market-economics

Tape-reading doesnt predicts target prices of a stock play as opposed to most methods (eg elliot wave) but lets volume (or lack thereof) be the ultimate determinant of a continuation of a move or otherwise. Since I have never been a technical indicators' fan, I now trade solely on tape-reading principles with simple charting techniques using candlesticks (paying due attention to volume on formation of important patterns) and doing very decently ever since.

Great stuff !!!

Wish all books were so succinct, i would've finished college in 1 year.

If you want to make money, read it!

A particularly good description is given
for interest rate risk management of a
standard banking portfolio.

In the last part there is a good section which describes how to manage risks , including liabilty and liquidity management,deposit insurance, capital adequacy, geographic diversification, derivatives, the new credit risk management techniques and securitization.

I had the chance to have Profesor Saunders as a risk management teacher and I only say that as his classes, his book is great. It shows you the best introduction to risk management. It discusses about financial institutions (banks, insurance and securities). That book just helped me to see financial institutions under the risk focus. I really recommend this book to understand risk management.

The only sad part of the book was realizing that I'd have to wait a year for the next installment. I'm already impatient.

Put one Pentecostal preacher and creator of the local church bumper sticker "I Brake for Sinners" with one Private Detective who thinks it a tad presumptuous for any one person to think him or herself capable of judging the rest of humanity, and you will get one interesting, and most definitely hilarious, read. Haskell Blevins, a private detective and part time drug store assistant for his brother, is dying for a case to come along and save him from the menial task of stocking deodorant. When the town Pentecostal preacher shows up asking for his help, Haskell, still smarting from his last humiliating experience with the preacher, thinks twice and charges double before he agrees to help. Once on the case, Haskell has to solve who is blessing the church bank account and playing Indian giver.

I really enjoyed this mystery. The series characters are wonderful. I appreciated the author's humor and ability to make light of the things we take too serious. The mystery is well planned, and, to me, the plot was simple, but don't let that fool you; just when you think you know - the author throws some great curves.

A great series to follow.

This book is different, and is a much better book. It also seems to me that the sector analysis coverage is a little more thorough (although I have not opened them up side by side to tell).

The only downside of this book is I don't think it gives you as many practical tools for tracking the business cycle and sector rotation as Pring's book, how to select stocks using technical analysis. It will give you the basics though, relying heavily on comparative relative strength.

If you want to see the big picture and understand how the markets are tied together, I can without hesitation recommend this book. There are several other books that complement this one as well.

Although I respect Mr. Murphy's work, he, like most technical analysts, can tell you with 100% accuracy exactly what happened.........yesterday. He really did do a good job on a very difficult topic, but the historical analogies referenced imply that the interrelatedness is rudimentary and predictable.
After a very detailed history of the four major market relationships, Murphy finally concludes that some of the historical tendencies are currently being challenged and that only time will tell if a new relationship has emerged or if history will again be proven right.

In the interest of disclosure, let me say that I do not know Mr. Murphy; nor has he or his publisher solicited this review. His editor at Wiley, Pamela Van Giessen, also edited a book I wrote on The Psychology of Trading. Knowing Ms. Van Giessen's integrity in a business that too often lacks that virtue, and having enjoyed Murphy's first book on the topic, I was eager to give "Intermarket Analysis" a thorough read.

Murphy begins with a review of the markets from the 1980s, recapitulating themes from the first book, including the close linkages among the currency, bond, commodities, and stock markets. His discussion of the role of oil and gold in economic slumps and booms is first rate, as he traces the interplay among these markets during the first Persian Gulf War and then during the "stealth bear market" of 1994. Throughout these presentations, Murphy captures qualitative relationships between markets that provide inspiration for traders interested in quantitative modeling. For example, the relationship between oil stocks and crude oil prices and the CRB/Bond Ratio are promising tools in capturing shifts in commodity prices that tend to impact the stock indices. I was particularly intrigued by his presentation of sector relationships during economic/market cycles, including the relative performance of cyclical and consumer stocks.

Where Murphy's book really shines, however, is in its explanation of intermarket relationships in a deflationary environment. He captures these relationships in his account of the recent bear market, drawing upon such diverse intermarket relationships as semiconductor stocks, Japanese markets, the Australian dollar, and the yield curve. This alone is a major advance over his previous text. At the end of the book, he traces the start of the recent bull market, illustrating the transition from a deflationary environment to an inflationary one--a pattern that also occurred after the great bear market of the 1930s.

Weaknesses in this book, from this reviewer's perspective, include an overemphasis on charts and visual data at the expense of quantitative treatments and a glib treatment of the Kondratieff Wave (long-term economic cycles). That having been said, this is an excellent market book. The presentation of sector rotation during economic cycles alone provided enough ideas to keep me busy with modeling efforts. Chart-based technical analysts and quants alike can find value in Murphy's work.

Brett Steenbarger
www.brettsteenbarger.com

1. What is "the emerging theory of manufacturing"? (Peter Drucker)

2. How to market in "the age of diversity"? (Regis McKenna)

3. How to manage in "an age of modularity"?

4. Do you want to keep your customers forever? (Pine, Don Peppers, and Martha Rogers)

5. Is your company ready for one-to-one marketing? (Peppers, Rogers, and Bob Dorf)

6. What are the correlations between "breaking compromises" and "breakaway growth"? (George Stalk, Jr., David K. Pecault, and Benjamin Burnett)

7. What are the "four faces" of mass customization"? (Gilmore and Pine)

8. What is "versioning"? Why is it the smart way to sell information? (Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian)

9. How to make mass customization work? (Pine, Bart Victor, and Andrew C. Boynton)

10. What does "managing by wire" involve? (Stephan H. Haeckel and Richard L. Nolan)

At the conclusion of their book, the authors also provide immensely helpful "Executive Summaries" of key points made in each of the various essays, and, brief but informative comments about those who wrote them. If you are looking for the single best source of information and about mass customization, look no further.

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.