Street

The reason I am writing this review, though, is that I believe the sample interview questions and advice are invaluable to anyone interviewing for any job that involves a lot of analysis.

I am not in the finance field, but rather in technology consulting. Having practiced with Heard on the Street, I found the "tough" interview questions I encountered to be downright easy, and I breezed through several rounds of interviews, landing the job I wanted at a major computer company best known by its three-letter acronym.

If you're headed to Wall Street, reading this book is a no-brainer. If you're headed anywhere else that involves numbers, logic or analysis of a non-financial nature, you'll still be glad you read it.

This book definitely has merit, but it isn't right for beginners or the mainstream investment community. The best audience would be investors with highly specialized investing methods.

But what really sets it apart is that it explains terms not from a purely academic point of view but a much more informative way by looking at how investors should and would approach a problem. If you have some understanding of statistics such as mean and variance (although both are explained in the book) then I would recommend this book to anyone who is thinking about embarking on an investment course of some kind. It is a definite read for any beginner and will make the course easier becasue it explains the fundamentals very well.

What you will find in this book are excerpts from the Port Huron Statement, conservative viewpoints on the anti-war movement, the platform for the Black Panther party, accounts of sit-ins during the civil rights struggle in the South, feminist statements and a million other things. It must have been difficult at times to put this book together, as deciding what to include (and what not to include) would be extremely difficult. Chances are whatever you're looking for is probably here in some form or another. Very helpful as a guide through this tumultuous time and essential for a student trying to get the feel for the times.

The book mostly consists of selections from the leftist and counter-culture movements of the 60s, though there is a token pro-Establishment section with items from the likes of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Due to my own personal interests, I would have appreciated seeing more selections from the nonviolent elements of the 60s movements-the pacifists, nonviolent anarchists, Gandhians, conscientious objectors, etc. Certainly the book does not neglect these elements entirely, but they are not as well represented as I might have liked.

Many things struck me in reading this book. I found the idealism--and what some would dismiss as naivete--of some of the early civil rights activists and of the Free Speech Movement leaders among others to be quite appealing. On the other hand, many of the selections serve as useful reminders that the factionalism, the bitter strident rhetoric, the simplistic ideologies, the in-fighting, the condemnation of anyone not accepted as a co-victim, etc. that I tend to think of as mostly insignificant excesses that arose late in the game after years of defeat and frustration were actually present all along.

What you won't find much of is the cynicism, apathy, smugness, defeatism, etc. of more recent times. Whatever is objectionable about some of the people you'll encounter in these selections, at least they had a sincerity about them, a desire to make their society and their world a better place, and a willingness to take action in accordance with their ideals. A few of them and their ideological descendants in the politically correct crowd have surely done more harm than good, but on the whole, they were on the right side of the vast majority of the issues they fought on, and even their quite limited successes have left us with slightly more freedom and justice, and slightly less war-tolerance than before they came along.

Remark: One might think that I am a crazy Gann friend. To justifiy the title I put for this review, I would like to summarize Gann's 12 and 24 rules for one's reference:-

The 12 rules:-
1. Determine the trend
2. Buy at single, double and triple bottoms
3. Buy and sell on percentages
4. Buy and sell on 3 weeks' advance or decline
5. Market moves in sections/waves
6. Buy or sell on 5 to 7 point moves
7. Study volume to determine change in trend
8. Study time factor and time periods to determine change in trend. (p.s. when a time period on a decline exceeds that of a previous decline, it indicates a change in trend)
9. Buy on higher tops and bottoms
10. A change in trend often occurs just before or after holidays. (p.s. when prices are at high levels there are usually several swings up and down, then when the market breaks the low of the last swing it indicates a reversal and change in trend)
11. Buy on a second reaction at a higher bottom. When it reacts only 2 days, it is in a very strong position.
12. Price gains in fast moves does not last very long.

The 24 rules:-
1. Never risk one tenth of capital in one trade.
2. Always use stop loss orders.
3. Never overtrade.
4. Never let a profit run into a loss.
5. Do not buck the trend.
6. When in doubt, get our or dont get in.
7. Trade only active stocks.
8. Equal distribution of risk in 4 or 5 stocks.
9. Trade market order.
10. Dont clsoe your trades without a good reason.
11. Accumulate a surplus
12. Never buy just to get a dividend.
13. Never average a loss.
14. Never get out/in of the market because of impatience or anxiety.
15. Avoid taking small profits and big losses.
16. Never cancel a stop loss order after you placed it.
17. Avoid getting in and out of the market too often.
18. Be just as willing to seel short as you are to buy. Let your object be to keep with the trend and make money.
19. Never buy/sell just because the price is low/high.
20. Wait till the stock is very active and has crossed resistance levels before pyramiding.
21. Select stocks with small volume of shares outstanding to pyramid on the buying side.
22. Never hedge one stock by another.
23. Trade with a plan and do not get out without a definite indication of a change in trend.
24. Avoid increasing trading size after a long period of success.

Whilst many books deal with the fundamental aspects of employment, marketing, sales, import/ export, trade problems, taxes, industrial disputes etc. Mr. Gann does his analysis by means of mathematical calculations which are based on natural law and therefore cannot get outdated!

I currently own all of Mr. Gann's books and would like to state that this is truly his most updated and best book for stock traders giving over 50 years of his experience in the markets. The valuable information contained here will repay itself many times over.