market-economics

I would like to know if it is possible to have the email address of Martin Mayer? In reference to a book about daytrading from home.

thanks Marcus De Hon mdehon@hotmail.com marcusd@mindspring.com

This is a short version, upgraded, of S. Moore's _Marx on the Choice between Socialism and Communism_. The author's argument is:
"Pointing out that Marx deffines communist economies as classless economies without markets, this book examines his claim that classless economies with markets are in some sense inferior to communist economies. From its analysis, two conclusions emerge. First, Marx's major arguments for abolishing commodity exchange rely on moral and philosophical premises, derived from Feuerback in the earlier writings and from Hegel in the later. Second, Marx's ideal of a communist economy is incompatible with his materialist approach to history...'
Your move.

This book was excellent. The wording of the book was great. It was very understandable. This book had so many facts. It also had a lot of details. It talks about the great depression. I give this book 5 STARS, because the Physical form was great, and the wording was absolutely easy!

Valerie Thompson has done an outstanding job of tackling this portion of the global bond market. The book is thorough enough to provide a refresher to a market pro yet accesible to moderately skilled retail investors. Mastering the Euromarkets is particularly recommended for the legions of retirement plan equity investors who will eventually need to worry about generating income from their portfolios.

Consider first, this book's subtitle, "Tools for Incomplete Markets." A "complete market" (the kind assumed by the Black-Scholes-Merton model) is one in which any derivative product can be dynamically replicated by means of cash and the underlying asset. An incomplete market, then, is one is which the world of derivatives and their underlyings do not match each other in the point-by-point replicable manner implied by that definition of completeness. This failure to match makes for a necessary imperfection in hedging. That, of course, is the real world, where traders practice, as Scholes and Merton famously discovered in Greenwich, CT not long ago!

A variety of illustrations of this practical emphasis might be adduced. In the preface, for example, Dr. Cerný tells us frankly that in his experience "is it hard to understand the Itô calculus, but it is possible to get used to it and to apply it quickly and consistently...." [italics in original.]

The author did a great job in putting mathematical concepts in simple language.

Jerry Muller's objective is to trace the origin and evolution of a central tenet of economics: the market. But rather than start with Adam Smith (he comes second), Muller reaches back to Voltaire and the Enlightenment: he sees Voltaire's criticism of religion as a crucial step toward acceptance of capitalism. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the evolution of ideas and the role of individual thinkers, ranging from the famous (Karl Marx) to the less famous (Justus Möser??).

When I looked at the cover of this book, I knew it was going to be contrarian. It shows volatility moving in the opposite direction to growth. Looking inside the book, I found the cover figure in Chapter 9 where it was described as volatility versus growth for 75 years of the Ibbotson Index starting in 1926. I looked at the Ibbotson table, and, indeed with the authors' eleven outlier years eliminated, the correlation is still negative (-.142). (With all 75 years included, I found the correlation to be (-.317).) At any rate, the Markowitzian notion of finding how large you can stand for volatility to be and then finding the portolio which maximizes growth is stood on its head.

The authors come up with an alternative to the Markowitz approach for portfolio selection based on something they call a simugram, which looks to be computer intensive.

Much of the book is spent on fundamental analysis, and indeed the authors do not seem favorably disposed to technical analysis. They dump on Black-Scholes and blame its use for the collapse of LTCM and Enron.

Some finance professionals will find much of this book annoying, since it attacks many standard concepts, such as the Efficient Market Hypothesis. And it seems to attack some of the basic tools in the finance tool kit, such as "risk neutral" evaluation.

One of the troubling things I found is that though the authors attack the canon of modern finance, they have only limited alternatives to recommend. They seem to recommend either doing deep fundamental analysis, using their complex simugram portfolio analysis, or putting one's money into an index fund. Most of us don't have the time to do the first or the software to do the second. To do the third really gives up on mathematical finance.

I really enjoyed this book. I recommend it highly. I spent 1984-85 in South Africa when the policy of "Apartheid" was the law. Races were heavily discriminated against, and some ended up as human slaves. Later, in 1998, I witnessed this again, but this time in a United States Commonwealth. The book, Modern Slavery and the Global Economy, identifies the horrific realities of Modern Slavery through first-person accounts. It also gives insight to the growing global economy and a possible connection. Well worth reading.

This book has impressed me greatly. I think it can be a bestseller for most of specialist in finance.