The big secret for the small investor : a new route to long-term investment success / Joel Greenblatt.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

When it comes to investing in the stock market,  investors have plenty of options:
 
1.  They can do it themselves.  Trillions of dollars are invested this way.
(Of course, the only problem here is that most people have no idea how to analyze and choose individual stocks.  Well, not really the only problem.  Most investors have no idea how to construct a stock portfolio, most have no idea when to buy and sell, and most have no idea how much to invest in the first place.)

2.  They can give it to professionals to invest.  Trillions of dollars are invested this way.
(Unfortunately  most professionals actually underperform  the market averages over time.  In fact,it may be even harder to pick good professional managers than it is to pick good individual stocks.)

3.  They can invest in traditional index funds.  Trillions of dollars are also invested this way.(The problem is that investing this way is seriously flawed--and almost a guarantee of subpar investment returns over time.)

4.  They can read The Big Secret for the Small Investor and  do something else.  Not much is invested this way.  Yet...
 
Let top hedge fund manager, Columbia business school professor, former Fortune 500 chairman and New York Times bestselling author, Joel Greenblatt, take you on a journey that will reveal the Big Secret for both individual and professional investors.   Based on path-breaking new research, find out how anyone can beat the market, the index funds and the experts by following a new approach that relies on the principles of value investing, common sense and quantitative discipline.   Along the way, learn where "value" comes from, how markets work, and what really happens on Wall Street.  By journey's end, small investors (and even not-so-small investors) will have found their way to some excellent new investment choices.