Guerilla Investing: Winning Strategies for Beating the Wall Street Professionals [Hardcover]

Peter Siris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1955

Reveals the secrets of Wall Street insiders to individual investors so they can compete with the professionals and win.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For Peter Siris, the stock market is a battleground. And if you're an individual investor, you'd better understand your enemy--the professional investor--as well your own limits and capabilities. According to Siris, the professionals have many advantages over individual investors: they've got the inside track on information that moves the market, and they're backed by research staffs and their networks with other pros. The trick to beating the pros is to employ guerrilla tactics--that is avoid their strengths and exploit their weaknesses.

Guerrilla Investing looks at techniques that individual investors can use to win the investing game. Siris cautions against short-term trading, which plays into the hands of the professionals, and he instead advocates a buy-and-hold strategy. He shows how to read charts, interpret a company's financial statement, and how not to get suckered by what market analysts say. He also encourages investors to develop a investment style and to stick with it. If you consider yourself a serious investor or are interested in becoming one, Guerrilla Investing is something you'll find yourself coming back to again and again. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards

From Booklist

Siris headed his own retail consulting firm before becoming an investment analyst, and he is the author of the spy thriller The Peking Mandate (1983). He now makes the point that with every stock transaction, either the buyer or the seller has made a wrong decision, and he goes on to compare trading to a war with winners and losers. His audience is the "serious amateur investor," and he warns that the enemy is the professional trader who has more time, money, information, and technology at his disposal. He suggests that the individual can still gain an advantage by discovering and exploiting small market niches overlooked by bigger traders. Pursuing his combat analogy, Siris stresses that intelligence gathering and analysis are at the heart of any guerrilla strike. He details such resources as the Internet and cable television's financial news networks and explains how to interpret the information one uncovers. In addition, he supplies such weapons as fundamental analysis and technical analysis to the guerrilla's arsenal. David Rouse

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing; First Edition edition (January 1, 1955)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563524678
• ISBN-13: 978-1563524677
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,542,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars basic foundation material, July 28, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Kansas City, Mo) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Guerilla Investing: Winning Strategies for Beating the Wall Street Professionals (Hardcover)

Siris does a good job at explaing basic investing techniques for the "little guy" but sometimes the militaristic atmosphere was a bit too much. Personally, I got quite a bit of good information from the book and enjoyed the material. I would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in learning how to use fundamenatal AND technical analysis techniques to enhance investment selections. I think most "little guys" will benefit from this book, I know I did.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some good info, some fluff, overall OK., February 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Guerilla Investing: Winning Strategies for Beating the Wall Street Professionals (Hardcover)

His technical section opens up with very interesting and promising observations on how to read short term price and volume action. But then, it seems like he felt he had to have some kind of indicator in there so he devotes a couple of pages to MACD. This part is lame--just a single example (MSFT 1997.11-1998.02) with no recognition of whipsaw difficulties, or any question of, if this method is so good, why isn't everyone using it. That is the whole theme of the book but he doesn't apply it here.

At various other points I began to get uneasy, thinking that this guy makes a lot of bald statements of effectiveness without much more than a couple of anecdotes in favor. Most of the time he seems to make sense. But how often does he really? In the specific area where I have done some work, he leaves a lot out.

The military metaphor is window-dressing and can be ignored. For example early on, in thrall to this image, he says that in every trade there is one winner and one loser. Punchy. Direct. Simple. But in the final chapter, he admits a case where one investor should be buying and another, with a different style, should be selling the same stock at the same price at the same time. They can trade with each other and both be winners. Once again the real world refuses to be reduced to a simple "explanation".

There is good information here on the data-gathering capabilities of the Internet, and good advice on specifics. For this it's worth the money. But use his evaluation techniques as a starting point; don't adopt them blindly. And for philosophy, read something else.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent "how-to" for independent investors., June 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Guerilla Investing: Winning Strategies for Beating the Wall Street Professionals (Hardcover)

This is a great book for individuals who think they are ready to break away from reliance on the big brokerage houses. Mr. Siris gives detailed advice on how to effectively use the internet to gather the "intelligence" needed to make wise decisions. The book also contains a variety of tips for both the technical and value investor. Overall, I found this book to be very enlightening.