John Addis believes that most people probably shouldn't be managing their own money. However, if you do, or want to, this book will help you to get better at it by avoiding the traps.

The key lesson in the book is that successful investors don t concentrate on picking winners; instead they work on minimising risk and learning from losses. John shares some of the mistakes he has made over his three decades of investing and, with the benefit of hindsight, the reasons why he made them. These include falling in love with a stock or a charismatic CEO, selling too soon as a stock continues to soar, misunderstanding the business model and not responding to obvious red flags.

How not to lose $1 million is neatly structured into four categories:

• stocks he bought but shouldn t have
• stocks he bought but sold too soon
• stocks he bought but sold too late
• stocks he should have bought but didn t.

John's engaging storytelling makes his review of the stocks he invested in entertaining and enlightening. The value of this book is in the lessons investors can learn for their future investing success.