The Little Book of Stock Market Profits: The Best Strategies of All Time Made Even Better

by Mitch Zacks

A timely guide to making the best investment strategies even better A wide variety of strategies have been identified over the years, which purportedly outperform the stock market. Some of these include buying undervalued stocks while others rely on technical analysis techniques. It's fair to say no one method is fool proof and most go through both up and down periods. The challenge for an investor is picking the right method at the right time. The Little Book of Stock Market Profits shows you how to achieve this elusive goal and make the most of your time in today's markets. Written by Mitch Zacks, Senior Portfolio Manager of Zacks Investment Management, this latest title in the Little Book series reveals stock market strategies that really work and then shows you how they can be made even better. It skillfully highlights earnings-based investing strategies, the hallmark of the Zacks process, but it also identifies strategies based on valuations, seasonal patterns and price momentum. Specifically, the Investing can be difficult, but with the right strategies you can improve your overall performance. The Little book of Stock Market Profits will show you how.

Genres: Finance, Nonfiction, Audiobook

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Milan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few good points, but not much for an individual investor.

[Arun Narayanaswamy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic little book with is packed with simple but potentially effective strategies. Focuses heavily on historical strategies which may or may not work.
Some effective points touched upon:
- Invest in Small cap vs large caps
- Do Not invest in ipo
- Mimic company management buy or sell
- Do not focus on company Earnings based on accruals
- Cash is king
- Put a price on value
- Consider following the momentum
- Invest in value during recession as growth is over leveraged
- Invest based on post earnings announcements surprises (positive drift)
- Relying on f or g score can be tricky

Some analysis of historical data is magical
Like more Sunshine generates more returns and Small cap does better in Jan. Overall a great book

[Gil Osborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does exactly as advertised. Great primer on many investment strategies with no fluff. If you are already fairly experienced maybe this won’t be helpful, but for anyone new to investing it does a good job of exposing each strategy and pointing out the logical flaws in them where it applies.

[Thaipaw · Rating 2 out of 5]

Presents a laundry list if active trading tricks for making profits. Not helpful for the buy and hold investor.

[Ishan Panthi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is sort of like a how to guide for old people. Even so, people are better off investing in funds rather learning from here.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decent book, but it's written by a fund manager who is writing for himself or other fund managers. It's kind of interesting to read about which investment approaches from common folk strategies work better or worse, but many of the strategies that work require buying a large number of stocks to get statistically consistent results, or responding to situations in a short time frame that only professionals would be able to do, or whose results return at most 10% more per year than a simple approach (and that not counting transaction costs). In addition to the more successful approaches not being practical for an individual, the author is vague on how they should be implemented, which leads me to think he actually uses them and doesn't want others copying his approach too closely. While it would be good that he knows what he's talking about, it would be better if the author were clear enough that a reader could know what he's talking about too. This problem is made worse by the fact that the author sometimes lapses into using jargon terms he hasn't defined (such as "drift").

Although it could never be useful for a lay person, it is nice to see a summary of how effective certain ideas are (small cap stocks, the January effect, etc.) from someone who has researched it.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. This book can be a bit dry at times, but it does contain some really good information. You just have to sift through it. I do like how the author sums up what he just wrote in a boldface paragraph. This helps highlight the most important points and makes it easier to digest the information.

I'm not crazy about the organization of this book, though. It lacks an index, which makes it more difficult to find what you're looking for.

[University of Chicago Magazine]

Mitch Zacks, MBA’99
Author

From our pages (May–June/13): "There are no foolproof investment strategies. But in this guide Mitch Zacks, senior portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management, identifies techniques based on valuations, seasonal patterns, and price momentum, as well as when particular strategies work best."