Investment-Risk

I bought the book as a practical reference in risk management/ applied financial engineering. I think the book accomplishes this goal.

It describes concepts and techniques in a clear, logical way and, most important, gives clearly outlined numerical examples, which help to implement the models. If all material would be written that way one didn't have to buy several introductory books and save a lot of money. This is especially true for professionals who want to implement things in a reasonable time without loosing time with (generally) confusing and incomplete derivations that have to be figured out afterwards through a painful process.

I must say though, that the work lacks to present some important concepts and techniques in interest rate risk management. As in many cases, fixed income applications were almost omitted. A treatment of PCA applications (hedging, simulation) would be very welcome and a more complete description with examples of interest rate models with implementations would complete this work.

I have read this book for the class of modeling financial derivatives and I was very impressed by the presentation of the theories of financial derivatives and risk management. The book covers derivative pricing in a very detailed form. THe best thing about this book is the presentation of the problems(mathematical) throughout the book, either through graphs, spreadsheet models, etc. It is not pure theory book, but it also contains many applications which encompas real finanical world. Such presentation enables the reader to easier comprehend the contents of the subject. Overall, the book is very very good for a beginner in finacial derivatives fiels, but it is also a great contribution to one more experienced in the field. Greatest emphasis was put on interest rate models, option models, volatility and risk management techniques.

The author has done good work in introducing the basic concepts in Value-at-Risk. However, the text leaves some important statistical and implementation points hidden, making implementing VaR look far too easy. For example, there is no discussion about the problems involved in long-term forecasting of correlations and volatilities.

The much advertised "new distinctive investment approach", the so called "Generalized Sharpe Rule" is a rather naive treatment on classical risk/return analysis. However, the lack of mathematical rigour is well compensated with good references.

The author goes right to the point. He explains well the VaR-related mathematics. There are a few mistakes, which would be easier to note if all derivations were provided. Overall, this is an excellent book.

When we went to implement a VaR system, the price tag was going to exceed seven figures. Needless to say, I didn't hesitate to drop some money buying the available books on VaR. They all say essentially the same things. For practical worked examples, you can't beat Butler. But unless you are an absolute beginner (do you know what delta and gamma are?) you may find it too basic. The all-round best book is Dowd. It is well organized and a pleasure to read. It covers the math, but without getting bogged down in meaningless derivations. For readers who want more information, there are plenty of references to original sources. I followed up on a number of these, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy some of this stuff is to assimilate.

This book provides an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of credit derivatives. Tavakoli provides an excellent resource for credit risk managers who specialize in one area of credit risk management, professionals who are new to the field, or for experienced professionals who need the definitive reference of credit derivatives products.
This book is not about is the mathematical and statistical details in credit risk/portfolio modeling, but Tavakoli does a good job of highlighting various aspects of modeling (such as data availability, limitations of different approaches, etc.). For example, Tavakoli's explanation of first-to-default baskets provides a quantitative explanation of boundary conditions and a qualitative explanation of the products.

The clear, qualitative, conceptual explanations are supported by explanations that show a deep understanding of the underlying mathematics. Numerically minded readers will grasp this, but even those who are a bit numbers shy will find the quantitative examples easy to follow. Tavakoli's book enabled me to discuss the assessment and deployment of quantitative models on an even footing with professional risk managers and the rocket scientists developing these models.

I also recommend Phillip Schonbucher's book on credit derivatives for people who need to model credit derivatives. Unfortunately, the resource doesn't exist that can solve the tough problem of estimating correlation between defaults.

The use and misuse of credit derivatives terminology is thoroughly explained in this book. After that, the products applications are introduced. The difference between insurance and credit derivatives is clearly explained. From the insurance perspective, examples of using credit derivatives to change capital structure are very helpful.

The basic structures of synthetic collateralized debt obligations are introduced in this book, but more details and the cash flows are explained in Tavakoli's newer book. This book focuses on the credit derivatives market and the peculiarities of this market.
Tavakoli's book is an excellent credit derivatives guide for both newcomers (who are finance professionals) and insurance/finance professionals who need a thorough overview of the various the products. All of the major structures of credit derivatives are explained. The new indexes aren't included in this edition, but index products of other sorts are included, so the structural form is introduced here.

The qualitative narratives are very helpful in explaining how the products are traded. These are supplemented with deal diagrams and tables of information. The author's firm command of the subject matter makes this book very readable and easy for finance professionals to understand. Professionals who are not looking for a heavy quant book but want a clear understanding of how these products are used and the guideposts for value will enjoy this book.

The documentation shown in this book is especially useful for lawyers and people customizing trades. This is particularly useful if you want to include features that offer greater value to you than "standard" documentation. Tavakoli includes basic documentation for each of the major products.

POSITIVE POINTS: Best indepth book on Credit Derivatives. Very readable. Explains very nicely why this derivatives are so important for banks. Non technical.

NEGATIVE POINTS: Focus on banks with only a little chapter on Credit Derivatives as investment products. No explanation how those derivatives are priced (but hey, there are loads of technical books)

This is a classic book describing a simple method for achieving outstanding results in the stock market by investing in a selection of five stocks from the Dow Jones Industrial average. There is one little problem. The method hasn't worked very well recently. Taking some data from the table on page 204 of the O'higgins book we see the % gain or loss of the selected five stocks compared with the Dow Jones Industrial Average: (Year, Five stocks, Dow Jones Average);(1994 8.6 4.9),(1995 30.5 36.4), (1996 27.9 28.9), (1997 20.5 24.9), (1998 12.3 17.9). The method has faied to Beat the DOW every year since 1994. My own calculations shows that this under performance continues into 2001. The Motley Fool Group has done extensive research on this method and after their initial enthusiam they have recently terminated their recommendation. Serious students of the market should buy this book. Further study of this approach may lead to new methods for "Beating the Dow".

"Beating The Dow" by Michael O'Higgins offers the following simple investment strategy. You simply buy the ten highest dividend paying stocks among the Dow Industrial Averages. The Philosophy is that as the value of the stocks increase, via stock price lagging or falling below the market, the dividend yield will tend to rise. (i.e. the assumption is that dividend yield is a proxy for value. One problem is that not all Dow stocks pay out the same level of earnings, so some stocks will tend to have higher dividends.)

While I tend to be skeptical of any investment strategy that is too simple, if you must use such a simple strategy, then you could do far worse selecting the highest dividend paying stocks from the Dow. Of course, the other option is just to index your money in a mutual fund that buys the entire stock market. Vanguard Funds is the leader in such index funds. But, I like dividends.

The difficulty with simple investment strategies is that they tend to be arrived at via data mining. The proponent of the investment method asks "What worked in the past?" and then tries to draw up a canned investment method. Almost always, the proposed method then starts to lag behind in the present and future stock market performance. (the recent performance of this strategy is discussed in another person's great book review. See that.) This is not due to market efficiency or that the method is becoming well known. It just means that the method wasn't entirely valid as a predictive method.

There is the old joke about the "X investment strategy." When a computer was asked to vigorously evaluate the stock market and look for predictors of future investment success, the computer spit back the answer, "Invest in stocks whose name begins with an 'X' and whose name ends with an 'X.' " Xerox was the top performing stock over the period.

"Beating The Dow" is one of those books, if read all by itself, might mislead a new investor into an over-simplified investment strategy. Yet, you might enjoy reading it. And, as stated, you could do worse than holding the ten highest dividend-paying Dow stocks.

"Beating The Dow" also mentions what Michael O'Higgins calls the "Penulatimate Profit Prospect (PPP)" which involves buying just one stock. The Stock with the second lowest price among the ten highest yielding stocks. I consider that Penidiotic. We conservative investors do love our stock dividends, and the focus on dividend yield gets "Beating The Dow" a solid honorable mention.

Peter Hupalo, Author of "Becoming An Investor: Building Wealth By Investing In Stocks, Bonds, And Mutual Funds."

Some people might laugh at this book specially the brokers who make living by sucking the commision out of an average investor. What had happened in the NASDAQ in 1999 before the correction was absolutely mind blowing and this book might have looked like a bad joke i.e. advocating to invest in companies like International Paper! but now that the dotcoms are down the drain, the valuations are somewhat back on earth, the margin-debt bitten people are done crying, maybe it is time that us i.e. average investors read this book.

This book as the name says is all about investing in Dow companies, the giants of the US and global economy. The companies which I truly believe that world could come to an end but GE would still be there. The book covers all the Dow components individually along with their historical financial performance, weaknesses, strenghts and their power to stay in business by being profitable over years and years. There are many different 'low risk' investment strategies covered in this book such as 'High Yielding 5'. These are the 5 Dow stock that you pick annually based on the criteria described, HOLD it for 1 year, redo the math (barely any)and pick your 5 stocks again. You also sell some at this point that didn;t meet your criteria and pick the new ones to fill their spot.

Sounds simple, yes! and that's the way it should be. Not only you can ride out the swings of the stock market in this way but also save a ton on commisions, taxes and most importantly be less stressed.

If you read the Motley Fool, you'll notice some of their strategies are derived from O'Higgin's methods.

A must read for all investors, specially younger people like myself who want to start building the nest yesterday!

Chris Marrison's book is something I have been seeking for a very long time. It is well organized and easy to read. I have spent several years in strategic financial services consulting, wherein a strong foundation in risk measurement concepts and tools is essential for consultants across experience levels. Though having studied undergraduate finance and statistics, I ended up developing my rudimentary (and incomplete) knowledge of risk measurement in a very ad-hoc, context-specific and inefficent fashion. Now an MBA student at Harvard, I come across peers also seeking to understand the business, technical and practical aspects of risk measurement, as conceptually, 'risk management' is a common idea but an abstract practice for many professionals. There is no other textbook I've come across that addresses the essentials of risk measurement in as tangible a manner. I will not hesitate to recommend this book as a great primer to fellow students. The only caveat I offer is that this book is for those truly interested in jumping into the practical applications of risk measurement - for more of an overview of risk management theory, or esoterica for that matter, you're better off looking elsewhere.

Moving from academia to the real world is made much smoother with this great text by Dr. Marrison. This book integrates interest rate, liquidity and credit risk with bank management perfectly. Anyone interested in gaining a strong economic background with a quantitative degree like myself will find this book extremely useful.

Marrison has written an outstanding book on risk management. What is attractive about the treatment is the fact that it covers all aspects of risk management for financial institutions. Lots of books focus only on "new" techniques (VaR, portfolio credit risk models) or only on "traditional" techniques (credit analysis, ALM). Marrison treats them all, and uses capital allocation as a unifying theme.

Two previous reviews that suggest Marrison is too basic or merely repeats other authors are, in my humble opinion, dishonest. Marrison is a sophisticated book for sophisticated readers who are new to risk management. This includes MBA students taking courses on the capital markets or risk management. It also includes professionals working in their first risk management position. Marrison did not invent VaR or ALM, but authors of other books did not invent these concepts either. An author's task is to describe established concepts in a manner that is accessible to and useful for his audience. In this respect, Marrison's book is a dramatic step forward. His choice of topics, organization and writing are superb.

One of those previous reviews recommended that you read books by certain other authors instead of Marrison. Of those books, the only one that Marrison competes with is Jorion's Value-at-Risk. Marrison is an order of magnitude better than that book. The other books cover unrelated topics or are more advanced treatises on specific topics. You might graduate to such books from Marrison, but they are not alternatives to Marrison.

Finally, you can't beat the price on this book. Marrison simultaneously offers a bargain AND one of the best books available on risk management.

Mastering Value at Risk is 80% practical and 20% theoretical. However, there are a lot of mistakes, specially printing and calculation mistakes. For example, page 24, 25, etc. ambiguous exercises. I require professional solved cases and applications of the real world. Back testing and stress testing themes present a poor development.

There is a great practical case on EWMA, but it can not be compared to GARCH model, because there is not a practical case on GARCH. There is no useful application. This model is only mentioned and explained theoretically. On the other hand Montecarlo Simulation presents a certain confusion. It's unclear and imprecise.

Finally, at the end of the book an address and e-mail are written in order to make contact with the author, but such an e-mail doesn't exist. It was impossible for me to contact Cormac Butler by means of that e-mail. Besides, there is a website in order to send your questions and queries named answerback.org. It was not possible for me to access this website.

Well, the book is good for a reader used to calculate VaR, not for beginners, because of printing errors and calculation mistakes. You must to identify them before to continue the next lesson and theme. Well, my rating to this book is 3 stars.

Definitely a good book but publisher should take more care in checking before it goes on print. The book is full of careless mistakes and printing errors. As this book is also targetted at the novice, more responsibility is required. Esle the poor reader would spent many hours figuring out why one plus one doesn't equal two. So tedious and unfruitful. I would personally like the publisher to give me a free copy of a reprint without those errors as I spent many of those hours correcting those mistakes in the book.

Liked the book very much. Excellent organization and presentation. Very carefully written and to the point. Practical examples spread around the theory. Highly recommended.

This book is a loose collection of highly watered-down ideas from standard portfolio theory and the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). In order to appear more original the authors have renamed conventional concepts like reward and risk to "Upside" and "Regret". Their technique which they call "marking-to-future" is the same process that forms an integral part of the binomial and trinomial lattice methods which have been used in the financial community for many years. The authors have also introduced a term which they call "lambda" to represent an investor's degree of aversion to risk, which is represented by the curvature of the investor's utility function in conventional economic theory. The book contains a number of numerical errors, particularly in the examples. For those comfortable with calculus a much more comprehensive yet still readable book is "The Risk Management Process" by C. L. Culp.

Dembo and Freeman do an excellent job of transforming the cold hard statistics of Market Risk analysis to a useable framework that accounts for more than just straight probability. They clearly layout how individuals react to decisions under various scenarios, showing that individuals and investors in particular are not purely rational. The authors make the point that VaR is not a useful tool unto itself, but when used in conjunction with a thorough analysis of the Upside and Regret in a decision, can be a powerful combination.

As a risk practitioner, this book certainly expanded the way I think about risk, and is a valuable addition to the literature of Market Risk.

This book is an excellent primer on risk management. Ron's outlines in clear terms what risk management is, and how it effect's our investment decision process. I loved the chapter on "Sweet Regret". ( I guess I liked it because as a motivational speaker, one of the greatest motivators known to man is: Regret. While this is kind of motivation seems quite negative, it does have a useful place in life every now and then.)

Zev Saftlas, Author of Motivation That Works: How to Get Motivated and Stay Motivated

a more suitable title for this book would be macro investing strategies, which i don't advise. why be a jack of all trades and diversify into bonds, stocks, global currencies and what not. boucher gives us good insight into an overall stategy albeit vague at times. the average investor would not fair too well on so much diversification, after all how many soros's are truly out there? hedge funds should be synonymous with market neutral investing and arbitrage. you won't find that here.

first, in boucher's defense, other reviewers have misunderstood the term "hedge fund" to mean "market neutral." the term "hedge fund" simply means the ability to go short in a portfolio. in that regard, the title is not misleading at all. this book does outline several short strategies based on an understanding of the liquidity cycle.

however, boucher, for as much as he espouses the austrian economic method, has forgotten that one tenant of that methodology is a total diregard for econometric forecasting. the relationships he defines in this book would have had many people in trouble in the early 2000s because, as the austrians state, what happened (past economic relationships) in the past does not have to happen in the future (these once dependable relationships may break down - with your money on the line). current monetary policy has been ineffective, and therefore, so would any of boucher's systems that rely on monetary indicators. these indicators would have been screaming "buy" the equity markets, while the equity markets themselves would have been screaming "sell us...now!"

that being said, the primary reason not to buy this book is that some of the systems that boucher gives are insightful logically, but dubious in execution. while he may give you a system, he does not give you all you need. the reader assumes that he is giving valid systems, with all pertinent information. but, he leaves certain important points out. for example, on page 138, he says that you should buy stocks when up volume on the NYSE is greater than 77% of total volume and then he gives past buy and sell dates for the strategy. after much testing, i figured out that he is not using total volume on the NYSE, but rather total volume less unchanged volume. in other words, total volume is up volume, down volume and unchanged volume for all shares trading on the NYSE. boucher's "total volume" is just up volume plus down volume. this makes a huge difference.

also, any time he uses 30-year t-bond data, good luck to you trying to figure out what he's actually using. the fed has a constant maturity series that goes back to 1977. boucher can go back to 1943 for this data. hmmmmmm. i'm sure he's using something, but i have no idea what. so, what good is the system if you don't know what he's using as the "30 year treasury yield"? and, through no fault of boucher, the 30-year is not issued any more.

he also relies quite heavily on the dow jones 20 bond index. this series was discontinued. this is not boucher's fault, of course, but just another reason to steer clear of this book.

i will say that i learned quite a bit from this book, however. it was fun to read. my problem simply resides with the somewhat tricky way that some of his systems are given. hey, i don't expect the guy to give away a proprietary system, but if you give a system, step up to the plate and tell the reader you're going to leave out some things (he actually does do this when he relays someone else's strategy). i find his method a bit disingenuous.

...

There is so much information in this book that it demands at least two readings. First, there is a wealth of material on trading. The chapter on technical analysis and reading the markets is solid and contains some good tips I've not found elsewhere. There is an entire chapter on containing risk, a large focus of which is money management--this information is worth the price of the book in itself.

Boucher also offers good material on selecting equities, evaluating other asset classes, and yes, hedge funds. However, the material on hedge funds does not take up a huge amount of space, and at first I wondered why he gave the book the title it has. I have since concluded that the title reflects his overall strategy, which is one of limiting risk by spreading ones' investments among many types of securities and asset classes, both onshore and offshore.

Aside from the above mentioned material, however, Boucher also has a couple of chapters on basic economics which I found to be invaluable background information for traders (like me) without business or economic degrees. His description of the liquidity cycle is brilliant. He explains the economic theory of Austrian alchemy, and shows how that model makes better sense than Keynesian economics. He has also provided data to convince me (a social liberal) that corporate taxes have a negative effect on a nations' citizenry.

This book requires dedication to get through certain sections, but it is well worth it. Its strength is its clear elucidation of trading information and techniques, supported by a foundation of economic theory and historical data, which enables the reader to understand the context in which s/he trades.

Firstly, I have a lot of respect for Mamis, so this is NOT to run him or his writing style down.

In-fact, I have given his other books, When to Buy and How to Sell the Five Star ratings as they are very useful and well written.

However, after reading those, this book seems to repeat some of the points made in them and seems a little defensive about Technical Analysis. Avoid this one but positively buy the other two.

It's been four years since I first reviewed this book (see the next to the last, below), and I still consider it to be absolutely essential for anyone considering any sort of involvement in the financial markets. In fact, it's probably essential for anyone who is considering anything at all that entails more than minimum risk.

The amateurs miss the point. This is not about the best stochastic settings or how to massage the bid and the ask. This is about facing up to the very real risks inherent in the financial markets, including the very real risk of financial ruin. Amateurs don't see the risk; therefore, they don't bother to grapple with it. Instead, they would rather blow up and disappear. If one wants to last, he must come to terms with the nature of risk, his own tolerance for risk, an understanding of how to manage risk. Without that, he's doomed.

I was reluctant to buy this book based on the first reviews I read. However, I have been daytrading for four years now, and frequently go against the crowd. Perhaps it is this contrarian view that keeps me in this business. I manage a proprietary firm in Denver (Bright Trading) and recommend this to ALL the new traders as well as veterans of the craft. It is fresh, insightful and really gets to the meat of what makes one trader successful while another fails. A great companion to this book is Mark Douglas' book Trading In The Zone.

'Irrational Exuberance' will no doubt consolidate Robert Shiller's position within his chosen field, but the book is also of considerable value to the intelligent lay person. Other writers have drawn attention to the market's overpriced level. Other writers have also done the numbers and concluded that stock returns are not likely to out pace bond returns, for example, over the next decade. But no other writer provides such a detailed and convincing analysis of the factors that have stoked our mania for stocks and brought us to the top of a speculative bubble. Shiller's account of what academics such as Prof. Irving Fisher thought of stock market valuations in the 1920s is a useful reminder that even the experts can get it wrong. More importantly, his analysis of past decades suggests a cyclical movement in the all too human desire to believe in a new economic age. Among the truths which Americans evidently have not learned is that new economic eras do not result in permanent stock market booms. That technology enables more efficient production which in turn helps keep inflation low has been acknowledged publicly by Alan Greenspan. But the market's reaction extends way beyond what this fundamental change might warrant, for all of the reasons Shiller cites.

While Prof. Shiller's analysis is highly credible, his suggestions for the individual investor are, in places, difficult to understand. Indeed his discussion of diversification may only be deciphered by his fellow economists. Lay men and women can hardly be expected to know what "...taking short term positions in claims on income aggregates," means. Nor can they regard his advice to invest in markets that do not yet exist as practical guidance. These, however, are minor quibbles. Unlike many market commentators these days, Shiller's underlying social conscience puts him on the side of the little guy. Yet even so, this books is aimed primarily at policymakers who have the power to influence public behavior for the good. The prospect of thousands of retirees living on the margins because they invested too much of their 401(k) money in the stock market is surely one which will compel their attention.

Jim Sanders Annandale, Virginia

This book is a superb exposition of the state of today's stock market. I cannot recommend it too highly. It is an excellent and readable blending of modern finance and behavioral finance set in historical context. If history is at all relevant, then I believe Shiller to be largely correct.

Is it different this time? That is the question. Previous reviewers in this space, among them J Weber, were right to suggest reading "Irrational Exuberance" alongside and in contradistinction to "New Era" works, such as Glassman's "Dow 36,000". You be the judge.

But don't prejudge the book on the basis of the rest of J Weber's review. Without wanting to engage in philippics, most of his comments regarding the book are inaccurate, inconsistent, and even self-contradictory. To wit:

To call Shiller "irrational" and an "old-school economist" who "has no understanding of the current market" simply because he disagrees with valuations is simply an ad hominem attack.

To say that Shiller "would only invest in bonds" is inaccurate. In today's context, yes, he would favor bonds over stocks, but not always and in every situation.

Check the facts. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not true that history "shows no better place to be than in the stock market". What about from 1929-1954 or from 1968-1982? You can disagree with Schiller's conclusions and still learn alot from his fascinating account of market history.

But you can't argue that the current market is "different" and at the same time invoke history as a proven guide. (And a factually incorrect version of history, at that!)

Moreover, to the extent that Shiller does recommend bonds, he favors TIPS, or inflation indexed bonds. A guaranteed real return of 4% is boring but not too bad over the long run.

Finally, does Mr. Weber know how to add and subtract? Or is basic arithmetic also a casualty of "New Era" accounting? He writes that "Let me see at around 6% a bond will only help my money keep up with inflation". Gee, last time I checked, the CPI was below 3%. 6% - 3% = a real yield of 3%, even if it's not indexed. Let's at least get the math straight.

Why is it so controversial or threatening to note that financial reward involves risk; that stocks, like other assets, can become overpriced; and that as a result, investors can actually lose money?

Shiller pursues his uncomplimentary examination of inexperienced investors authoritatively, all the way into their psyches and lapses of reasoning. Introspecting to the CNBC-led, over-hyped carnival sideshow that investing dilapidated into (fall 1999 to March 2000, when the top exploded), all-important valuations were relegated in favor of insane dot-coms, companies with NO business models, not expected to turn profitability until years later, and ever-accursed tech stocks, whose prices were trading profanely overextended. The culprit for investors' sins was financial media; from the most superficial propaganda outlet, ruining investing science into a fad, CNBC, to purportedly "respected" publications, WSJ, to radical, greenhorn publications, the Street.com and Motley Idiot. All sources mentioned had one unrighteous plan in common: the turbulent peddling of speculative garbage like YHOO at $200 without current year earnings to show for, OR shamelessly outright varmint: Pets.com! The culpable media obviously didn't incriminatingly impose people to go underweight in cash, homicidally overweight in tech-but their worst involvement was NEVER raising the alarm to cap Wall Street's mania, angrily opting instead to procure mutual fund talking-heads ruthlessly, to hypnotically fabricate longing, on television!

Discordant factors produced the disreputable herd mentality/behavior that Shiller dissects, striving to overthrow the Efficient Market Theory, which invites debunking. Shiller decidedly reasons the opposite of the Efficient Market Theory. It's unimaginable for persons to actually oppose Shiller's precognition, not because bears the world over were vindicated by equities' bleak performance, but because stocks' P/E ratios are calculated for precisely the reason Shiller alerted: to regulate stocks' unwarranted racketeering. It's fact, that at the bubble's start, techs in the networking and chip sectors were probably outperforming their "old-economy" peers, relating to earnings. Yet since most investors are miserably prepared, they were harshly ensnared by the lax press to pile on to those initially moderate rewards for stocks, to abuse those gains in overstepping ways. Likewise, one could argue that when the Bubble burst-and additional factors like 9/11 and corporate scandals contributing-those same feebly swayed "investors" sold the markets off nightmarishly worse than what was due. Again, because their paranoid nervousness took over their rationale in deciding how to approach markets. I retrospect with ghoulish HORROR, the relentlessness of wrongdoings that Wall Street, the collective body, committed in hazardously presaging themselves for the hardest bear ever.

CNBC, fund managers, analysts blindingly had the blameworthiest ulterior motives to exploit undereducated soccer moms, Sunday investors. Roughly analyzing, the more people CNBC guilefully suckered into longing dangerous techs, the more ratings they'd get, intensifying on-air "personalities"' payoffs, including CNBC's anchors' OWN holdings in various funds they'd get under GE. The more bait fund managers could lure to invest in their funds, the more they'd be compensated for escalating their funds' values. Ever-notorious ANALysts' ulterior motives laid not in the public's response, but in companies' stocks that they covered. Some were paid kickbacks for their suspiciously nothing-but-buy ratings. This triad of terror is accountable for falsely justifying the market's overreaching excesses beyond their, initially, reasonable beginnings. The drone public was simply mistaught that internet stocks' repugnant absence of income would materialize soon enough, networking high-fliers like CSCO and JNPR were said to "never suffer" from lack of business because of ever-expanding business that the growing internet would provide, and that the zombie public could expect profane, double-digit returns for years to come, laxly based on one year's (1999) fluke growth of speculative tech stocks which were preyed upon as a fad.

Also contributing to mania were factors that people mistook to maltreat as reasons for entering markets in a buy-and-hold savagery. As baby-boomers aged, they were unquestionably snared by CNBC's falsenesses to expose themselves supplementary more to equities which were on teetering foundations. The same's true of mutual funds' elevating popularity, as innumerable people were misdirected to blindly trap themselves in funds where they'd never monitor its performance for lengthy times. Other factors were also involved in this worst bear market in 100 years, constituents like 9/11, corporate improprieties, personal bankruptcies-the plausible, defining trigger that blew the markets up (particularly NASDAQ) was people overstretching their margins, thus being extorted to sell automatically. These are hallmark characteristics of hype markets' speculators being so overextended on long sides that when savvy investors decide to take their respective gains from months of abominable gains, selling significantly, margin calls are consequently called in on many accounts. This leads additionally bleakly into the domino effect of tumbling decks of cards.

It's pronounced message still corresponds to today's markets. CNBC's-ONCE AGAIN!!!!-restarting their impenitent Jihad of superficially, abusively embellishing the mediocre point the economy's currently at. Respecting historical bear cycles, we're indisputably in the 4th secular bear since the 20th century, convincingly proven by the damaging downfall of 2000-2002, arduously worse than any declines in the last century, especially the NASDAQ. There may definitively portend 18 years more of this feral bear, from 2000 levels. The shiest estimate of S&P 500's P/E's still sinfully extreme at 30-you'll pay 30 bucks to one dollar of what it's licitly worth, for vast majorities of stocks. Companies repeat slashing jobs-no small part thanks to the newest scourge of outsourcing-at record, breakneck furiousness, with probability of jobs returning to levels markedly improved from the -400 000 that impend awful growth to increments which would traditionally support prosperous GDP higher than 4% ascendingly unlikely. Through this purgatory, and ruthlessly mediocre to pessimistic economic numbers up to the present, aggressively hardened CNBC is unapologetically unlearning from its breaches and refusing to revere their costly errancies. CNBC persists on solely rigging the most obdurate perma-bulls (Angiletas, Leones) and loathsomely irrelevant, corporate Bush Admin. pushers (Kudlow, Cramer) to comment on the last half-year's markets. Those same schemingly prejudiced perma-bulls are seizing control of current market conditions to exaggerate them furiously and depravedly. The increasingly intolerably wretched CNBC "personalities" are debauching to vile, hypocritically "happy" guises while on air, further tyrannizing an air of "great market returns". They're willfully relapsing to 1999-2000's embezzlement, and need to be spurned as Contrarians!!!!