Futures-market

Reading this book was rather like going into a 400 page Newsweek article. Even though the theory about "waves" can seem appealing, the authors fail to provide a theorical framework for the ideas they propose. Ok, so the wars of the future will be different.. so what?
There's no explanation within the book that tries at least to determine what the causes of the future wars will be. It leaves the door open for any "random" cause to ignite a war.
Anyway, I could say the anecdothic style of the book makes it easy to read, but if you're looking for a more in-depth text about wars and their future implications, forget about this one.

Published in 1993, the authors published this look into the future of warfare. Building on the paradigm introduced in their earlier books (Future Shock, The Third Wave, and Powershift), the authors argue that as the new "Third Wave" transforms society, so will it transform warfare. Throughout, the authors attempt to show how war has been transformed, and how it will continue to transform in the decades ahead.

I picked up this book in reaction to the recent attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. I was hoping that it would give me a better insight into modern military, and what modern warfare would be like. I think that the authors did a great job of showing just how different any present and future wars are likely to be.

My one complaint is that the authors focused almost exclusively on the militaries of the advanced societies. If you want to see how the "new" terrorists are also "Third Wave" organizations, I highly recommend Countering the New Terrorism, by Ian O. Lesser, et al.

That said, this is a fascinating book, with a thought-provoking message. I highly recommend you read it.

The Toffler's have written a very engaging book about the coming age of war in what they call the 'third wave'- or a post industrial society. Information, according to the Tofflers, will become the vital component of future conflicts in the way that territory and resources were in the second wave. The details and the theory that they construct are very interesting. The causes of this are a new form of wealth creation that is also information intensive (read Silicon valley and the computer industry/cell phones/ or services in general). I recommend reading this book before, with or after Robert Kaplan's vision of the future in "The Coming Anarchy". One aspect of the book that is rather surprising is that they managed to write an entire book on this subject without mentioning Microsoft or the Internet! Then I checked the publication date (1993), and was amazed by the fact that only 7 years ago these entities might not have merited such consideration. This alone helps confirm the Toffler's theories on an quickly changing world, and one in which information is becoming the hot commodity.

The waves are also amazingly close to an anthropolgical method of classification- domestic scale society (tribes bands and chiefdoms), political scale society (nation states) and commerical scale society (the emerging global system). I wonder how much interchange of ideas has gone on over the years between the Tofflers and the author of my text book! Very interesting.

I worry that their division of the planet into first, second and third wave societies may be a way of anesthetizing the fact that wealth and power are becoming more and more polarized. But this is the reality of our time, and whether or not it is pleasing, books such as this are attempting to make sense out of the present and the future. I will most likely consult this book again in the future when writing papers, or talking with friends about the future of conflict for some time to come.

I have a university maths degree and found the book very obvious and drawn out for the first few chapters. In spite of this I looked forward to what was going to be explained later. Suddenly from a very simple and easy to understand explanation on the EMH he starts to use mathematics in his equations that I had a lot of difficulty following. There was very little or no explanation of how these equations were arrived at and a lot of mathematics and statisics is assumed. This book does not apply the theory in ny meaningful way to the markets let alone the capital markets in my opinion. I found that I took very little away from this book and would not recommend it to anyone who has basic mathematics like myself or is looking for some deeper insight into the markets. I would hate to have Mr Peters as a teacher based on his book.

The second edition of this book was published in 1996. The book
seems to be largely based on Feder's 1988 book "Fractals". The
dated nature of this book means that it is missing later work
on long memory processes, which Peters estimates using the Hurst
exponent.

As one reviewer already noted, don't assume that this book will
provide much in the way of useful equations. For anyone who wants
more than an overview, this book is a disappointment. Peters does
a poor job of explaining the equations and I did not find enough
detail to implement the algorithms discussed (I turned to Feder's
book and various journal articles). The book does come with a
"floppy" disk containing the Visual Basic algorithms. This is
a poor choice, since C is pretty much the lingua franca for
algorithms.

The various chaos and fractal techniques are applied to a handful
of financial data sets, but this is far from even a solid
suggestion that these techniques might be useful to anyone
developing real market models.

Some of the conclusions that Peters draws (cycles in financial
data) do not seem to be supported the evidence he presents.

In summary, if you are looking for something beyond an overview,
save your money. Feder ("Fractals") has a better description of
RS calculation. "A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Lo
and MacKinlay has a chapeter on the application of the RS
statistic and long-memory processes which is much better than
Peters. For those who need to simulate fractal brownian motion
(data sets with a particular Hurst exponent) "The Science of
Fractal Images" by Barnsley et all is a good reference.

I read this book, the 1991 version, years ago. Around 1980 my own attempts to crack share prices statistically convinced me that all share prices behaved like a Gaussian random walk meaning that all speculation was comparable with playing roulette and I am not one of those guys who usually wins when gambling. This view was strengthened when the option pricing model came up, meaning that even the real pro's in the field assume that share prices are nothing but a random walk. This book has opened my eyes to the fact that there is much more to randomness than just the Gaussian curve. Share prices are not fully random. Impressive is the demonstration that an RS analysis on the real data is different when applying the same RS analysis on scrambled data. So there is information hidden in these time series, somewhere. Since then I have picked up the subject of cracking time series again with great pleasure. I think this book is exceptionally well written and without it I doubt if I would have been able to follow Mandelbrot's book "scaling and fractals in finance" that I bought later. The book is about understanding a subject, not about learning a simple formula to apply on a time series.

The book started with so much promise and unfortunately, just fizzled out with very basic, very vague and ineffective TA. Just a very basic primer on moving average crosses, reversal and entry bar patterns, stochastics, MACD, OBV and some other minor items. I did find the Lindahl buy/sell pattern setup to be fairly unique .. though hardly remarkable.

In all honesty, I didn't try the system or even try to test it. The entry consists of a checklist of 24 chart-based technical indicators or conditions for both weekly and daily prices-- thus 48 items in all. These are explained, sometimes clearly and sometimes vaguely in 19 chapters. Altogether, it is one of the most complex systems ever published. Though it may or may not work, its "kitchen sink" approach makes it too complex to understand well, and if there is one requirement for a good trading system, it is that the trader should be able to comprehend what he is doing and why at all times. If it starts to fail, you will never know why. While each of the technical methods presented is sound, Alexander's use of all of them at once makes for a mess rather than a good system.

This book helped me in several aspects. 1. It helped keep me from over trading (my weakness) 2. It helped me to determine if a move counter to trend was likely to succeed or fail. 3. It has helped my profitability. Yes there are only a few major turns every year, but Alexander also discusses "how to enter a rapidly moving market." This adds to the number of trades one can do with this "system." Other reviews are correct, it is not for the day trader. I did have to read it three or four times and marked it up pretty good. I have three different software programs and found the things from the book could be programmed into Metastock Explorers and Advisors (my lower end software) with some, but not too much, effort.

This text offers absolutely nothing. It is either far too simplistic or misses chunks of valuable detail.

There are far better introductions to the energy markets (e.g. Stephen Errera's Trading Energy Futures & Options or Peter Fusaro's Energy Risk Management) - buy one of these instead!

Patronizing style and too many mentions of his wife's book. Poor content - give it a miss.

"Managing Energy Risk" gave me the information I needed to answer technical questions about energy risk in an actual job interview. My answers must have been good because I was offered and happily accepted an energy risk management position! This is a great introduction and summary of energy risk management, which I believe was intended for managers and others like myself who just want a thorough overview. Several technical concepts are discussed in this book, but the author leaves the gory details for other sources. Among other things this book covers: 1) the current status of the electric power industry and a brief historical perspective, 2) risk management policies and procedures, 3) the different players involved in energy risk management, and 4) the foundations, basics, and some of the peculiarities of energy risk management. I recommend this book to anyone looking for a solid foundation in energy risk management.

This so-called options-expert says that options have a different value for different investors. Well, that's simply not true, it doesn't matter whether you buy an option for speculative reasons, or write it to make some extra return, you can calculate the optionprice with the Black and Scholes fomula.
The author correctly states that you should buy options that are undervalued, but his buying criteria don't make any sense.
This book contains many other errors, and with this book you will definitely not outsmart the pros, as the title suggests.

I started to understand things better about the why and the why not of options.Definitely recommend it to beginners.

Not the worst book I have read on investments, but certainly not the best. The author spends much of the book explaining why he believes standard option trading techniques are doomed to fail in the long term, but his rationale are at best fuzzy. He does do a decent job of outlining his twist on covered call writing and portfolio hedging, but does a poor job of backing up his claims; uses a lot of statements like 'should create a greater return' than standard methods. Should? I'd like to see a bit more testing than just his gut feel. Overall, a quick read, lots of Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, and some potentially useful ideas, but be prepared to work out a lot of it on your own.

In this book he never really puts together what SIMPLE really means . The story about how he became a trader are a little hard to believe. He couldn't recognize that he was being scammed twice,turning his life upside down then all of a sudden he understands the futures market in a few months . He had such a brief trading history and then writes a book about a technique that is not exclusive . Much too pricey for the content!

The previous review was blatantly induced by the author. Please be aware of this.

Throw away all your other books on commodity investing. This is the only book you will ever need. The book is easy to understand, and it works! Most commodity investors- about 90% lose money. With this system 100% of the investors will make money. Just stick with the system. It is easy, no technical analysis and fancy shmancy mathematics. All you need is a little bit of money , discipline to stick with the system, and patience. I have made money with this system every time. And I will use this system for the rest of my life, because it makes money every single time. It is the best book on commodities there is. I am not buying any other books because they don't work. This book tells you how to make money and it takes very little of your time.

This book was written entirely by Kelly Angle. Wm. Grandmill had nothing to do wth this book, and this book does not use Grandmill's principles. If you want material by Grandmill go to some of his other books.

What Kelly Angle wrote is reasonable decent. It is primarily about his father's trading in Gold Futures.

This book deals more with 'investing' rather than 'traading' as such it uses a more longer-term approach to making money in the grain futures and options markets. If you want a long term plan with say 2-3 trades for theyear, then this book might be helpful to you. It is not suitable to the active commodities 'trader' who maybe involved in swing trading etc.

What stands out most about this book is the large print that does not fill the pages. It could have easily been half the length. That said once you distill all the information down to pertinent theories what you are left with is something more worthy of submission to 'Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities' as a two pager. The authors theory is very simple and straight forward. It's hard to believe that an entire book has been written on such a narrow subject/theory. The bulk of this text is merely examples of the theory that are applied across different markets. I finished this 214 page term paper in under 1 hour. If my highliter had not graced the first few pages it would have found it's way back in postal system. Save your money.

Event Trading certainly stands out in the increasingly crowded arena of investment books . As a professional trader with over 5 years in the futures markets it is a pleasure to come across a methodology that is backed up by rigorous statistical testing that the reader can duplicate. It is also refreshing to find an entirely new approach to trading, one that is not a rehash of technical analysis indicators or a review of interpreting economic fundamentals. Event Trading differs from most of the existing books in this field. All rules are fully disclosed and mechanical. The reader is not presented with any "squishy" interpretations of market activity - this is not Elliot Wave! The performance each system includes the full spectrum of all trades taken . Far too many books show only the periods where their systems excelled, conveniently excluding periods of poor performance. I have definitely found the ideas presented to be both novel and applicable in the futures markets. If you want to survive as a trader it is critical to have a methodology that you verify with historical testing and implement according to your testing. Event Trading will give you this edge.

This book is primarily about the role of portfolio insurance in the market crash of 1987. Despite the Amazon listing, I don't believe that Harry Markowitz is a co-author. Unfortunately, unless a reader is already well informed about the crash, he will not realize that there are many factual misrepresentations, particularly those that have to do with Jacob's critique of the way portfolio insurance was marketed. I was an eyewitness at the time, so I know what actually happened. Jacobs also has a bad habit of using cited quotes or cited paraphasing, which gives the book an air of scholarly authority, that he then improperly interprets out of context. Jacobs clearly has some reason for his own vendeta and crusade against portfolio insurance that causes him to seriously overstate the case against it and even to attempt to unfairly damage the reputations of those involved.

This is a badly written, repetitive and self-serving account, largely, of the foolishness of "portflio insurance." That things which are "just like" something else may not be so in reality, and that magic fixes in the market (which after all fly in the face of the rational-expectations/efficient-market hypotheses which often are built into the view of the market being relied on) I guess needs to be pointed out regularly, since hope of quick, uninformed, and painless fixes seem to reoccur with each new wave of financial charlatans and the greed they feed on. Jacobs does point out such problems for a particular, rather bizarre episode, and suggests, not too coherently, that such "scams" are still prevalent. However, He does this in a horribly repetitive and self-laudatory way that is not really very clearly argued.

he book provides an extremely enlightening treatment of arcane financial strategies that have derived from Nobel Laureate winning option pricing theory. It is a well-written description of how very smart people are able to "outwit" other supposed very smart people by promising something for nothing. There will always be those who will dream up complicated strategies that purport to promise high return for low risk and thus demand a premium for providing their strategy. The book reminded me of Albert Einstein's work for the Swiss Patent Office at the turn of the century. He would daily receive applications for new and different perpetual motion ideas. Sometimes the ideas were so complicated Einstein could not readily find their flaw. (Finally, he encouraged the patent office to pass a ruling stating that anyone wishing to patent something which broke the second law of thermodynamics had to submit an actual working unit.)

Portfolio insurance was the first large scale application of option pricing theory. Long-Term Capital Management, a highly leveraged hedge fund partnered by the Nobelists, was the second large scale application. Both promised free lunches. It is easy for the disciplined, long-term, individual investor to look at the 1987 crash and the LTCM debacle and conclude that it doesn't matter. The ones who were harmed the most were the purveyors of these supposed perpetual motion machines as well as the investors who "played with this fire". In fact, however, Jacobs' book is a wake-up call that these new financial strategies have become so far reaching, that they can have significant impact not only on the financial markets, but on the global economy as well. The missing element in the book is a way for regulators to rein in an industry that is out of control and return it to its basic purpose: moving money from people that have it (investors) to people that need it and educating the investor on the risk/reward tradeoffs. The industry subrole of shifting risk from people who cannot accept it (e.g. farmers) to those who can (speculators) is also valid, however, it has become so pervasive and sophisticated that it begs for a return to sanity. Absent that, Jacobs' book is an eye-opener, and a must read for anyone hoping to cope with today's complicated markets.

I loved the two reviews praising Batra as if he were some sort of seer, an economic guru. I have my own predictions: The stock market will rise and fall in February 2000, and the economy will go up and down during the year 2000. If these predictions come to fruition, am I a guru too?

Dr. Batra is a brilliant guy who tragicaly jumps to unwarranted conclusions. There was no Great Depression in 1990-1995. He should have called it quits there when he predicted that if a Great Depression did not materialize by the year 1995, then that window of vulnerability had shut. Batra's main problem consists of the fact that he does not factor human resilience and the ability to adapt into his economic equations. His most convincing argument to date (which he needs to develop) is his analysis of Free Trade (see "The Myth of Free Trade"). It is convincing and (IF correct) portends bad times in the future. Unfortunately, he drops that analysis and is mesmerized into trying to predict millennial doom. Sadly, if he keeps predicting doom, and if he lives long enough, Dr. Batra will be correct. It's really a pity that a man of his intelligence doesn't use it to further our understanding of socio-economic dynamics.

Batra usually gets hammered by establishment critics for his unconventional, left-of-center stands. He predicted a great depression in 1990 in a book he wrote in 1985, and, indeed, 1990 witnessed a severe recession. Even after the recession, the recovery was slow. Real wages fell for 80% of workers until mid-1996, a statistic which indicates to me that the 1990s really haven't been so grand. In this book he makes a compelling case that the stock market is a bubble -- overinflated and ready to crash. He also predicted the market would recover some after the Fed cut rates -- right again. the only weakness in this book is that it needs better editing, as there were some grammatical errors in it. Nevertheless, there is some sound analysis in it. Batra bases his conclusions, in part, upon economic history and empirical fact. He shows that economies that utilized protectionism and state intervention succeeded quite well in many cases. I would bet that we will see another stock market crash this year, in accordance in with Dr. Batra's predictions. Most of his policy solutions would help alleviate the world's deflationary condition; they are also backed by egalitarian leanings. While I don't expect an 80% collapse of the market, 30% down on the Dow this year strikes me as quite likely. And seriously, Batra is a good economist. He has written intensely mathematical papers which deal with trade theory in a complex world. In every book or article he writes he makes it clear that tariffs can serve a beneficial social purpose. On the whole, the book is quite good. Batra could use a better editor, but his occasional grammatical errors are justified by his rush to publish quickly. He is both a skilled and moral economist.