The Guru Investor: How to Beat the Market Using History's Best Investment Strategies

Over the past six decades, the U.S. stock market has averaged an annual return of about eleven percent per year. Yet, except for a few renowned Wall Street gurus, the vast majority of investors, both amateur and professional, fail to come anywhere close to those eleven percent average annual gains. Why do most investors fail—and what do those very successful investment gurus have in common? The Guru Investor identifies the stock picking methodologies developed by some of history's best and most successful stock market gurus—including Peter Lynch, Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Martin Zweig, John Neff, and others—and shows how you can combine these proven strategies into a disciplined investing system that has been proven to outperform the market.

John Reese breaks down the very different approaches of each of the gurus—encompassing value, growth, and quantitative investing—and lays out their philosophy and achievements, detailing step-by-step the secret formulas they used to beat the market, while explaining why these legendary investors consider certain factors to be so important when analyzing individual stocks.

Reese not only discusses the individual gurus, their strategies, and why they are important, but he also explains how to best use these strategies in the real world, showing how to sift through all of the choices to find a strategy that works for you. The model portfolio system that the author has developed turns each strategy into an actionable system, addressing many of the common mistakes that doom investors to failure. In addition to offering these individual guru-based models, Reese also explains how to combine and implement these approaches into a multi-guru system that will provide you with a comprehensive, practical stock investing strategy with a proven track record. He reveals when you should buy, when you should sell, how many stocks you should own, and much more.

All investors can learn from the thinking, writing, and experience of Wall Street's greatest investors. The Guru Investor will teach you the lessons of these greats and give you all the tools needed to put those lessons to work in your investment strategy.

About the Authors

John P. Reese is CEO of Validea Capital Management and Validea.com. He also advises the Omega American and International Consensus mutual funds offered in Canada. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a columnist for TheStreet.com and Forbes.com. He holds two patents in computerized stock analysis and lectures around the country. His last book was the highly regarded The Market Gurus.

Jack M. Forehand is cofounder of Validea Capital Management and leads the development of the firm's quantitative investing system. He has an economics degree from the University of Connecticut and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.