Praise for THE LITTLE BOOK OF PICKING TOP STOCKS

“Marty Fridson’s ‘Little’ book is a recipe for ‘Big’ equity market returns, especially in a future where active stock selection is destined to radically outperform the passive strategy that dominated for much of the past two decades. Whether you are a seasoned professional or a novice, put this book next to the Graham and Dodd classic on value investing.”
—DAVID ROSENBERG, Founder and President, Rosenberg Research

“In The Little Book of Picking Top Stocks, Marty Fridson once again shatters accepted investment axioms and uses empirical evidence and common sense to help one make more thoughtful and better performing investment decisions.”
—RICH BERNSTEIN, CEO, Richard Bernstein Advisors

“For those individuals who seek the Holy Grail of investing, finding the next Google or Tesla, that monster stock, either for the intellectual challenge or they have a preference for taking big risks, Marty Fridson’s book is highly readable, informative, and well researched, providing the common quantitative and qualitative characteristics of stocks that finish #1 in the S&P 500 for the year. In an engaging style he shows you why following traditional Wall Street research won’t lead you to them. Whether you are a stock picker or index fund investor you will learn from Fridson’s insights and stories.”
— LARRY SWEDROE, Head of Financial and Economic Research, Buckingham Wealth Partners

“Award-winning analyst Marty Fridson has made a quantum leap in how to identify top performing stocks. Serious investors take note!”
—CONSUELO MACK, Anchor and Managing Editor, Consuelo Mack WealthTrack

How well does it pay to own the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s best-performing stock of the year? Over the 2012-2021 period, the one-year total return ranged from 80% to 743%. This book identifies the quantitative and qualitative traits of stocks that made it to #1 and tells the stories of how they got there. A key indicator, the Fridson-Lee Statistic, makes its debut in these pages.

Aiming for the massive upside of the #1 stocks entails substantial risk. It’s not something to do with more than a small percentage of your portfolio. But attempting to pick the coming year’s top performer can provide an outlet for speculative impulses that might otherwise spoil a prudent, long-term investment plan. And by investigating the statistically determined best candidates for #1, you’ll gain important insights into stock selection.

The Little Book of Picking Top Stocks explains why conventional equity research provides only limited help in zeroing in on the index’s future top performer. Spotting the #1 stock isn’t Wall Street analysts’ focus, although the information they furnish about companies’ competitive strategies is quite helpful. Problematically, investment banks’ fundamental stock reports are structured around a valuation metric that was discredited nearly half a century ago—earnings per share.

Author Martin Fridson’s previous writings on the stock market include the books It Was a Very Good Year and Investment Illusions, as well as articles such as “Ben Graham’s Value Approach: Can It Still Work?” He has received the CFA Society of New York’s Ben Graham Award and has been named the Financial Management Association International’s Financial Executive of the Year. The Green Magazine called his Financial Statement Analysis (co-authored with Fernando Alvarez) “one of the most useful investment books ever.”