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The Market Gurus: Stock Investing Strategies You Can Use From Wall Street's Best

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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.

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.

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.

I just picked this book up at Costco, and I must admit it's one of the most useful investing books I've ever read. It outlines 9 investing strategies in detail. You can't find this info anywhere else (well, I guess you could find it if you wanted to read nine different books). It gives real-world examples, too, of companies that meet certain investment criteria, making it a very practical guide for all different types of investors.

-- In this market, a reference like this is invaluable.

I've spent so much money on numerous stock investing books, hoping to learn some investing tactics...however I'm usually left feeling as if my time spent reading was a waste. There are so many financial analysts, each with their own stock investing strategies. The Market Gurus does a good job of detailing a number of prestigious analyst's strategies and has helped me develop a much clearer understanding of investing in general. I recommend this book to all interested in furthering their knowledge of the investment world.

This is the best book on investing that I have seen in a long time. I find that most investing books don't clearly show you how analyze stocks. Many questions go unanswered, and you never get direct answers. The authors of "THE MARKET GURUS" do a fantastic job of explaining the different methodologies step by step. That is, they'll tell you about each criteron and why its important. And then there is background and interesting stories on each of the "gurus". A great read for anyone from beginners to experts.

The Market Gurus by John Reese and Todd Glassman is one of the first investment books I've ever read. The book is fairly easy to read and doesn't require too much prior knowledge. Each section starts with an introduction of the guru, his achievements, and a summary of his investment strategy. The strategy is then applied step by step to two companies. What I particularly like is that plenty of links to various websites as well as recommendations for other investment journals/books can be found scattered throughout the book.

The problem, however, is that some gurus share similar views and it can get rather redundant. But overall it is well worth a look, even if you don't finish reading everything.

The Market Gurus easily breaks down investment strategies for the new or begining investors, but has very useful information that can be used by veteran investors. This book is easy to understand for the rookie investor. The authors achieved their goal very successfully. By showing the investors of the past, it made the different strategies much clearer than it would have been to just explain them. I enjoyed this book and definetly recommend it to anyone in need of strategical advise in the stock market.

A great book on learning about the stock market. Talks about many different types of strategies that any new upcoming investor could use. It let's you find out what kind of investor you will be by seeing what strategy fits you best. I myself like the O'Neil strategy. I would recommend this book to any who are curious about the stock market and investing in it.

The underlying theme of this book is two-fold:
1. A mini who's who of famous investing strategists.
2. How the author's product aggregates the best techniques and offers it to you for the price of admission.

I have several issues with this book, and the major problem I have is that the book contradicts itself from page to page. And the shameless plugs, as described by the author, are the basis of the book and not discrete tags in the book.

You will not gain any insight from this book about the selected guru's that you could not find searching the person on the internet yourself.

Including Warren Buffet in the list of guru's contradicts the authors' own criteria for screening guru's. Warren Buffet does not have documented strategy that can be verified and tracked. The fact that he is a market mover in his own right, and has the ability to invest in a company and change how the business operates goes beyond being a good stock picker with a strategy.

The point that buy and hold outperforms techniques that time the market is not a ground breaking revelation in the investment community, though the author contradicts this with the correct observation that most moves in the market occur over only a few days in the trading year.

The point that most mutual fund managers do not outperform the S&P 500 is not a ground breaking or new observation. There are several reasons that mutual funds have a hard time beating the market, and one of them is that they are selling a product just like the authors of this book.

There is not one bit of information in this book that is fresh or remotely new. And using back testing for any investing technique is highly flawed. The nature of equity and bond markets today is drastically different than it was 20 years ago, let alone since post WWII. The global nature of economies and money combined with 24 hour global trading have redefined the notion of market and company fundamentals.

The most irresponsible message in this book is that the buy-and-hold strategy is not presented completely.

Personally my returns on the market outperform any professional listed in this book, but then again I have no product or service I am trying to sell. Though my advice is simple: buy low and sell high.