Book excerpt: Its been 10 years since the global financial crisis ushered in the Great Recession but world stock markets just keep on keeping on. There is nevertheless a nagging level of anxiety. Have we merely kicked the can of financial reform just a few years down the road? How far away is the next debt-fuelled recession? What should stock market investors do to protect themselves and even profit from events? Using content normally available only to institutional investor clients of the global news and data distributors, this book opens up a world of investment research and information. This book will help investors to prepare themselves for troubling uncertainties ahead. It is, nevertheless, not a stock picking service and is not offered as a forecasting model. Rather, its published as an aid in a process that should help careful investors and their advisers set up and maintain a portfolio of stocks comprising those designed to seize opportunities, those more of a defensive nature and others that just keep ploughing ahead despite the ups and downs of the markets. The book reviews 100 leading global bagger stocks and 20 extra similar stocks of interest from each of Asia and Australia/New Zealand for a total of 140 stocks. No stock appears in more than one grouping. Authors Howard Belcher and Anil Bakaya have more than 40 years experience together and have developed a globally-oriented independent research house with major clients including global aggregators Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones and Lexis Nexis.