THE NAKED INVESTOR: Cautions for Dealing with the Stock Market

The Money Game--ten years after. Heller, a British financial journalist, offers an engaging if cautionary tract on the excesses that precipitated jolting stock market crashes on both sides of the Atlantic in 1974, larding the fast-paced narrative with precepts rather than prescriptions for investment success. While inclined to beat some of the financial community's deader horses--brokers' mass conversion to the growth cult during the 1960s, spurious recommendations by so-called securities analysts, the accounting antics employed by corporations to generate illusory annual gains in per-share earnings, and the myth of common shares as an inflation hedge--he still provides a blue-chip portfolio of sound economic and investment advice. The book abounds with wit to leaven wisdom: ""The stock market has a habit of seeing brilliance in every rising price."" Heller's preoccupation, however, is with value, dividends and other returns within realistic reach of the individual. Particularly useful is a brief essay reminding those with a bent for emotional or ego involvement in their selections that stocks are bought to be sold. The title is unfortunate insofar as it obscures the serious survey of a capitalistic institution subverted but not broken by profligacies in both the public and private sectors. Well worth an investment.