I can't remember when I first came across this book - likely around 2005 - but I remember it being a very interesting read coming just a few years after the dot com boom.
I've recently read it again and still found it entertaining even though it's almost 20 years since it was written.
Jonathan Maitland often appeared on ITV, especially the 'Tonight' show, but at the end of 1999 he decided to remortgage his house, taking £50,000 out, to try and turn it into £1,000,000 via the stockmarket.
This book begins in diary format starting on 4th January 2000. As we all know, looking back with hindsight, the FTSE 100 famously peaked on New Year's Eve 1999 so Jonathan was starting his quest to make a million in the stockmarket just as the market was beginning its long fall.
Just look at the front cover - it screams the turn of the millenium. Huge cream monitor... chunky cream keyboard... home telephone!
The parallels with this site haven't gone unnoticed and in some way his efforts inspired this LISA Millionaire experiment. Jonathan also created a website to track his progress but sadly his site is long gone.
It's well worth a read if only to teach you what not to do. He isn't a professional investor and he has very little experience of investing. In the late 90s there were plenty of people turning to "day trading" to try and make a living and Jonathan decides that he should get in on the action while he can.
Jonathan speaks to several people who were making lots of money buying and selling high-tech dot com shares over very short timeframes. As he gives names I couldn't help putting their names into a search engine to see what they are up to now.
We all know how the dot com day trading boom turned out. Still, it's fascinating to read. The lesson here perhaps being that it's hard to see the bigger picture when everyone is so irrationally bullish.
This is one book I like to read every couple of years. They say markets go in circles so it's reasonable to think that at some point in the future we will see money piling back into the stockmarket. We will see the stockmarket being the main talking point at dinner parties and taxi drivers giving out share tips. My hope is that by reading a book like this every-so-often I will recognise the signs that we're near a top and take appropriate measures to protect my investments.
So "How to Make Your Million From the Internet" goes onto the Recommended pile - buy, hold and read every couple of years.
Pick up the book for a few pounds on Amazon or eBay:
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Click here to find book on Amazon