Book Review > The Intelligent Investors Guide to Share Buying - 7th Edition

This book could have been called 'The Intelligent Investor's Guide to Making Money in Shares - in a Nutshell' - there wasn't much to it, really.
Buy the Weekend Australian, look at the top 150 companies (Big Cap), make a list of those with a PE ratio less than 10, and maybe a second list of those with PE ratio's between 10 and 15.
They must pay a dividend and ideally have a price-to-net-tangible-asset-backing ratio of less than 1 ie you're buying a dollar's worth of the company for less than $1.
Find out as much as you can about them, ie do 'due diligence', and if you 'like' what you find, buy them and hold…!
The author offers his own list of potential 'intelligent' buys, as at 12 Jan 2002 (I'll spoil the surprise in code only):

BTO, BPC, CSR, CLI, IPG, PDP, PSN, STO, WPL, GNC, CCL, FCL, WFA.

He claims to have form, having published his first list of 'intelligent' buys 10 years ago in the first edition. He spent a fictional $100,000 on 10 shares fitting into the above simple criteria, and today on his calculations they would be worth more than one million dollars.
He does espouse a couple of other important 'rules' - if a company misses a dividend, for whatever reason, SELL! If the stock dips below 20%, or whatever is your comfortable level of stop loss, SELL!
The book had lots of other interesting information about the market and the people and companies that have moved it over the past decade and an expose of insider trading, but really, it's a simpleton's guide to share investing!
Maybe there's brilliance in its sheer simplicity? Maybe it's just a clever marketing ploy - we investors are sensitive types more likely to buy an 'intelligent guide' than a simpleton's guide?
I wish I had read this book when I first started out - this approach doesn't need graphs and charts and it is not a bad starting ground for novice investors short on time, or indeed 'buffeted' (no pun intended!) investors seeking calm water whence to anchor their boat.