The Unemotional Investor : Simple Systems for Beating the Market

A stock expert from the popular "Motley Fool" Internet site explains his simple and effective systems for making large profits in the stock market, a two-model approach designed for both beginners and experienced investors

Falling in love with your investments is easy to do. You spend lots of time looking for that perfect company worthy of your money, then you buy it. The more the stock goes up, the more you like it. If the stock goes down a bit, you're usually pretty forgiving. But if it goes down a lot, you find yourself in a big dilemma. Should you hang on, hoping for better days, trusting that your reason for buying the stock in the first place was sound? Or should you admit your mistake, dump it, and move on?

In The Unemotional Investor, Robert Sheard, author of the Dow Dividend Approach and Foolish Workshop for The Motley Fool, offers a way around this dilemma. He notes that the obvious requirement for making money in the stock market is to buy low and sell high, but that most people simply can't do this. "What does it take to buy low and sell high? Surprisingly enough, it takes the polar opposite of normal human emotions."

So rather than try to reverse this investor psychology, Sheard sidesteps it altogether and advances two successful systems for buying and selling stocks. The first follows the Dogs of the Dow, which looks at the highest yielding stocks in the Dow 30. The second invests in growth stocks that also have a high degree of price momentum. Both systems require no knowledge of the companies in which you're investing. Instead, decisions to buy and sell are based on easily-acquired information. Sheard demonstrates how over the years these systems have consistently beaten--by a wide margin--all of the major stock indices.

If you've never consistently made money in the stock market, or if you're tired of the measly returns offered by your mutual fund, consider this book. It's good for all level of investors (except the most jaded) and typifies the best of The Motley Fool. Sheard's writing is clear and easy to follow. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards