Jason Kelly | About

Jason Kelly is the author of nine books including The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing, a BusinessWeek best seller now in its 2010 edition, and his newest title, Stock Market Contest, out for reader reviews in November 2011 and finding a home in New York as you read this. He also publishes The Kelly Letter, a curiously readable weekly investment advisory.

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 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.

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 founded and managed Socks for Japan in response to the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The aid effort delivered more than 150,000 pairs of socks and care letters to survivors.

You can contact Jason on the contact page.