market-stock

Note: this is not a book that appeals to your greed with a get rich quick philosophy. Quite the contrary. Dr. Ross takes you on a guided tour of how and why the markets work, why all the hype of Wall Street can be so misleading to investors, and how you can invest efficiently. And efficiency, as Dr. Ross explains, means avoiding waste - wasted money, wasted time, wasted aggrivation. Work smarter, not harder, as I like to say.

Bottom line: if you're looking for a thorough discussion of the Capital Asset Pricing Model or the Equity Premium, then I would look at more academic texts, but if you want a clear, user-friendly, well-researched discussion of the stock market, I would buy this book. The average 5 star review from 25 people (as of this review) is substantial evidence to this book's value.

In chapter 1, he defines all the terminology you'll encounter in stocks. In a very readable manner, he quickly covers EPS, P/E, PSR, ROE, Beta, and numerous other concepts that are useful.

In chapter 2, he describes the methods of 6 all-time top investors (including: Buffett, Lynch, O'Neil, etc.) comparing and contrasting there methods.

In chapter 3, he explores what some historic evaluations of stock growth show. This is great stuff, especially during a down market.

In chapter 4, he explains in detail the Dow Dividend Strategy. Anyone can understand this and with only 30 minutes of work per year have a relatively successful investment plan.

In chapter 5, he covers the process of choosing a broker and placing orders.

In chapter 6, he covers some of the many methods you can use to research stocks. With a ton of web-sites, newsletters, and books, Kelly's advice can save you countless hours wasting time looking for information from the wrong source.

In chapter 7, he explains his own strategy. With easy to understand worksheets and using the knowledge gained earlier in the book, he guides you into an investment plan that will suit you.

Not only is this book full of good information, but it's written in a very readable manner. I highly recommend reading this book BEFORE making another investment decision. Even if you have a broker that you like, you owe it to yourself to educate yourself with this book.

This book will teach you how to analyze individual stocks. You will learn which information is important and where to go to find it.

It makes the vagaries of investing clear. It concisely covers areas such as Valuation Ratios, Growth Strategies, and Value Strategies.

No only does this book cover a wide variety of information, but it then distills it down into the best strategies for investment success.

Essentially, this is a must have book for anyone new to investing.

Few businessess are as brutally competitive as trading in Chicago exchanges. However, with great faith and works, Joe obviously holds to his strong Christian values in this tough environment.

This book helps me come to grips with striving for success while hoping to maintain the fundamental value of helping and loving one's fellow man (or woman).

After reading this book, you'll realize that most of the "experts" that you see on tv or read about in the paper are just shills for Wall Street. Their interest is in getting you to buy and sell stocks so that THEY can make money.

From a practical point, the author argues convincingly against the "buy and hold" approach, demonstrating with simple graphs and language how devastating this can be to your wealth. For example, the Nasdaq was at 5000 in March of 2000. It's now at 1500. While it may recover to 5000 one day, do you want to wait another 10 or 15 years merely to get back to even?

Finally, and most importantly, his research shows the average investor how to triple the returns of the S&P 500 by following the "seasonal" tendency of the stock market to rise strongly in the November to late April period and then to fall in the May through October period. The data is very, very convincing.

In a word, if you want a clear, simple, and straightforward understanding of the stock market and how to use that information to dramatically increase your returns while lowering your risk, this is the book for you. Those who read the book and follow his advice can look forward to a very comfortable retirement. Those who don't, well, good luck to you.

Despite the book's schleppy and seemingly unrealistic title, Greenblatt's descriptions are wonderfully realistic and honest. In particular, although I've looked for other resources on spinoff investment strategies, everything you really need to know is in this book. The author's style is flippant but endearing, and the reader will get more than his/her money's worth from the ideas described in this book.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about some of the black and white fundamentals of the market.

The book introduced one central theme - look for a big volume jump when the price crosses the 150-day moving average - and was repetitive after that. The book tried to discuss chart patterns (e.g. head-shoulders) but was pretty lame. The book did not mention anything about other market indicators such as MACD, RSI, etc. Were these indicators unimportant? Were these indicators not in fashion back in 1990? I was perplexed.

If you are looking for an introduction to technical analysis, there are better tutorials out on the web than this book (just google "technical analysis"). Save your money for your next investment.

Key points:
- Very practical, systematic and clear. Excellent communication. You don't get bored reading it.
- Sound trading system.
- Stan's stage analysis is a tremendous help to separate the stock price movement in stages. Very valuable insight.
- His stop loss explanation on both and long are extremely valuable and clear. He explained it in a step-by-step fashion. This alone can save you $$$ by locking-in your profit.
- Other excellent explanation: important chart patterns to be considered (he only selects the best ones), volume analysis, importance of Relative Strength and moving averages. What to buy, When to Buy, When to Sell, How to Short....And he separated those key processes between Traders and Investors. So, you will have a clear understanding of what to do. A step by step explanation on how you can find the A+ stocks using his "Forest to Trees" approach.
- Excellent Quiz & Answers and the end of each chapter that tremendously re-test you understanding of the important concepts.

If you're a beginner or intermediate, this book will certainly give you a huge boost in mastering chart reading as well as execution. Unlike any books that sort of short in explaining one critical area, I find Stan's book very clear and entertaining as well. It opens your eyes on what to look for in a chart.

Highly recommended!