1929-stock

This is a very nice hardcover book that talks about the people, the stocks, and what went on in 1929 at the dawn of the stock market crash. Blumenthal follows numerous popular brokers, celebrities and everyday people as they stuggle with the uncertain market. Blumenthal also goes into details of why the stock market was so popular in the 1920's and explains many important stock market concepts as well. I used this book for a project,but have to admit that at times it was a bit dull. The intended audience might find it very boring, but nonetheless, it was a fairly good book.

This was a great book that I loved reading. I am into history and this book gave lots of details about the stock market crash that made it easy to understand. I think lots of kids will like this book if they give it a chance.

This book written by one of the top expert on speculation is no doubt just about the best book in its subject. However, the powerful element fo time may have eroded some of the usefulness which had been enjouyed earlier. Readers can still find it as a source of valuable historical data. For the best in stock market operations you should read Mr. gann more updated book "45 Years In Wall Street" published in 1954

This book is one of the most concise and clear writing by Mr WD Gann. He was still in his early years, and wrote a very clear layout of his strategy. I think you should read this book as the beginning of Gann studies. I don't recommend you go too far to research such topic as: astrol finance of Gann, some magic formulae, some magic chart and so on. I don't mean that they are useless. But you would get lost if you start running before you know how to stand. Thus, buy this book and read it at least twice, bofore you dwelve into a deeper field. The content? I think that it could be summarized as follows: 1) Observe the time element (e.g. time span, period, seasonal trend, etc.), 2) Classify the chart pattern (this is just the material contained in standard Technical Analysis books), 3)Money Management Philosophy - Cut loss, never let your loss be beyond 10% of your capital.

In my opinion, this is probably the most important book written
by W.D. Gann. I usually listen many comments from other Gann
student who consider '45 years in Wall Street' as the best book
of this author, but this is better. I think that if you read many times 'New stock trend detector' you will find hidden some very important trading techniques that will help you to keep a good track record in your future operations. Naturally, the work for 'decode' this techniques among the examples made by Gann,is hard but if you 'love' the stock market and you need a real help in your trading, this is the book for you.

In the waning months of the year 1929, the New York Stock Exchange was going strong. Millions of small and large investors poured their life savings into the pool of speculative issues, hoping for a big return on their gamble. On Black Tuesday, October 29th, the dream came to a crashing halt. This is the heart wrenching tale of that fateful day: the giddy years that preceded it, and the miserable decade that followed in it's wake. Sterling drama, with many poignant stories of the principal movers and shakers of Wall Street...before the Bubble burst.

Klein's retelling of the story of the stock market crash of 1929 is just too little and much too late. Other books, notably Only Yesterday by F.L. Allen for anecdotal material and The Great Crash of 1929 by J. K. Galbraith for analysis, go over the same material and do a better job. Klein's book does have some strong points: wonderful vignettes of some of the people, big and small, who were caught up in the crash; a good analysis of why Herbert Hoover, "the great engineer," couldn't engineer his way out of this one; some interesting anecdotal material I haven't seen anywher else. But all of that could have been done in less than half the space. Nice try, but no cigar.

Maury Klein, in his book Rainbow's End: The crash of 1929, has given us a blend of a newer style of historiography with the traditional sense of examining historical events. He has given us a look at the Stock Market Crash of 1929 through the eyes of the people that participated, rather than looking at it strictly from an economic or political historical viewpoint.

Klein starts his book with a description of American society in the 1920's and explains to us why the society of excess and speculation led to the crash moreso than a failing of the general American economy. By dotting the landscape with characters, some familiar and some unfamiliar, Klein gives us a good portrayal of the times.

There is, unfortunately, only a short section of the book that actually deals with the events of the crash itself. This section focuses the days between Black Thursday and Bloody Tuesday, which culminated in a horrific period of losses in the market.

Klein does a good job of staying on task during the sections of the book in explaining the economic factors and the behind-the-scenes actions that took place during these few hectic days. He does not, however, explain the immediate social ramifications (such as the fact that people who lost everything gave up on life) as well as might be expected; he gives this facet of the crash only peripheral coverage.

I would recommend this book to anyone that is looking for a socio-economic history of America during this 1920's. It does a very good job of covering this topic. However, if one is looking for details just on the crash itself and those few terrible days on Wall Street, that reader would be well served to find another book to read.

"No era ever vanished so suddenly, so completely, as the
twenties." -- -- David Dempsey, _New York Times_, Feb 15, 1970

This is a quick run-through of the Crash, with a little pop-sociology about America in the Twenties. It's eerie, reading quotes from bankers, politicians, and brokers from the months before the Crash, about how the market had become so modernized and shockproof that panics were now impossible. Sounds familiar...

New York Times financial columnist Alexander Noyes is a primary source in this book. It is fascinating, watching these titanic events being filtered daily through this not-stupid man's pen. We've heard more than 70 years of second-guessing about the Crash by now, so it is interesting seeing how it was taken point-blank by analysts at the time.

In Maury Klein's account, the Crash is nobody's fault. Like Stanislaw Lec once said, every snowflake in an avanlanche pleads not guilty. Big brokers ostentatiously placed big orders, hoping to spur rallies. Consortia of financiers struggled to maintain public confidence in the market. President Herbert Hoover-who as a humanitarian first and failed President second was Jimmy Carter in reverse-tried to get Big Business together in a game plan to retrieve the situation. But in a free market, there is no one pulling levers and hauling cables controlling things. There was no one to stop the free market from going into freefall.

Throughout the book are amusing little vignettes, like the man who sat smiling in his broker's office throughout Black Monday. His termagant wife wouldn't be able to nag him about the neighbors doing better in the market than him anymore...

Economics, like physics, has a fundamental canon: you cannot make money out of nothing. To narrate the history of financial bubbles is to chronicle those times when people overlooked that fact. In those instances, asset prices soar merely to be resold for profit, with little regard as to their actual value; when something shakes confidence and buyers are in short supply, a crash follows as prices were sustainable only insofar as they could be resold higher.

According to John Galbraith, the stock-market crash that took place in the fall of 1929 was typical of this prototype. Mr. Galbraith, a Harvard economist, traced the optimism to the Florida real-estate bubble of 1925 which made people forget the elementary rules of money making. What follows is an elegant narrative that interweaves economics with history to produce one of the most telling and lucid accounts of the developments, economic and otherwise, that lead up to the October 1929 crash.

The crash, according to Mr. Galbraith, was caused by an admixture of bad income distribution (economy too dependent on luxury spending and investment), bad corporate structure, bad banking structure, foreign imbalances, and bad economic intelligence. In seeking compelling explanations, the "Great Crash" often resists conventional wisdom: for example, to those who blame the abundance of credit, Mr. Galbraith answers: "on numerous occasions before and since credit has been easy, and there has been no speculation whatever." Mr. Galbraith looks beyond central banking and interest rates to compile a rich and diverse history of the 1929 crash.

So what about preventing future crises? Here, Mr. Galbraith is ambivalent. Regulation has and can play a substantial role in preventing future troubles. But the problem lies elsewhere: people continue to believe that they have been blessed, and that they can make money with little or no effort. When wise men see such folly and decide to partake in it rather than spoil it, a bubble that later crashes is inevitable. For all those who seek an economic solution to this economic problem, Mr. Galbraith surely disappoints. The surest protection against over-speculation, he writes, is to remind people that you can never get something from nothing. Those in love with central banking might find the idea simplistic, yet its beauty lies with its simplicity.

You want to know how irrational and unpredictable the stock market can be? Read this book. Written in easy-to-read language, it is digested almost as easily as a mystery novel, and yet provides a deep insight into the dramatic events of 1929, and gives an invaluable historic lesson. You can clearly see the parallels between events preceding market collapse in 1929 and today high-tech stock market boom - "...there is here a basic and recurrent process. It comes with rising prices, whether of stocks, real estate, works of art or anything else. This increase attracts attention and buyers, which produces the further effect of even higher prices. Expectations are thus justified by the very action that sends prices up. The process continues; optimism with its market effect is the order of the day. Prices go up even more. Then, for reasons that will endlessly be debated, comes the end. The descent is always more sudden than the increase; a balloon that has been punctured does not deflate in an orderly way." Book goes on to describe the inaction of the Federal Reserve, trade on margin, mergers, Florida real estate boom, investment trusts, leverage, short selling, and so on. Yet, you do not need to be a financial whiz to understand it. This is definitely a 5-star book.

Recall the talk before the bust of the "New Economy," in which distended P/E ratios and lack of profits were to be irrelevant. Recall Enron's public proclamations of its stability and projected earnings increases. Keep these in mind as you read The Great Crash, and you will never again listen to an analyst, much less an executive.

Galbraith's theme is that market stability and corporate interests are fundamentally at odds. CEOs will never speak evil about their own companies or the condition of the market, so their speech is about as useful to an investor as a pre-game pep talk is to a bettor. Analysts, as well as executives, are salesmen of their own stock, and their primary objective is to get you to buy high.

So why did the 1929 -- or the 2000 -- crash occur? Buying high is great as long as someone is always buying higher; however, such an aggrandized pyramid scheme is doomed to failure. It's as simple as that. So why, then, read Galbraith's book? He is a talented storyteller, and he highlights themes that are likely to accompany future bubbles so that the reader knows what to be skeptical about. This is a very entertaining read, and if you actively compare what Galbraith tells you of the 20's to what you know about the 90's, you'll likely not be swept away by future investing mania.

I've read all of Anita Shreve's books. This one wasn't as good as A Pilot's Wife or The Weight of Water.

Her latest book tells the story of the stock market crash in 1929. We see the struggle of the mill workers and the impact of such a horrendous economic blow to all of the various social classes. Honora Beecher is at the centre of the story though the novel is told from 5 different perspectives.

Shreve is an outstanding writer in that she uses wonderful, descriptive language and she can explore the human condition and the range of emotions like few other authors. I enjoyed this part of the book, but the story was a little too slow. I felt that some of the characters just didn't come to life like they could have...Vivian, the jaded socialite especially.

Overall, this was a good book, just not her best.

Anita Shreve's latest book, "Sea Glass," is a quiet novel that deals with the universal themes of life, love, loss, hope, beauty, tragedy and death.

"Sea Glass" begins in 1929, when Sexton Beecher, a typewriter salesman, marries bank clerk, Honora. They decide to make their home in a rather dalipidated, but still romantic, New England beach house. Honora is a fulltime wife and homemaker and besides the usual things all wives and homemakers do, Honora loves to take long walks on the beach and collect bits of colored glass, worn smooth as silk by the waves of the sea. Eventually, Honora meets and becomes friends with, Vivian, a wealthy woman who happens to live nearby. The world seems, at least to Honora, to be an almost perfect place.

When things are too good, they usually don't last and Honora learns this lesson the hard way. When the Depression causes Sexton to lose his job, his car and even jeopardizes the house, Honora is, of course, frightened. Sexton does find work at the local textile mill, but the job isn't a good one and a strike soon jeopardizes that as well.

Sexton and Honora's home become the center for the strike organizers and this event will, eventually, turn Honora's world upside down. When she begins to cook meals for everyone who meets at the house she meets handsome, Quillen McDermott and his twelve year old friend, Francis. Although times are very difficult, Honora suddenly finds that she is enjoying herself. Both the constant company and the presence of Francis, to whom she becomes a surrogate mother, are comforting. But, where McDermott is concerned, Honora may just be finding things a little too comforting and complications arise. These complications and how they are solved make up the bulk of the book.

This is a book that is told from the point of view of many of the characters involved. In almost every case this works, and it works well. The exceptions are Vivian and Francis. In the early sections of the book, Vivian played such a prominent part that we come to believe she will be an integral part of the coming storyline as well. Instead, she seems to fade a little more with each passing scene.

Francis is also problematic. His chapters are written in long sentences that let us know he is smart, but lacks the education he should have at his age. This wouldn't be bad in and of itself. The problem arises because the rest of the novel is so quiet and so poetic; Francis' chapters seem a little abrupt, as if they're jarring us out of a lovely reverie that we just don't want to leave.

Shreve is good, at least in this book, at creating convincing, believable characters and then making them come to life. The tension and excitement that exists between Honora and McDermott is especially memorable.

Although the description is good, the symbolism of the sea glass, however, is a bit heavy-handed, especially near the end.

This is a quiet book, with no great surprises and no great suspense. It doesn't delve too deeply into the minds and hearts of the characters involved, but then, we don't always want something that's earthshaking. I think most women will find more than enough to relate to in this book and Anita Shreve fans will probably love it.

If you read and liked Fortune's Rocks, also by Anita Shreve, Sea Glass is a must read. It was hard to put down.