The Intelligent Investor is good, however, it's a bit dated. It's from an age when values could be found by carefully checking the companies books (and or pape

The Intelligent Investor is good, however, it's a bit dated. It's from an age when values could be found by carefully checking the companies books (and or paper files) and finding it owned a utility that had a book value worth more than the stock of the owning company. Even Graham has said that for most people a low cost index fund is the way to go. Competing against a computerized/connected/inside information Wall Street is very hard and because of transaction costs (higher to the individual than the institution) winning stock trading strategies are non-trivial. However, Claude Shannon (famous computer science guy) was a pretty good investor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion Fortune's Formula http://www.amazon.com/Fortunes-Formula-Scientific-Betting-Casinos/dp/0809046377 http://www.amazon.com/Fortunes-Formula-Scientific-Betting-Ca... details some of Shannon's methods and covers some other interesting stories like LTCM, Mathematician Edward O. Thorp's black jack schemes and later his creation of the one of the first "computerized" hedge fund.