Product Description

Designed to give you broad exposure to the savviest thinking you can find on Wall Street today, The Market Gurus is an ¿investor cheetsheet,¿ that boils down the most successful investors¿ strategies into simple, easy-to-follow steps. The strategies covered in the book are those of Peter Lynch, Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, David Dreman, William O¿Neil, Martin Zweig, Kenneth Fisher and James O¿Shaughnessy. Within the pages of The Market Gurus are easy-to-understand, step-by-step analyses of each guru¿s investment strategies, including: -- Introductions to nine legendary investment gurus ¿ little known, but mesmerizing facts about each guru, their backgrounds, their investment philosophies and the rationale behind how each invests his money -- Easy to understand, step-by-step instructions for analyzing companies using the strategies of these nine gurus. There¿s no guesswork: You know what to do, how to do it, when to do it. -- Real-world examples for each strategy, which makes learning about these strategies quick and easy. Immediately upon finishing The Market Gurus, you can apply these strategies for your own investing. -- Explanations of the amount of risk you will have with each strategy. -- A time horizon for each strategy ¿ you know before you start how long you can expect to hold each investment. -- A rating of how much effort each strategy requires on your part. -- A complete explanation of the famous ratios used by virtually all successful investors ¿ in easy-to-understand language. Holding market gurus accountable turned Validea.com into one of the Internet¿s most popular investing sites. Now for the first time, the Founder and CEO of Validea.com has taken the crème de la crème of the gurus featured at Validea.com to show you what makes them tick ¿ and how you can apply their strategies to your own portfolio.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #927472 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 260 pages

From Booklist
It seems that for every investment option there are 10 experts telling you where to put your money. In response to this glut of insight, successful businessmen Reese and Glassman thought it necessary to isolate and analyze nine of those experts, among them Peter Lynch, Martin Zweig, and the Motley Fool. The authors not only explore each investor's strategy for success but also apply their own investment tools as found on their Web site, Validea.com. Each profile includes a brief bio, a step-by-step breakdown of that person's methodology, and case studies using extensive charts and statistics, concluding with a summary of the investor's key investing criteria. Although the book would be most helpful to those with some investing experience--market jargon throughout might deter some newbies--the final chapter, "The Famous Ratios," will serve as a handy reference for those who don't know their PEs from their ROEs. Overall, this is a helpful, well-researched survey of different but effective investment strategies. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
John Reese -- John Reese is chairman and cofounder of Validea.com, which has been recognized as one of the leading Web syndicators of unique financial products and tools. Previously, he founded and operated-and later sold-a successful high-tech business. He holds a bachelor's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard University. Todd Glassman -- Todd Glassman was Validea.com's investment strategies product manager and first employee; he is now an independent consultant. Previously, he worked in the engineering and banking industries and on Wall Street. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Connecticut and has passed the Series 7 (Registered Representative) exam.

Customer Reviews

Detailed analysis of various strategies
Confused with all the "expert" advice available on investing? Why does there seem to be so many different views and different ideas on how to best invest? Of course risk is one of the biggest factors as is how much time you are willing to put into analysis each day. Some people are comfortable with a lot of risk if the potential reward is a really large gain, others are not. Some enjoy watching the stock tape cross their computer screen all day long and watching their investments, others are to content to watch their investment progress on a monthly basis.

Reese and Glassman examine the most respected investment advisors today and detail not only their philosophy but also the level of risk the investor should be comfortable with and the level of effort the investor needs to put forth to follow that person's advice.
Each expert is analyzed one at a time including the criteria they use for investing, how they determine if a stock meets that criteria or not and examples of individual stocks with an analysis of where they pass and fail the selected criteria. The analysis is detailed and yet straight forward so that someone with minimal experience in stocks can understand the basis philosophy.

Who are these investors that are analyzed? Only the most revered names in stock investng: Peter Lynch, Benjamin Graham, William O'Neil, Warren Buffett, The Motley Fool, David Dreman, Martin Zweig, Kenneth L. Fisher, and James O'Shaughnessy.

Most of the experts selected have written their own books on how to invest. This book distills down all the fluff and long winded information in the other books to a single chapter on each advisor, a chapter with all the information required to follow that person's style. So, I guess you have a choice, buy several books and read them all or buy this one and get all the knowledge as well as a detailed step by step plan of how to follow their investing style. Complete analysis (even on those who have not written a book), risk profile information, detailed examples of how to apply the methods, and simple pass/fail criterion information, the information is complete, easy to understand and easy to apply, there is nothing not to like about this book! If you are an investor or want to try your hand at it or have a self-directed IRA or similar instrument then you owe it to yourself to read this book, select at least a style that is appropriate for you and apply it.

A good reference, but not a tutorial
This book is tricky. It gives you a decent overview of some of the best stock investors, who they are and what they've done. It also gives you some quotes and some ideas they've been using and it's easy to get convinced it tells you how they were picking their investments. But it's not that simple.. There are a few reasons to be carefull.

1. Sometimes the information is based on second hand interpretation (like Buffet never really explained his approach)
2. Even when you read the original works quoted in the book, they are usually full of exceptions and warnings, so the book tends to oversimplify things and pull them out of context.
3. If those great investors could fully explain their winning strategy, everyone would probably be following that method and enjoying similar results. But since we don't see followers of some particular approach dominating the market, probably some personal outstanding characteristics and maybe luck are playing some role and this is not something you can pass through a book.

So treat this book as a catalog of a few prominent investors featuring some highlights of their techniques. But if you lime any of them, don't rely just on the breif description in the book. You should do you own research and make sure you've got enough information to make your own decision.

Overall, this is a well written book with enough useful information to make it worth reading.

A great guide for novice investors
I am a novice investor and am still fairly new to this territory. Until I read this book, I didn't really have a structured investing style and wasn't sure what to look for when buying a stock. My techniques were pretty arbitrary, usually investing in stocks through word of mouth not knowing whether they were REALLY good or if it was just hype. This book practically holds your hand and shows you how the experts evaluate a stock step-by-step. Am I an expert now? No, but I have the knowledge of legends like Graham, Fisher, and Zweig to guide me along and help me make more intelligent and wise investing decisions.