Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits

published

2011-12-14

rating

3

Definitely one of the classics, and a commonly recommended book for new investors, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits will show you what it takes to be a successful growth investor. The theme of the book is the "scuttlebutt method", which is all about doing extensive research beyond the financial statements, primarily by talking to investors, employees, and company managers. For small investors, this may be a bit discouraging because they often will not have the network of connections or amount of capital required to get meetings with the necessary individuals. Nonetheless, anybody should be able to benefit by taking the advice in the book. The advice in the book is almost purely qualitative, so it will not help very much in learning about valuation. The author de-emphasizes quantitative valuation because he expects that the investments made by his system will usually go up several fold in price. Overall, the ideas presented in this book should be valuable to investors who intend to spend a lot of time personally researching their investments.