Joel Greenblatt

Greenblatt ran Gotham Capital from 1985 and posted returns over its first decade that would be hard to credit if the record were not public, then handed back outside money and went on managing his own. You Can Be a Stock Market Genius, despite a title he has said he regrets, is not a beginner's book. It is about special situations: spin-offs, restructurings, rights issues and bankruptcies, corners of the market too small or too awkward for large funds to trouble with. He teaches at Columbia Business School. The approach assumes a reader willing to do primary research on individual companies, which is most of why it is less imitated than quoted.