffett quantitatively and qualitatively evaluates companies to decide whether to invest, as well as his recommendations for managing your portfolio and avoiding psychological mistakes. We’ll also consider alternative approaches to investing and discuss updates to Hagstrom’s arguments since publication.