Forecasting

Michael Mandel, economics editor at Business Week, has written another economic apocalyptic book, albeit well documented and educational. He writes, as do most with financial backgrounds, in a dry manner (and includes a few charts and graphs often associated with financial writing). His basic premise is that "The U.S. has a New Economy in which the business cycle has been replaced by the tech cycle," and we do not know how to comprehend this new cycle, thus we will be bitten on the butt because of our own ignorance.

Mandel goes on to underscore that since none of us have lived through a "tech bust" we do not know what to expect. While he really doesn't either, he does give us his prognosis of what could happen during this coming tech melt down. He states that, "The downturn is likely to come, as violent and destructive as a hurricane," and that it will bring "devastating damage" to those with jobs in the IT market. The coming internet depression will bring a significant fall in household prosperity, and it will bring a loss of wealth, as the stock market tanks, especially for those with "new economy stocks."

One interesting evaluation Mandel makes is how the U.S. rose to dominate the world market in technology and innovation. He answers the question "Why did the New Economy start in the U.S. rather than Japan or Europe?" by pointing out three important strengths: First, the U.S. had early deregulation and a very flexible labor market. Second, we developed a system capable of financing innovative businesses. Third, we had educated workers who were willing to take risk and step outside the safe confines of the protection of large corporations. Good insight.

Mandel writes about the coming depression but refuses to state when, how long and how deep. At the end of his chapter "The Next Depression," Mandel writes the caveat, "Anyone who puts too much trust in economic forecast runs the risk of finding out that the forecast will be as wrong," so from Mandel we get nothing specific, just the warning that bad times are a-coming. It reminds me of my past interludes with apocalyptic Christians who storm the streets crying, "Jesus is Coming, Jesus is Coming soon!" Jesus has been coming for the past 2000 years but we are still here. Conditionally recommended.

Should the title be changed to "The Currant Internet Depression'? It seems likely. Mandel highlights the obvious parallels between the twenties and the nineties, and explains in detail why he expects why he the currant economic protections to ineffective and dealing with the possible collapse of the New Economy. His main thesis is that the currant economists, business leaders and government officials will be as unprepared for the tech collapse as the people of Hoover's time were for the stock crash, and for much the same reasons. Mandel believes the 'New Economy' is more important even than New Economy proponents suggest, and that it's collapse will lead a general collapse by a few years. He suggests that it represents an economic shift of the magnitude that took place in the twenties with the emergence of personal credit and the spread of new technologies of the time. He does not claim, as his overconfident knee jerk critics will expect, that the collapse will happen the same way as the Great Depression. Indeed, this is the opposite of his thesis; although he does point out that the conservative economists of the twenties were just as certain that there could never again be a collapse. One ideologue I mentioned the work to dismissed it out of hand because of the SEC and the FDIC, it's this sort of overconfidence that lead to the last collapse and the inability to cope with it when it did occur. Indeed, given Congresses willingness to allow the protections installed in the thirties to lapse (allowing consolidation and cross pollination in the financial/insurance world) perhaps it WILL happen just the way that it did, especially if the knee jerk anti-government lassie fare radicals actually get their way. If anything, Mandel is to optimistic, especially when he suggests that Venture Capitalists are a hardy forward-looking bunch. Mandel's scenario, with tech layoffs leading to a crisis of consumer confidence and subsequent personal bankruptcies and an unwillingness on the part of VC's to indulge in risky spending to jump start the tech sector seems compelling, and not simply because it seems to be happening now. Is the 'recession' really a 'depression' and will it last as long as Mandel suggests? You can decide for your self, but you ought to read the book, if for no other reason than to understand the underlying weakness of a risk driven economy.

Mandel called it before it happened.... He recognized the patterns in psychographics, world economics, technology, and the road ahead. He shows that the paradigms of the technology driven society we hastily built will need to radically change if we are to continue growing. As we are all painfully aware, we built upon the euphoria of intrinsic technology while the foundation was being eroded by weak (to non-existent) earnings and fundamental business needs. If you want to understand exactly what's going on right now and how to position yourself for the future, you will want to get this book!

I found SJG's little book quite interesting in that he chases rabbits through fields of astronomy, calendrics, history, American Indian lore, mathematics, theology, and other areas including savants.

He fails to include Julian days as a means or reckoning the passage of time in a very orderly fashion. Always entertaining but never conclusive on the subject, since he properly makes a distinction between The Millennium of Apocalypse and the millennium of the calendar, he leaves conclusions to the reader. He points out that the media did get it right, according to one school of thought, in the 1900-1901 century transition and the nineteenth century passed to the twentieth Dec. 31, 1900/Jan. 1, 1901. The mid point, however, was signaled by LIFE magazine publishing its mid century issue in January 1950 rather than 1951.

What we are really concerned with is the consistent ordinary, everyday reckoning of time, days, and years in an orderly and rational manner. It doesn'take a PhD in calculus or differential equations to deduce that the twentieth century is 20th hundred years, that two millennia is two thousand years and until the 2,000 years have been completed at the END of year 2,000 the twenty- first century and the thirdmillennium have not arrived. As they say about opera...it isn't over till the fat lady sings.

Buy a copy if you are a fan or borrow a copy if you like science fiction mixed with lots of unusual facts. You will find the finale a bit poignant, but don't cheat, resist the urge to peek.

I love Gould's essays. I hate Gould's self-indulgence. Gould always has something interesting to say, and this book is no exception. But he needs an editor who isn't overawed.

As in his delightful collections of essays, Gould finds the excitement in interesting tidbits and magnifies them in an interesting way. In Questioning the Millennium ("two n's," Gould reminds us with characteristic pedantry but an unnecessary apostrophe), we learn not only about the never-ending conflict over when the century ends (Gould claims to take no side, although he really does), but also about a wealth of millenarian trivia (only one n here). It's interesting trivia - little pieces of history that, as Gould notes, we always mean to look up but never do. He details apocalyptic visions of the millennium, the change from Julian to Gregorian calendars, and nature's frustrating imprecision - all worthy subjects.

Unfortunately, the inherent interest of these topics is somewhat compromised by Gould's ever-present reminders that he really, truly is an Essayist - which, to him, means someone who likes to advertise his vocabulary and seeks admiration of his ability to turn a neat phrase. Problem is, sometimes he gets a little lost in his own self-wonder. Several times, I had to look back to pick up a thread of thought I figured I must have missed - only to find it absent. I like stylish writing, but I don't like writing that calls attention to itself. Gould's writing does, and it wears thin.

But Gould nevertheless has a truly original mind, and I love how he thinks. It's worth trudging through a book that, like many of his essays, is a little too long and a little too cute to get the benefit of his wonderful thinking.

One other thing. The book ends on a beautiful note, but it's essential to build up to it. Don't skip ahead.

Stephen Jay Gould is entertaining. His work Questioning the Millennium is that questioning, but entertaining. I like Gould as an author and his essays are thought provoking.

This work is no different. Complex calendars and the idea of a millennium and how it effects us as a whole. A whole host of ideas brought to us from Gould's questioning mind.

This is a rather short work of essays, but no less provoking. As with all of Gould's essays... either you like them or despise them, idiosyncrasies and all.

Nonetheless this is entertaining.

The only thing I can say after reading this book is--baloney! I've never read a more useless business book such as this. I have no doubt that the author has never worked a day in his life. Get a job! Get a life!

In short the book could have been about 60% shorter. At times the hypothesis drawn are illuminating but very often the authors are spending entirely too much time to support their insights. My feeling is that anyone reading a book such as this doesn't necessarily need a whole lot of convincing as long as there is some sound rationale and telling examples to support the theories.

Having just completed the book I would recommend that anyone interested in picking up the book just look at the last 15 pages to get a sense of the nature of the book where the authors make predictions regarding the next 500 months and the next 500 years.

There are however some very keen insights on the power and use of technology (connectivity), tribalism, the role of corporations and government, business and social constructs, the importance of constant education, the nature of chaos, the power of the consumer... and almost all of this is addressed from primarily a marketing perspective.

There was very little that was written that I disagreed with but I feel like the same thing could have been said in many fewer words.

Making sense of our world, never an easy or a completed task (our pretensions regarding the latter notwithstanding!), just got substantially easier with the appearance of The 500 Year Delta. The book works on several levels, not the least of which is its utility as a survival guide to the new ways and definitions of work and relationships which await us as our separate rivers dump us into the roiling, clear-as-mud, yet nutriemt-rich waters of that Delta. The authors' uncommon sense (e.g., that corporations will have embassies, not governmets; that governments' chief values will be to effect transfer payments and provide entertainment, etc.) hit at the very foundations of our value systems. They are, nonetheless, cogently and coherently conceived and presented. Accepting their theses will lead the reader along seemingly tortuous paths, and will require several iterations of what the literary critics used to term the "willing suspension of disbelief." Those suspensions will be frequent, and some will be of serious length. Particularly challenging will be the authors' insistence that the utility of reason has played itself out, and their consigning of hierarchies to the dustbin of history. A must read for those of us in government service (an emerging oxymoron?), but not recommended for those therein in management positions!

I did not find this book as helpful as I was hoping. First, and most importantly, I needed more examples. There was only one and it was a service organization and I needed to see an example of a manufacturing organization where the target customer was not so geographically limited. Also, I found that the way the book is organized was difficult. I felt the book was more oriented toward helping someone sort out their thoughts and feelings about starting a business than it was focused on actually structuring and writing a business plan. What I actually need are the hard, factual mechanics of writing a business plan and I did not find it to my satisfaction in this book.

This book was well organized and some of the worksheets were a little hard to use but its still one of the better books I've looked at. The worksheets I had problems with were the financial planners. Some of them were not well explained and therefore hard to use. Overall, the book was very thorough and hopefully it will help my plans for starting a business go through.

Pros:
-The sample plans were the strongest part of the book because it allowed you to see how the worksheets were put together.

-Very thorough book.

-Leaves nothing out in terms of how to write a business plan and then how to get the money.

Cons:
-The book fell apart on me after reading through it a few times. For such a high quality text I expect a better put together book.

-Some of the financials were not matching other sections of the sample plan to see how it was put together overall.

-Some of the worksheets especially the financials were not well explained.

I have read a lot of them and written a lot of them... business plans and bus planning books. This is BY FAR the best book available. It has depth and the detail needed to write a SERIOUS business plan. The only reason it has been criticized in reviews here is that it has a lot of detail and requires WORK. If you want the Daffy Duck business plan book (don't want to work), go elsewhere. If you want to get money (are willing to work), buy this book and do it from cover to cover. A MUST HAVE BOOK.

This is an interesting and easy to read book. It provides the reader with an in-depth explanation of Bollinger Bands and its interpretation and application. The book expands a bit more on how to apply the bands to trading strategies, but it falls short on a more detailed trading system with the bands. For instance, stop-loss, entry, exit, ect. It is a book about the study of an indicator, and that's about it. Nonetheless, it is worth reading!

Unfortunately, the book fails to provide a more detailed explanation on the most interesting aspects of the bands: The squeeze. The squeeze of the bands itself does not tell the trader too much, except that the price action is bound for a strong move. However, it is possible to combine other indicators so to have a solid idea which way the move is going to occur.

Of all the main stream technical indicators, it is safe to say that Bollinger Bands are perhaps the least understood. But they can become part of an arsenal of highly useful technical tools for those who have learned how to properly apply them and one good way to get a running start is to read his latest book, Bollinger on Bollinger Bands. Not only does the book provide some very useful background information on how they came to be, it is an opportunity to hear from the master himself how he uses the bands to best effect. According to Bollinger, one pattern that he calls the Squeeze (a topic on which he spends a whole chapter) draws more questions than any other aspect of Bollinger Bands. As he describes it, his bands "are driven by volatility, and The Squeeze is a pure reflection of that volatility." (Excerpt from Investopedia.com with permission.)

After reading the book, I developed a scan to find stocks that are getting the Squeeze and it works pretty well. Sure enough, a stock that has shown a period of declining volatility, generally breaks out with a bang shortly after reaching a low extreme. The trick is then trying to determine which way. Bollinger includes a number of tips and indicators in the book to help the trader figure that out too.

This book is for anyone who has ever looked at Bollinger bands and tried to understand how to use them as well as those who do use them now but want to get some more great ideas. It is not a difficult read and is actually very well written (I am always surprised by traders who have been steeped in mathematics and technicals like John B. who can also write well.) He is obviously an excellent communicator and this fact comes through loud and clear in his book.

Bollinger on Bollinger Bands is well worth the money. It is also a chance to hear the master who we see on CNBC and in the Wall Street Journal express his ideas and views on markets and how to profit from them. That alone, makes this book worth reading.

Matt Blackman - Technical Writer/Reviewer Email: matt@tradesystemguru.com
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Contributor to Stocks & Commodities Magazine, Working Money, Traders.com Advantage, Active Trader, Traders Mag (Europe) and SFO Magazine

A quiet, well paced, unassuming power house of history, insight, and trading experience all rolled into an easy flowing, unpretentious read. Bollinger manages to teach us about his indicator, and about the market itself without shameless self promotion or hype. Bollinger on Bollinger bands is what this market needed, a clear, concise and useful tool for investors to use to provide balance in a chaotic time. As a financial writer, and money manager, who uses Bollinger Bands on every trade, I found that the book gave me new ways to not just trade, but analyze the market and decide when not to trade, which is where the difference between success and failure is often deciced. The book is written in a fluid, easy to digest manner, which gives the reader room to sit back and ponder between chapters. There are clear, one sentence summary statements after each section, which pull the material together quite well and reinforce the main points. Other useful aids include a pull out reference card with statistical formulas and reference charts. The best thing is that Bollinger, a bona fide market guru, doesn't take himself too seriously. He humbly admits that trading has a great deal of uncertainty, and does not tout his own fortunes as a result of his indicator. The book can also be read as a nice historical piece, which begins with the nostalgic foreword by CNBC's Ron Insana about the old FNN news room, including a classic anecdote about the late Ed Hart, who for all of us who knew FNN could only bring a smile. Thanks John.

Publishing is a notoriously conservative, unprofitable, non-linear line of business. The most fascinating parts of Epstein's book are his accounts of how he did something a little differently ("thought outside the box," to use a current cliche) and helped create something truly innovative and worthwhile--like quality paperbacks (Anchor Books) and the Library of America (uniform editions of carefully edited American classics on acid-free paper). While this book is essentially an extended essay on where publishing is going (as publishing houses become lesser components in larger media companies, and author advances for the turner-outers of blockbuster titles sap publishers of their resources and makes them unwilling to take risks on more significant literary voices), there are some interesting portraits of key figures from publishing's past, such as Horace Liveright, Bennett Cerf, and Donald Klopfer.

His key thesis, that the future of publishing lay in being able to obtain printed books on demand from ATM-like kiosks, is both hopeful and scary. It means that there will be no need for any title to ever go out of print, no matter how limited its audience. (Hopeful.) But will books produced in this manner be as satisfying to read, hold, and collect as any single title in the Library of America? (Scary.)

The preface of BOOK BUSINESS mentions the very origins of written language: cutting or "scoring" a mark onto a board. He notes that "scorekeepers still keep score on boards". He might also have added that the early scoring was the first expression of binary code, the language understood by the tiny chips that run the giant scoreboards at the Super Bowl, as well as every other scoreboard or "computer" on Earth.

Epstein gives here a curious insider/outsider account of the book business over the last half century. He was decidedly inside when he began in the fifties, working with Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer to "publish" such legends as Nabokov and Faulkner. His anecdote of Nabokov is a gem. He runs into the author in the bar of the Paris Ritz in the early seventies. Nabokov, in a loud Hawaiian shirt and a loud Midwestern accent, raises a toast to Richard Nixon. Why Nixon? Because he believed Nixon would eventually triumph over the Viet Cong and that would lead, dominolike, to the fall of the Soviet Union, enabling him to return to his beloved homeland.

By the eighties Epstein and his ilk are being overwhelmed by mass market forces. Chain bookstores seem to be taking over the industry and reducing drastically the numbers of titles available for sale (and by extension able to be published). The pressure of real estate costs at the malls steadily reduced the selection at bookstores to a handful of bestsellers, "whose faithful readers are addicted to their formulaic melodramas". Publishers who in Epstein's early years were like intellectual families had by the eighties been reduced to mere distributors and advertisers. Between 1986 and 1996, he relates, "63 of the 100 bestselling titles were written by a mere 6 writers".

By way of hinting at what was to come, Epstein tells of meeting a man who in the 1950s described to Epstein in some detail...the Internet. Epstein liked and respected the man, Norbert Wiener, an engineering prof at MIT, but "dismissed this prophecy as science fiction". Courageously, Epstein admits his failure to take the prophecy seriously reflected "the limitations of my own worldview at the time and that of my intellectual friends who were increasingly absorbed in Cold War issues and felt that the fate of Western civilization depended upon the positions they took in their articles for Partisan Review or in their dinner party conversation". One sees the limitations of his worldview pop up again when he meets a man named Bezos, who is committed to changing the book business. After a fairly short time, Epstein pronounces Bezos to be "committed to an incorrect business model".

But in spite of revealing himself to be a bit of a mossback, Epstein also gives what I found to be one of the most exhilerating glimpses anywhere of what technology can do for the book business: A kiosk, containing an "ATM machine for books". In it, an integrated set of computer, internet connection, laser printer, and binder. You put your money in, type onto a keyboard what text you want--anything from a transcript of the Nixon tapes to a copy of LOLITA to a handbook of Siberian butterflies--and the computer downloads it, the laser prints it, and the binder binds it. It doesn't matter if it's "out of print". That phrase is obsolescent. It doesn't matter if the book is banned. The newly printed and bound book will fall into a slot like a can of Coke. Your wait will be perhaps 5 minutes in 2005, falling to 5 seconds in 2010.

In book publishing since 1950, Jason Epstein knows firsthand the problems the industry has faced over the years and how recent technological advances are about to bring a much-needed change. And though this may seem boring on the surface, read on, for according to Epstein, the future of book publishing is about to change dramatically.

No stranger to innovation, Epstein launched The New York Review of Books, and the Library of America, in addition to creating Doubleday's Anchor Books, the imprint that started the quality trade paperback revolution. Now he envisions another revolution, but he's not talking about electronic books (e-books).

In the preface to Book Business, Epstein says, "Technologies change the world but human nature remains the same," which seems to sum up how most readers feel about e-books. You can't replicate the experience of curling up with a good book if you're glued to a computer screen or fumbling with a stack of loose-leaf printed pages. What he is talking about is print-on-demand (POD) publishing - technology that is capable of transferring book text electronically to book kiosks which will be able to print and bind a finished book, either in a central location or, eventually, in your own home.

Joining Random House in 1958, when the company was housed in New York's Villard mansion, Epstein witnessed an exciting part of book publishing history. He recounts tales of W. H. Auden showing up unannounced "in torn overcoat and carpet slippers delivering the manuscript of The Dyer's Hand"; Theodore Geisel (Dr. Suess) "arriving with his storyboards to recite Green Eggs and Ham"; and Andy Warhol "bowing slightly and addressing me in a deferential whisper as Mr. Epstein, as if I were not someone in a torn sweater and corduroy trousers hardly older than he was...."

Epstein elucidates a time in New York after the Second World War when the sounds of Johnny Mercer and Ella Fitzgerald could be heard at the Vanguard or Café Society and, if you had a few pennies, you could enjoy a beer while you were listening.

But irregardless of the social opportunities it affords, Epstein asserts that publishing, by its nature, is not suited to becoming a commercially viable enterprise, and that attempts at making it so have oft led to disappointment, since the publishing paradigm includes allowing booksellers to return unsold stock for full credit. When he was at Doubleday, Epstein later learned, the company's treasurer was advising its owner to sell the business and invest the proceeds in government bonds, arguing that this would yield a greater profit. "The book business as I have known it," Epstein confesses, "is already obsolete."

Meanwhile, the marketplace has come to be monopolized by superstores, whose accompanying high overhead costs require high turnover. The trouble started with the migration from cities to suburbs, since the only place booksellers could set up shop in the suburbs was in the malls, where high rent precludes the profitable operation of a retail business that requires a great deal of inventory with very little turnover. "When this phenomenon first became apparent some 30 years ago," Epstein quips, "the industry joke was that the shelf life of a book had fallen somewhere between milk and yogurt. Since then the situation has worsened...."

Internet booksellers have attempted to bring these inconsistencies within line, but even their dismal profit performance shows continuing difficulty. The problem is that even in a warehouse, overhead rises with increased sales and profits never improve.

Enter the "ATM for books," POD machines proficient at printing and binding any paperback book for the cost of a few dollars. They are already in use at book wholesaler Ingram, and other publishers and retailers. Smaller, less-costly versions of these machines are now in development, coming soon to a store (or library, or post office?) near you. One day you might have one attached to your computer as your conventional printer is now.

In the meantime, many publishers are scurrying to digitize their backlists, although there is still controversy over whether they, or their authors, own electronic rights; while another hurdle to be overcome involves developing reliable encryption to prevent against copyright infringement.

But imagine the possibilities: any book ever written available instantly, or the ability to create custom books with combinations of text from one or more authors, all from the comfort and convenience of your own home.

Book Business is not only premonitory when it comes to the coming revolution in publishing - which makes it a compelling read - but well-written and conversational; the kind of book you don't want to end. If Epstein's predictions ring true, our world will almost assuredly be a different place for publishers, booksellers, authors, and readers alike.

When it comes to considering the possibilities this technology brings, the mind boggles and I feel the urge to visit my local bookstore, this time spending a little more time, so I'll be able to tell my grandchildren what one looked like.

Getting Started in Technical Analysis provides a fantastic overview to the world of technical analysis, with topics ranging from the age-old fundamental vs. technical debate to outlining of trading guidelines. Written in an easy-to-understand style, the book is also easy on the eyes (which cannot be said of many financial books).

Schwager uses the first seven chapters to define many of the technical factors that novice traders should know before they can trade in today's active market. Part One illustrates a wide range of basic technical-analysis tools and how they are (or should be) used. Chart patterns, oscillators, trends and the like are explained concisely with easy-to-follow sample charts. The reader can quickly absorb these basic ideas before moving on to Part Two.

In Part Two, the reader gets his/her first taste of the "how" of technical analysis. The author delves into topics like pyramiding, stop-loss points and exit signs. This is also the part where the author's "Most Important Rule in Chart Analysis" is laid out. Part Two can easily make a reader anxious to start (or get back to) trading.

The third section of Getting Started in Technical Analysis approaches trading systems and software. The author describes the most pertinent options that a trading software package should contain, leaving the legwork to the reader. In the discussion of trading systems, there is no magic formula here, simply guidance to develop and test a trading system of one's own.

Part Four is vital to the trader...novice or otherwise. The author (who is CEO of Wizard Trading) offers practical trading rules and market wisdom.

Getting Started in Technical Analysis is an excellent source of information for the soon-to-be, novice, or expert trader. This book should have a reserved shelf space in every trader's library.

I'm familiar with Schwager from his two Market Wizards books, in which he interviewed and profiled many of the great traders of our times, such as Paul Tudor Jones, the great futures and swing trader. So when I saw this I decided to check it out.

I would recommend this as a good beginner's book. Read this before you undertake Martin Pring's book on technical analysis, for example, as his exhaustive analysis of chart patterns will be too dense and forbidding if you're just starting out. Schwager strikes a good balance between getting the concept across and inundating the beginner with too many details. Most technical analysis methods aren't that hard to understand, even the ones based on more sophisticated math; it's the application to the real-world charts that takes some skill and experience.

For me the best chapter was the 82 Rules of Trading, which contains 82 short statements about trading principles, including such classics as never selling a stock that is making new highs (probably as close to an "absolute" principle as there is in the markets). This chapter may be most useful to someone with more trading experience in the market who's experienced what happens when you violate these principles, but they're there anyway, and it won't hurt you to get exposed to them right off. Overall, a well written, clear, and concise introduction on this aspect of trading.

This is the kind of book that you should keep as a constant reference. With many trading computer programs that will do all of your technical analysis for you. It is good to know the why and wherefores behind the concepts that you are using. This is the Sixth book that I have read by Schwager and I am thoroughly impressed. Many of his books tend to be steeped in high level mathematics and difficult to grasp exactly what point he is trying to make. In this book, there was no such problem. The only part he leaves out is that the Technical Analysis is nothing without discipline. His book ... will give you a well rounded trading experience. I own this book as a reference and so should you.

When I saw the cover of this book, with Ben Stein and his co-author lounging by the pool, bags of gold coins and gold ingots at their side, I thought it would be a send-up of investing books. Oops.

In spite of the kicky title and irreverent writing style, this is a genuine attempt to educate investors. It's full of rather conservative, long-term advice. Look for undervalued stocks. Don't jump in and out of the market. Diversify. When Stein and DeMuth talk about Market Timing, it is not a reference to day trading, rather to buying stocks when they are cheap. Buy low, in other words.

Their thinking on dollar cost averaging is refreshingly sensible. Instead of the Bob Brinker style of investing a fixed amount every month (or year or whatever) regardless of cost per unit, you should wait until the stock is cheap, then buy as much as you can. This assumes the investor has a brain, and enough discipline not to mess it up, which seems to be Brinker's fear.

Anyway, there isn't much new here. It's solid investing advice, breezily presented, so if you need a refresher, or are new to investing, this isn't a bad book to start with.

Stein and DeMuth succeed impressively in their primary aim, which is to prove that there are better times than others to invest in the stock market, and that a market timer who pays attention to the signals they describe can achieve significantly higher returns than a steady investor who buys in regardless of price. To determine whether the market is over- or under-priced, they rely upon valuation methods that will please the heart of a classically trained economist or business school student: price, P/E ratio, dividend rate, and price-to-book, comparing today's figures to the 15-year moving average. Examining the performance of the S&P 500 over the past century, they convincingly prove that a strategy of doubling up investments in "buy" (under-valued) years and avoiding investing in over-valued years delivers superior performance to a buy-and-hold (or dollar cost averaging) strategy.

Although what Stein and DeMuth have proven seems like common sense from one angle (buy heavily when prices are low), it is not what most of Wall Street and the financial press urges investors to do. Nor is it emotionally easy to follow this advice, since it means buying at times such as the middle of the Great Depression, when the popularity of stock market investing is at its lowest ebb, and it means avoiding buying when the market is zooming to the moon, and it seems as though every neighbor of yours is making a fortune in Internet and telecom stocks (the late Nineties). Stein and DeMuth do a great job describing these situations, to provide the internal fortitude needed to follow a buy low strategy.

The debate over this book arises over how applicable it is to the average individual investor (its target audience). All the research conducted by Stein and DeMuth concerns the S&P 500, and they freely admit that the conclusions they draw do not necessarily apply to other indices, markets, or individual stocks. Furthermore, they look at 20-year results, so the final verdicts for the last 20 years (including the bull market of the '90s) are not in yet.

However, Stein and DeMuth cite many others studies that are aligned with their general strategy of buying under-valued stocks, and summarize the superior results that these other studies report. Because of this, and the book's sharp wit and hard-hitting style, this book is a great introduction to value investing and the fundamental methods of valuing stocks. The boom and bust of the late Nineties and early 2000s prove that far too many investors (and professionals) don't pay enough attention to stock market valuation.

This book won't tell you how to make a quick fortune. It won't tell you how to identify the next Microsoft or Dell Computer. But it does tell you how to identify better times to invest in stocks, and can help you avoid huge losses from investing in bubbles. Because of the strength of the book's advice, which recent history proves is so often ignored, and the fact that it is a short and entertaining read, I highly recommend it.

Finally, at last, a book about the financial market that combines great advice with true wit and common sense. I've bought it for everyone I know. (Including my three year old son... A must for every Mom who'se thought about entering the market, but has never quite felt able to trust it before. With these chaps you're in safe, informative, entertaining hands. Alison Larkin

As a Foreign Currency Dealer, I was NOT helped from this book at all! Actually the title is misleading since he does NOT concentrate on FX, he only shows some graph examples using FX crosses instead of stocks... The author just refers to a lot of TA indicators only reviewing their typical Buy and Sell signals that are written in every TA book, and furthermore the sections are very bad structured. Really very very disappointed!!!

I have had a measurable improvement in my profitability since reading "Technical Analysis Applications in the Global Currency Markets."
Although I have traded currencies for nearly seven years, I've never had the opportunity to systematically train in charting. Adding insult to injury, I listened many times to the "expert advice" of some ill-prepared reporters, who deliver opinions devoid of information. Needless to say, I lost money in several instances.
What "Technical Analysis Applications in the Global Currency Markets" brings to the table is a complete and systematic set of tools that will enrich every trader's arsenal. It's been working for me well consistently. It's hard to believe that I missed so many opportunities in the past.
There are many technical books out there. But I am a currency trader, and I'd rather see examples in FX, without the bias of "buy-and-hold" that you see in most other books that focus on equities. Besides, with the way they are going, who wants to trade equities, anyway?
I learned a lot from this book, and I feel confident that I can always go back to it to refresh my knowledge. Frankly, a lot of candlestick terms were at best fuzzy before reading is book. Now, I am fully confident in my understanding, and this translates in increased profitability.

I traded FX for 15 years in major banks in New York and London and I now have a retail FX firm. I found "Technical Analysis Applications in the Global Currency Markets" to be an excellent review for myself and a vital training tool for my traders.
In a short period of time junior traders drastically improved their knowledge and, more importantly, performance. At the end of the day, all that counts is a decent profit.
I found the clear structure and complete coverage to be big assets, particularly in a market devoid of consolidated research. In fact, this is the only technical analysis book on foreign exchange that I know of.
Junior traders were very pleased with the excellent explanations, diagrams and real-life examples in this updated edition. In particular, they found trend analysis, candlesticks, and point-and-figure charts to be consistent profit boosters.
The clear explanation of the benefits of moving averages and of the entry/exit points is valuable as well. Most recetly, these ntry/exit applications worked wonderfully for both the euro and the yen.
I strongly recommend "Technical Analysis Applications in the Global Currency Markets" to anyone who toils in the volatile currency markets.

This book was ok in that it did a good job in describing workplace dislocations caused by new technology, but in many ways, its the same old situation. If one is looking for a very clearly articulated portrayal of these dislocations in the modern time, then one will like this book. I disagree with all of the doom and gloom, however. This sort of doom and gloom reminded me of the Malthus's writings about overpopulation and fears of machinery in the late 19th century, both of which I view as very discredited observations.

There will always be dislocations as result of technological progress; and as tragic as it is, one cannot progress without rendering something obsolete. But we are nowhere near a post-market nor a post-scarcity era.

Rifkin provided a good historical examination of how technological innovations of automation, corporate reengineering, lean production, and computers have replaced the need for workers at an alarming rate culminating in what he termed "The Third Industrial Revolution". Every sector and industry has experienced significant trends in unemployment and underemployment. Although virtually every worker has been affected, African-Americans were particularly devastated as they got caught between the machanization of southern agriculture and automation in northern cities resulting in the creation of the underclass. In all, technology has undermined the worker and reconceptualized our notion of the workplace.

Solutions to global worker displacement include shorter work week to share the remaining work to all workers. Rifkin also argues for investment in the third sector of volunteerism and social services to combat the rise in crime and violence that is inevitable in a society of large scale employment.

Although his historical examination is admirable, his future prophecy of a massive unemployment did not convince me that we are headed to a society run by machines. Alternatively I believe there will always be demand for human labor as machines present their own limitations. Several years ago many proclaimed that dot.com's will put bricks and mortar stores out of business. Despite these claims bricks and mortar stores did not disappear partly because many customers enjoyed the personalibility of social interaction with salespeople and other customers. Doing Christmas shopping over the internet is not a comparable replacement to going to a shopping mall for everyone. In addition, Rifkin never addressed the all important realm of unpaid work that will never diminish as long as there are humans on earth.

Overall, this book is a good read although I had trouble with his future predictions.

I must admit that when I read this book, I was a bit dissappointed at the lack of new information. As a student of labor history, I had read previously many of the ideas and concepts that Rifkin expands upon in several other books. I only wished I had picked up this one book, prior to reading all the others. It would have saved me much time and money.

In short, Rifkin decribes the transition of the worker from pre-industrial revolution, through the era of machines and mass-production, and the advent of the information age in which he predicts there will be fewer and fewer workers. His analysis describes how this effects the worker, organizational make-up, employment relationships, and even how government has been forced to change to accomodate the modern economy.

I believe that anyone interested in the dynamics of technology and globalism on the workforce will find Rifkin's work very interesting, well-written, and easy to read.