The Neatest Little Guide To Stock Market Investing is a useful primer for the novice investor. The author, Jason Kelly, does a decent job of explaining how the stock market works and how essential information, such as financial ratios, should be interpreted by the individual investor. Kelly is also adept at explaining the different styles of investing; most notably, a chapter entitled “How the Masters tell us to invest” sums up the strategies of investment legends such as Warren Buffet, Bill Miller, Benjamin Graham, Peter Lynch and other venerable masters in a clear and concise format.  Kelly’s advice on where to look to find business news, and a decent broker (he is a big fan of online discount brokers, and rightly so) is useful information for anybody not yet familiar with the investing world. All of the book’s chapters are laid out in a clear and concise fashion that allows the information to be easily digested by financial neophytes and veterans alike.

Where this book falls short is its strategy, and Kelly’s personal suggestions can be questionable (keep in mind that Kelly is not an investing professional, but a writer who covered finance). I would not recommend that anyone use this book’s strategy as the sole blueprint for their-own personal investing style. Don’t get me wrong, he has some good advice that should be implemented into your personal strategy. I do, however, wish that Kelly stuck to his unbiased explanations of what seems to be an insurmountable amount of information seen daily by individual investors, and how it relates to you and me and, in turn, left much of his personal views out of it. There are countless books that opine on what investment strategy is best, and to be a really successful investor you have to read, a lot, and decide for yourself what is most appropriate for your needs and personality.  It’s not that Kelly’s strategy is completely misguided, and his strategy of tracking stocks is a good guide that can be easily personalized, but no one book should tell you how to implement your own strategy so precisely. Also, as a value investor I have to take issue with his opinion on the efficacy of the price-to-book ratio (a ratio that compares the price of the stock to the intrinsic value of the company) for evaluating stocks:

In truth, P/B (price to book) isn’t worth much to me. I care a lot more about a company’s use of its equipment to earn money than I do about the auction value of that equipment. If I really wanted the most equipment for my money, I’d go to the auction myself.

Kelly seems to contradict him-self at times, claiming in the beginning of the book that he leans more towards value, rather than growth, investing for his personal strategy, but then seems to put a little more weight on the growth side.

If you are new to investing, or the stock market, this is a good book to start with. It has detailed and concise explanations of what you’re going to come across during your new hobby. You will learn a lot, that I guarantee, but in terms of crafting your own strategy, read this, then read the masters and decide what works for you.