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With apologies to Molly Meldrum, if you own shares or plan to one day own shares on ASX-listed companies, do yourself a favour and buy Roger Montgomery’s new book Value.able.

Montgomery is a former fund manager and regular on Sky Business Channel. Unlike virtually every share market expert, not only does Montgomery get it right most of the time, but he also has the rare ability to simplify the fundamental principles of investing to the most unsophisticated of investors. Refreshingly, Montgomery is just as willing to tell investors to avoid buying shares in a company as he is to encourage investment. Montgomery’s analysis led him to suggest that ABC Learning Centres was over-priced at $8 (at the time, most analysts were fawning over the soon-to-collapse child-care operator) and told investors to buy JB Hi-Fi at $6.50 (before it rocketed to more than $20).

There are few more topics as poorly explained (and as a result, misunderstood) as investing. That fact is somewhat ironic given there have been more books written about investing than almost any other subject. But unlike books filled with technical charts or complex formulae, Value.able manages to simplify investing to a few basic principles and explain to readers how buying shares in a company is really like buying a business. Montgomery is careful to distinguish between speculating (which is what most mum and dad investors unfortunately end up doing) and real investing. Like his hero Warren Buffett, Montgomery has little time for speculators.

The essence Montgomery’s investing lessons can be summed up in his simple analogy: “Focusing on high quality businesses and on value investing is akin to finding a higher quality cheese — perhaps a jar of Meredith Dairy marinated feta  — selling for the same price as a block of home-brand cheddar. You always go for the better quality, because it really does matter what kind of businesses you put into your portfolio.”

The most important secret Montgomery teaches about investing is that there really aren’t any secrets to investing. Obeying simple rules and treating shares like real businesses will allow investors to grow their wealth — despite what Gordon Gekko might say, when it comes to real investing, greed isn’t always good.

The details: Value.able is available to be purchased online here.