You Can Be a Stock Market Genius Even if You’re Not Too Smart: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits
$17.04
You Can Be a Stock Market Genius (Even If You’re Not Too Smart) is a practical, opportunity-driven investing playbook built around special situations—the areas of the market where complexity, forced selling, restructurings, or deal mechanics can create mispricing that disciplined investors can exploit. Joel Greenblatt’s core message is simple: you do not need to predict the economy, find “the next Apple,” or rely on market forecasts to outperform. You need a repeatable process for identifying corporate events where the odds are structurally tilted in your favor.
Rather than focusing on conventional stock picking, the book teaches how to evaluate and profit from real-world catalysts: spinoffs, partial spinoffs, rights offerings, merger securities (risk arbitrage), bankruptcies and restructurings, recapitalizations, stub stocks, and the intelligent use of LEAPS, warrants, and options where appropriate. Each topic is treated as a framework—what to look for, why the opportunity exists, how the market typically misprices it, and how to think about risk.
Greenblatt’s style is deliberately pragmatic and direct. The goal is not to overwhelm with theory, but to teach readers how to find situations with asymmetric payoff profiles, where careful homework and clear rule-setting can produce strong results even when broader markets are noisy or directionless. Importantly, the book also highlights the behavioral and institutional reasons these opportunities persist: mandates, index constraints, time pressure, headline risk, and the discomfort many investors feel when situations look “messy.”
For serious investors, this book functions as a blueprint for building an event-driven toolkit—one that can complement long-only portfolios or form the foundation of a dedicated special situations strategy.
✅ What You’ll Learn:
- How “special situations” create structural mispricing and repeatable edges.
- How to analyze spinoffs, partial spinoffs, and rights offerings for opportunity and risk.
- The core mechanics of risk arbitrage and how merger securities behave before deal completion.
- How to approach bankruptcy and restructuring situations with a probability-based mindset.
- How recapitalizations and stub stocks can produce hidden value opportunities.
- When and why LEAPS, warrants, and options can enhance opportunity structures (without turning investing into gambling).
- How to build a disciplined research process that prioritizes odds, structure, and payoff.
💡 Key Benefits:
- A highly actionable framework for event-driven and special situations investing.
- Helps investors identify opportunities that are less dependent on market direction.
- Improves decision-making by focusing on structure and payoff asymmetry, not predictions.
- Teaches how to think like an opportunistic value investor in complex corporate events.
- Offers practical guidance on avoiding the most common “special situations” mistakes.
👤 Who This Book Is For:
- Investors who want to outperform using process and structure, not market forecasting.
- Value investors looking to expand into spinoffs, restructurings, and event-driven setups.
- Intermediate investors seeking a practical framework for special situations research.
- Investors comfortable doing homework and reading deal/restructuring mechanics.
📚 Table of Contents:
- Follow the Yellow Brick Road—Then Hang a Right
- Some Basics—Don’t Leave Home Without Them
- Chips Off the Old Stock: Spinoffs, Partial Spinoffs, and Rights Offerings
- Don’t Try This at Home: Risk Arbitrage and Merger Securities
- Blood in the Streets (Hopefully, Not Yours): Bankruptcy and Restructuring
- “Baby Needs New Shoes” Meets “Other People’s Money”: Recapitalizations and Stub Stocks, LEAPS, Warrants, and Options
- Seeing the Trees Through the Forest
- All the Fun’s in Getting There
You Can Be a Stock Market Genius Even if You're Not Too Smart: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits By Joel Greenblatt
| Author(s) | |
|---|---|
| Product Type | Ebook |
| Format | |
| Skill Level | Beginner to Intermediate |
| Pages | 297 |
| Publication Year | 1997 |
| Delivery | Instant Download |
17 reviews for You Can Be a Stock Market Genius Even if You’re Not Too Smart: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits
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Rylan Humphrey (verified owner) –
First off – the title is terrible. Sounds like every other ‘get rich quick by trading stocks’ type of book out there that only makes the author richer, not you.
That said, the content is gold. Basically I would characterize this book as a guide to special situations investing for non finance professionals. This is really the best ‘pond’ to fish in as an individual investor with a small account as many of the rocks you would turning over are too small and illiquid for the bigger players to even bother with.
This approach will not work for casual investors, however. You may have to dig into opaque legal documents/filings and spend a lot of time understanding a particular company’s situation to see if it could really be a home run/multibagger. Also many of the opportunities may be in highly levered companies priced for bankruptcy and now turning around – a high risk high reward play. Still, if you enjoy this sort of contrarian approach to investing, you can do very well with it. And if you don’t, you could just buy and hold FAANGM or an index fund for the next 20 years and retire wealthy!
Nyla Manning (verified owner) –
Greenblatt provides great insights to alternative strategies for stock market investing. On top of my value investment and quality business approach tought by Buffett, Greenblatt’s approach to special situations investment is worth deep diving.
Phoenix Manning (verified owner) –
This book is an interesting guide on looking for undervalued, hidden gems; unlike the efficient market theory, this book assumes that there are key scenarios (spinoffs, etc) wherein there may be opportunities for a well-informed investor to get a bargain deal on an up-and-coming stock. The book runs contrary to some other books such as A Random Walk Down Wall Street, or others who suggest that stocks are efficiently priced. It also doesn’t really tout the conventional wisdom of mutual funds and diversification as the best ways to optimize returns. IMO, each theory has its place and there is room for both some well-researched speculation as well as a more balanced approach of mutual funds for the rest of one’s portfolio.
Bennett Arellano (verified owner) –
so much to learn !
and to read as well !
Krew Mueller (verified owner) –
About 2/3 through this and definitely seeing plenty of new concepts that are timeless from 1997 and onward. Thanks!
Seth Lucas (verified owner) –
– Enjoyed reading it and def will recommend as a reference
– References are great
– Easy read, but at times wish the uses cases were more current
Ty Hoover (verified owner) –
For anyone interested in learning more than buy & sell this book is awesome.
Amy Jacobs (verified owner) –
Huge fan of Joel Greenblatt’s work. Hate the titles he gives things, but his work speaks for itself!
Jakari Lane (verified owner) –
Very insightful. Will reread and supplement as it introduces new ideas into my investment knowledge., but overall it creates a good base to refer back to.
Bryan Hurley (verified owner) –
This is a book on stock market with a quite different approach than most books. Although it has good ideas, it is quite wordy and outdated.
Imani Roach (verified owner) –
Cheesy title but fascinating and inspiring. I have a new way to seek stocks. As of Friday, in the first month of the start of my reading of it, it has paid for itself, literally and without exaggeration, by a factor of 1000.
Seth Goodman (verified owner) –
This book is without a doubt the best investing book I have read. The book provides very real insights into how to profit off of unique corporate situations, such as spin-offs, mergers, bankruptcies, etc. My personal interest is investing in spin-offs and this book arms you with knowledge that you can apply to your own investment research. A recent example for me was that I was able to make a massive profit off of GE’s spin-off of GE Health Care, because of the information I learned from reading this book.
One thing that I will add is that this is a more advanced investing book. The book assumes that the reader already has a background in investing and has some experience. I would not recommend this book to people who are at the beginning of their investment journey.
Alicia Farrell (verified owner) –
Yea.
Virginia Avery (verified owner) –
Good book with a great writing style and sense of humor to keep you engaged. I did not quite understand all of it at the detail that I would have like to but definitely opens up a lot of areas for exploration. Thanks Joel!
Kieran Griffith (verified owner) –
Joel’s style is easy going and not super-technical, and rhis book is relatively short. There are good ideas, especially around spinoffs, but some of this may be out of date and the advantages eroded by modern information being available to everyone rapidly OR some things, like restructuring no longer being done by companies.
It is still worth the time to read for investors.
Faye Bauer (verified owner) –
Excellent “You can do this” kind of advice delivered with a touch of humour. An update of references would be appreciated.
Carolina Powell (verified owner) –
Good balance of general stock market information and deep dive into more complex situations. All with a splash of humor.