1. You Can Still Make it in the market (printed in 1977) by Nicholas Darvas. I don't think it is available in Singapore. Could be out of print. You can get it from Amazon.
2. The Gone Fishin' Portfolio by Alexander Green.
You Can Still Make it in the market
Darvas is the author behind the book How I made $2MM in the market, written back in late 1950s. His strategy is essentially a "trend following" system. It is a precursor for the CANSLIM model which O'Neil perfected. This book was written after the market came off a VERY BRUTAL 1973-74 bear market when the market lost 50% of its value in a short 18months, not dissimilar to what has happened last year, which makes this book a good read.
Steps to identify stocks to buy.
1. Know the market trend
2. Buy stocks in the strongest industry
3. Buy the leaders in the strongest industry with the product and revenue/profit growth that is off the roof.
This is nothing new. The Lao Zuo Gong Jesse Livermore was one of the first Trend Followers and he used this methodology, so did Bill O'Neil, when he turned $5000 to $200K within a couple of years.
In this book, he interviewed some retail investors on their psychology coming out of the 73-74 bear market which makes interesting read. Darvas survived the brutal bear market with his capital intact as he did not like to play the short side of the market.
The Gone Fishin' Portfolio by Alexander Green
In the first 1/3 of the book, Green talked about how over the long term, mkt always trends up(quoting from Jeremy Siegel - Stocks for the long run) and the futility of timing the market (which I don't agree, of course
). Added to the mix is all the usual crap about "how if you miss the top 10 or 20 or 30 best days in the market, you returns will be so much lesser. He then unveiled his "Gone Fishing Portfolio" (GFP) and benchmarked it to the S&P500 from 2000-2007. Not bad. The portfolio has beaten the SP500 index every year. Losing less in bear markets and gaining more in bull markets.
His GFP is essentially a basket of funds from US to foreign mkts, TIPS and BOND funds. He uses the Vanguard group of funds due to its low expense ratio and size and advocates rebalancing only after every 12 months to avoid paying top bracket capital gains tax in the US.
After finishing the book ytd, I took it a step further and went back to Vanguard website to track all the returns for the 10 funds in 2008 to compute weighted average returns.
For me to trust an investment methodology, I always satisfy myself with backtesting to make sure that it is sufficiently robust. Here are the results.
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Portfolio Weightage 2008 Return Weighted Returns
Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Investor Shares (VTSMX) 15 -37.04 -5.56
Vanguard Small-Cap Index Fund Investor Shares (NAESX) 15 -36.04 -5.41
Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund Investor Shares (VEIEX) 10 -53.04 -5.30
Vanguard European Stock Index Fund Investor Shares (VEURX) 10 -44.73 -4.47
Vanguard Pacific Stock Index Fund Investor Shares (VPACX) 10 -34.36 -3.44
Vanguard High-Yield Corporate Fund Investor Shares (VWEHX) 10 -21.29 -2.13
Vanguard Short-Term Investment-Grade Fund Investor Shares (VFSTX) 10 -4.74 -0.47
Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities Fund Investor Shares (VIPS 10 -2.85 -0.29
Vanguard REIT Index Fund Investor Shares (VGSIX) 5 -37.05 -1.85
Vanguard Precious Metals and Mining Fund (VGPMX) 5 -56.02 -2.80
Total 100 -31.72
So I did a $100,000 portfolio invested at the start of 2000 to see if it can really match the Gone Fishing Mentality.
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Theoretical $100K Portfolio
Year GFP SP500 GFP SP500 Index
2000 -6.14 -9.11 93,860 90,890
2001 -2.73 -11.89 91,298 80,083
2002 -5.41 -22.1 86,358 62,385
2003 32.72 28.68 114,615 80,277
2004 15.28 10.88 132,128 89,011
2005 11.93 4.91 147,891 93,381
2006 16.99 15.8 173,018 108,136
2007 10.75 5.49 191,617 114,072
2008 -31.72 -38.5 130,836 70,154
This portfolio without doubt beats the SP500 hands down for the eighth year. Please note that the results from 2000-2007 was taken directly from the book so I assumed the author did the correct work.
No doubt that the range that it has beaten the SP500 is impressive, but the GFP compounded annualized return for 8 years is only 3.4%. Not sure if this will suffice for layman investors who like to Go Fishing.
This book is available at NLB. A good read if you are more of a passive investor who has stash of cash available.
Am trying to wrap up The Snowball and Panic this week
for all these recommendations, thank you MM ge! 
