Getting started in shares for dummies
Curated by Brian Kim, CPA — every pick gets a plain-English summary and the key takeaways.
Brian Kim, CPA · 2.89M YouTube Subscribers →What this book actually teaches
- 01The book prioritizes ASX market mechanics before stock selection — understanding how orders are filled and what brokers do is staged before any individual company evaluation.
- 02Australian tax rules (CGT, dividend imputation, franking credits) are explicitly covered, making this substantially more practical for Australian investors than US-centric alternatives.
- 03The assessment section covers P/E ratios, yields, earnings growth, and when to sell — the sell discipline is an underserved topic that Dunn addresses directly.
- 04Readers will outgrow this book quickly — the "For Dummies" format compresses complexity by design, and it is not suited to intermediate or advanced investors.
- 05Content is Australia-specific throughout; ASX mechanics, ASIC regulation, and broker landscape do not translate to other markets.
What's in this book
"Getting Started in Shares for Dummies" by James Dunn is an entry-level introduction to share investing on the Australian Securities Exchange, designed explicitly for readers who have no prior experience with financial markets. Dunn, a freelance finance journalist and founding editor of Shares magazine, takes the "For Dummies" format seriously — the goal is market literacy before stock picking, with jargon explained inline and complexity staged across chapters.
The book's structure prioritizes mechanics first. Before a reader is asked to evaluate a company, Dunn explains how the ASX operates, what brokers do, how buy and sell orders are filled, and what actually happens when you purchase a share. This sequencing is the right call for a beginner-oriented guide: the mechanics are opaque to new investors, and misunderstanding them leads to poor order execution and unnecessary costs.
The assessment section covers the tools most relevant for individual share selection: price-to-earnings ratios, dividend yields, earnings growth, and the basics of reading company announcements. Dunn also covers when to sell — an underserved topic in most beginner investing books — and touches on portfolio construction basics. A section on lessons from ten legendary investors provides accessible exposure to multiple investing philosophies without requiring readers to work through the source material directly.
A meaningful differentiator from US-centric investing books is the explicit treatment of Australian tax rules. Dunn covers capital gains tax (CGT), dividend imputation, and franking credits — concepts that are central to Australian share investing returns and essentially absent from any non-Australian source. For a reader in Australia, this tax-aware framing makes the book substantially more practical than translated American content.
The limitations are real. The "For Dummies" format necessarily compresses complexity — readers who progress quickly will outgrow the book within months. The content is Australia-specific: ASX mechanics, ASIC regulation, franking credits, and Australian broker landscapes do not translate to other markets. Dunn is a finance journalist, not a portfolio manager, and the book carries no track record or practitioner authority behind its recommendations. Multiple editions have been published, and the relevance of specific examples varies significantly by edition year.
For Australian investors at the starting line, this book does what it sets out to do — it removes the initial barrier to participation without oversimplifying the risks involved.
Read next
For anyone who wants to invest seriously without becoming a day-trader — beginners willing to read carefully, and exp…
Buy on Amazon →
Early- and mid-career W-2 employees who want a single, executable wealth-building plan without becoming amateur portf…
Buy on Amazon →
For individual long-term investors who can hold concentrated positions for five to twenty years and want a framework…
Buy on Amazon →
For experienced investors who are comfortable with DCF mechanics and want a more disciplined, market-price-anchored f…
Buy on Amazon →About James Dunn
Read more from James Dunn and explore the full bibliography on ClearValue Books.
View James Dunn's page →Get an email if our take on Getting started in shares for dummies changes.
We re-review our picks. We'll email you if Getting started in shares for dummies's ranking or review changes — no checking back.
Ready to read Getting started in shares for dummies?
Buy the edition we recommend on Amazon.
Buy on Amazon →