Investors adopt many different approaches that offer little or no real prospect of long-term success and a considerable chance of substantial economic loss. Many are not coherent investment programs at all but instead resemble speculation or outright gambling. Investors are frequently lured by the prospect of quick and easy gain and fall victim to the many fads of wall street.

My goals in writing this book are twofold:

• In level 1, I identify many of the pitfalls that face investors. By highlighting where so many go wrong, I hope to help investors learn to avoid these losing strategies
• In level 2, I recommend one particular path for investors to follow a value-investment philosophy