FROM ROGUES TO RICHES

Murray Bloom's light trading in white-collar conmanship (The Trouble with Lawyers, 1968; The Man Who Stole Portugal, 1966; Money of Their Own, 1957) turns this time to the stock market where he uncovers all the paper skullduggery -- back-dooring, boosterism, churning, phony confirmations, etc. -- you have come to expect from the boys who ride the bulls and bears (cf. Brutus' Confessions ora Stockbroker, p. 1233; Elias' Fleecing the Lambs, p. 905). Bloom seeks out insider-promoters like his favorite rogues Phil Stoller and Jerry Alien to whom the book is dedicated (understand, they're not that devilish, ""Only very shrewd, cynical and clever"") who candidly yak about the brokerage business (""the only place where you can make a lot of money with no money and a minimum of talent""), successful market letter operators who aim their ""fingers"" (planted tips on ""crappy"" stocks) at the ""mooch"" (sucker-subscriber), their endless jockeying with the SEC, their ups, their downs. Once more you learn that there are no secret formulas for successful investing, that professional analysts are no better and sometimes much worse than random chance, that courses and schools on the market are quite limited (""We'll teach you how to speculate. That's all""). But for all this Bloom is a romantic mooch; he searches for that ""hero of American capitalism. . . the cool, calm, determined American who invested his modest savings and made a real fortune"" and, not strangely, he finds a few -- all eccentrics. This should do well with market buffs who are still bullish on America.