Jason Kelly is the author of nine books including The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing, a BusinessWeek best seller now in its 2013 edition, and its companion volume, Stock Market Contest. He also publishes The Kelly Letter, providing subscribers with a clear look at financial markets every Sunday morning.
He graduated from the University of Colorado in 1993 with a BA in English, but not before a professor told him that he would never succeed as an author because he “lacked a basic command of the English language.” Luckily, IBM disagreed and hired Jason as a technical writer at its Silicon Valley Laboratory in San Jose, California. Once income from his freelance writing matched his income from IBM, Jason left corporate life to become a full-time freelance writer. About IBM hiring him for the only “real” job he’s ever had, Jason wrote in his book Financially Stupid People, “I keep a special smile for Big Blue because of that break. It was the only company that believed in me. I never knew the meaning of the term ‘competing offer.’”
One of Jason’s Japanese publishers, Shueisha, brought him to Tokyo on book tour in 1999. He took that opportunity to visit his old high school exchange student friend, and wrote a funny article about the experience. That article remains one of Jason’s most widely read. It’s still on his site. Japan went straight to Jason’s heart, and he decided to live there. He rented out his home in California and moved to Sano, Japan in 2002 for what he thought was going to be a one-year stay. This many years later, he still lives and works there.
After the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, he founded Socks for Japan, a volunteer organization that hand-delivered 160,000 care packages from around the world to survivors. See photos and read reports about the effort here.
In addition to writing new books and The Kelly Letter, he’s also the angel investor in Red Frog Coffee in Longmont, Colorado, a delightful little shop managed by his sister and business partner, Emily.
He divides his time between Japan and Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.
You can contact Jason on the contact page.
Jason is on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Goodreads. Your best bet for timely investment info is a subscription to The Kelly Letter.
Hi, Mr. Kelly!
I just finished reading your latest revision of “The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing” and wow what an informative book. I’d like to think that initially I had the steel nerves to invest and was just lacking useful knowledge and practical know-how. But after reading your book I think I’m finally armed with what I need to invest wisely and for the long haul. At least to get started on the right foot anyway Keep up the amazing work and happy investing!
Brandon C. Lewis
Thank you, Brandon, for the enthusiastic comment. Good luck to you in the market. Remember to start slowly. Learn with small amounts of money, not large, and find the style that works for you. There’s no rush and no time limit, so make the effort to find how you fit into the great squirming money machine of the stock market.
Here’s to your success! Jason
Hey, Mr.Kelly This is brandon from Buffett Magnet middle school. We are doing a work project called World In Need about Japan’s nuclear crisis and were wondering if your organization could help the people in that area.
Hi Brandon,
Yes, we could and did help people forced to evacuate from the Fukushima radiation zone. A family of such refugees even moved into an apartment in my neighborhood for part of last year, providing me with plenty of firsthand information as we continued Socks for Japan.
In the first weeks following the disaster, all of our volunteers wore protective clothing to help guard against radiation. After a while, though, we read that the protection didn’t do anything, anyway, and continued working in the danger zone in normal clothes because that’s what survivors were wearing and we wanted to blend in well with them. We trusted the radiation level reports of the government, but also compared them with privately collected readings. All of them indicated that we were safe to continue operating.
The controversy now is over whether the readings were accurate or not. We won’t know for sure who was affected by the experience for many years yet, when cancer rates and other long-term effects can be charted. Fingers crossed.
Rumors circulated that our volunteer team lost weight due to radiation sickness. That’s not true. None of us went through typical radiation sickness symptoms. The reason we became thinner was because we were extremely busy, doing physical work, and eating little while in the field with survivors.
Good luck with your project!
Jason
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