Stocks for the Long Run 4th Edition The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns And Long Term Investment Strategies
September 10, 2009 by Investing · Leave a Comment
Stocks for the Long Run set a precedent as the most complete and irrefutable case for stock market investment ever written. Now, this bible for long-term investing continues its tradition with a fourth edition featuring updated, revised, and new material that will keep you competitive in the global market and up-to-date on the latest index instruments.
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Wharton School professor Jeremy Siegel provides a potent mix of new evidence, research, and analysis supporting his key strategies for amassing a solid portfolio with enhanced returns and reduced risk. In a seamless narrative that incorporates the historical record of the markets with the realities of today’s investing environment, the fourth edition features:
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- A new chapter on globalization that documents how the emerging world will soon overtake the developed world and how it impacts the global economy.
- An extended chapter on indexing that includes fundamentally weighted indexes, which have historically offered better returns and lower volatility than their capitalization-weighted counterparts.
- Insightful analysis on what moves the market and how little we know about the sources of big market changes.
- A sobering look at behavioral finance and the psychological factors that can lead investors to make irrational investment decisions.
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A major highlight of this new edition of Stocks for the Long Run is the chapter on global investing. With the U.S. stock market currently holding less than half of the world’s equity capitalization, it’s important for investors to diversify abroad. This updated edition shows you how to create an �efficient portfolio� that best balances asset allocation in domestic and foreign markets and provides thorough coverage on sector allocation across the globe.
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Stocks for the Long Run is essential reading for every investor and advisor who wants to fully understand the market-including its behavior, past trends, and future influences-in order to develop a prosperous long-term portfolio that is both safe and secure.
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User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Getting the broad picture
If you have no training in finance, this book is a good starting point. Don’t expect to trade like a pro after reading this, though. It provides a perspective, an interesting big picture. The historical accounts are worth exploring. The tables are the information you want to take with you. Too many institutional details for my tastes, but it is probably fine for an introductory book.
5 Stars Stock Market Investing
Outstanding and should be read by anyone who is investing or thinking of investing in the stock or bond market. Dr. Siegel backs all of his findings with facts. This book is an easy read and leaves you looking for more books written by Prof. Siegel.
5 Stars A New Gloss on Stocks for the Long Run
In the previous editions of Stocks for the Long Run, Wharton Finance professor Jeremy Siegel offered a thoroughly bullish take on the merits of equity investing that has proved highly influential and largely correct through the end of the post-Millennial Bull Market in mid-2007. In the latest edition of this classic, released in a much more difficult period of substantial market declines, Siegel has added important and more nuanced insights derived from his previous and somewhat overlooked book “The Future for Investors,” which came out in 2006. Siegel’s basic advice to stock investors is to focus less on growth stocks and index mutual funds (eg., Vanguard 500) and more on looking for tried and true stocks that pay high dividends. He argues that such reinvested dividends are the true source of stock returns, or the “El Dorado.” (His term). Overall, this argument is well-presented and persuasive.
However, I am perplexed on a key element. His case is largely based on historical evidence that purports to show that high dividend yield stocks, with dividends reinvested, have accumulated more total return than growth stocks or index mutual funds. However, his calculations do not account for the deleterious effect of taxes on reinvested dividend. (He says in an endnote that taxes are not significant for the portfolios he chose, but does not explain why; for most common stock portfolios, taxes are significant.) Dividends are taxed yearly and until recently at a higher rate than that of capital gains and that of retained earnings, which are not taxed at all. If taxes have been paid on dividends, only the untaxed part can truly be considered “reinvested”; the part that is taxed has to be made up by a new infusions of cash from the investor. The effect of ignoring this is that his historical comparisons are not terribly meaningful because he is not calculating the returns on true (after tax) contributions to dividend stocks vs. growth stocks. Naturally, if more is contributed to the dividend stocks, there is likely to be more at the end. (BTW, this is basically the same fallacy that sunk the allegedly huge returns of the otherwise delightful “Beardstown Ladies” of yore.) Given that the magnitude of the “advantage” he posits of dividend stocks vs. growth stocks is not all that great, one cannot have confidence that he has truly made his case.
That said, his advice is very useful for investors in tax sheltered 401Ks. Also, the new lower tax rate on dividends also helps lessen, though not eliminate, the effects of yearly taxation of dividends.
In addition to emphasizing the importance of the contribution of stock dividends to equity portfolio performance, this book also grapples with a perplexing challenge to Siegel’s original stocks for the long run mantra, the much vexed question of what will happen if and when the populous Baby Boom generation attempts to cash in its stock and bond retirement portfolios by selling them to the smaller demographic of Gen X and Gen Y. An entire school of catastrophe futurologists, most notably Harry Dent, but also more mainstream voices like Peter G. Peterson (The Grey Wave) have warned that this so-called Age Wave is about to wreak havoc with stock market investments. In this book, Siegel does not dismiss this issue, but deals with it in a logical and generally less alarmist point of view. At the risk of oversimplifying a complex analysis, Siegel’s bottom line is that while it is true that there are not enough younger generation Americans to absorb the Boomers stock and bond assets at current prices, investors in emerging countries, like China and India, will more than make up for that and will end up buying the Baby Boomer’s paper assets as the Boomers sell them off to fund their retirements. The upshot is that foreigners will end up owning a lot of our companies by the year 2050. A potential snag, says Siegel, is whether America will be willing to let this happen, or will pass laws or adopt polices to discourage the transfer of US assets to foreign countries. This remains to be seen, but he is optimistic. On the other hand, the implications for the typical Baby Boomer’s most important asset, his or her house, is rather dire, because homes can’t be sold as readily to foreigners, for obvious reasons. Siegel doesn’t provide an answer for the housing market, which is outside the scope of a book on stock investing in any event. Overall, this remains one of the best written and most sensible investment books available today, now offering a more nuanced and even more helpful sets of advice than the previous editions. With new information and analysis, this is well worth owning, even if you have a previous edition.
5 Stars Outstanding Overview of Stock Investing
Dr. Siegel, one of the top academics in finance, has provided a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of investing in stocks. His book is based on data going back 200 years and is fact based, rather than just opinions or theories. I have been involved in investing for over 30 years and found much new, useful information. This book is a great read for anyone interested in stock investing, whether a rookie or a veteran.
5 Stars Professor Siegel gets an A+
Siegel’s masterpiece is a must buy for anyone who wants to stop wasting money on mutual fund fees and start accumulating wealth. I give this book and Professor Siegel an A+.
Andrew Nissenbaum
Quicken 2009 The Official Guide Quicken Press
September 9, 2009 by Investing · Leave a Comment
Quicken 2009 The Official Guide Quicken Press
The Only Official Guide to the #1 Personal Finance Software
Now you can manage your finances and assets with ease! Quicken 2009: The Official Guide is filled with insider tips and expert techniques for tracking your income, expenses, savings, transactions, investments, and much more.
Fully endorsed by Intuit, makers of Quicken, this official guide helps you save time and money by showing you how to maximize all of the software’s powerful capabilities-including new features and little-known tools. You’ll also get valuable guidance along with information about online resources to assist you in making smart financial decisions and planning for a secure future.�
- Customize Quicken for your preferences
- Track your cash flow
- Set up Online Account Services
- Automate transactions and tasks
- Reconcile checking, savings, and credit card accounts
- Track investments and optimize your portfolio
- Monitor assets and loans
- Manage household records
- Reduce debt, save money, and plan for retirement
- Simplify tax preparation and maximize deductions
- Get help and guidance from the new Sidebar feature
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User Ratings and Reviews
2 Stars Disappointed for my needs
I am new to Quicken but have used MS Money for years. I thought I could use a guide book to help with some of the issues related to small to not so major features…such as budgeting, savings plan, tax planning, etc. From what I reviewed on such topics, I thought the author isn’t telling anything more than what you can see on the screen itself and perhaps figure things out on your own. Not much of any insights into how the features may be of benefit, why not or why you need to use them, etc. It is more of a rewritten user manual…if there ever was one. Less than what you may need if you are beyond a novice user. I am replacing it with “the missing manual”.
5 Stars Awesome info for a Newbie
I am new to Quicken and found the program intimidating. After researching information on several manuals this looked like the best choice, but I was skeptical that the book might be too advanced. Not so! I found the information fairly easy to find and understand, and I highly recommend it to Quicken Newbies!
5 Stars As advertised
The book explains Quicken in detail, which is good because I wanted a book to explain Quicken in detail.
1 Star Quicken 09
Does not cover the business portion of the program. Intuit keeps telling me that the guide that includes the business section will be available soon. That was in August.
4 Stars Quciken 2009 Review
This is a great book, very helpful on learning the “ins and outs” of Quicken.
Execution Premium
September 8, 2009 by Investing · Leave a Comment
In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area–not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize just a fraction of the financial performance promised in their strategic plans.
It doesn’t have to be that way, maintain Robert Kaplan and David Norton in The Execution Premium. Building on their breakthrough works on strategy-focused organizations, the authors describe a multistage system that enables you to gain measurable benefits from your carefully formulated business strategy. This book shows you how to:
Drawing on extensive research and detailed case studies from a broad array of industries, The Execution Premium presents a systematic and proven framework for achieving the financial results promised by your strategy.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Six-stage management framework to link strategy and operations
Robert S. Kaplan is professor at Harvard Business School, while David P. Norton is the founder of Balanced Scorecard Collaborative and a director of Palladium Group. This book was published in 2008 and consists of 10 chapters plus a short preface and acknowledgement.
There is considerable history behind this book, which goes back to 1992 when the authors introduced the balanced scorecard as a performance management system. The balanced scorecard made it possible for managers to express and measure operational performance. The framework was built around 5 management principles: (1) Mobilize change through executive leadership; (2) translate strategy into operational terms; (3) align the organization to the strategy; (4) motivate to make strategy everyone’s job; and (5) govern to make strategy a continual process. This has resulted in four previous books by the authors, which focused primarily on the first 4 principles.
In the preface Kaplan and Norton explain that while they set out to document the best practices for the fifth principle, “we ended up with a self-contained and comprehensive mangement system that links strategy and operations.” In the first introductory chapter, the authors explain that although many of the building tools for strategy development, strategic planning and operational planning already exist, but that a comperehensive framework to integrate all these tools is still lacking. They therefore introduce a six-stage comprehensive, closed-loop management system that integrates management tools to help companies with strategy execution. In addition, they introduce a new organizational unit that helps design the integrated system.
The six-stage framework is almost broken by chapter. Chapter 2 contains a detailed description of the 3 strategy development process. Chapter 3 describes the first 2 strategy planning processes. Chapter 4 describes the 3 initiative management processes. Chapter 5 describes the best practices companies use to align organizational units and employees to the strategy. Chapter 6 discusses the linkaged of strategy to process improvements. Chapter 7 describes the conversion of a strategy plan into plan for resource capacity and for operating and capital expenses. Chapter 8 presens the structure, frequency, partipants, agenda, and actions fo operational and strategy review meetings. Chapter 9 provides detais and several case examples of the test and adapt meetings. Chapter 10 finalises the book and describes the roles and responsibilities for a new unit termed “office of strategy management”, who should become the architect, process owner, and integrator of the process embedded in the management system.
However, the authors make one explicit additional remark to the 6 strategy management stages: “… leadership is so important to the strategy management system we believe it to be both necessary and sufficient.” The necessary condition comes from the authors’ experence with the more than 100 enterprises around the world who have become members of the Balance Scorecard Hall of Fame. The sufficiency claim is even bolder as the authors believe that each of the six stages is doable, when guided by a senior management office. However, “we cannot provide a blueprint for visionary and effective leadership.”
Yes, I do like this book. It does perhaps does not bring many new issues to the table, apart from the office of strategy management perhaps, but I still believe that the highly visual aspects of the balanced scorecard and this 5-stage framework assist to explain strategy, measures, targets, processes, reviews and findings to all parties involved in organizations. The framework povides great guidelines to organizations to execute their strategy better through improved operations. Highly recommended.
4 Stars One Side of Wisdom, Needs to be Read with Prahalad Et Al
20081214 DEPARTED AMAZON WITH OUTRAGE OVER THE MANIPULATION OF VOTES.
I strongly recommend this book for any executive with ambitions to both rise and to help grow a sustainable and increasingly profitable (or effective) organization, i.e. this applies to non-profits and government and academia as much as to commercial enterprises.
The book MUST be read in partnership with The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value Through Global Networks, both emphasize strategy and business processes, and they are each unique in how they approach the urgency of getting an executive grip on both strategy and business processes or the blood and guts of operations.
Where I am increasingly disappointed (only one star worth) with the business literature is with its relative isolation from all the other literatures. Business is one of eight “intelligence tribes” (learn more at Earth Intelligence Network and OSS.Net,): the others are government at all levels, Military and National Guard or Gendarme, Law Enforcement, Academia, Media including bloggers and new media, Non-Profits, and Civil Society including lasbor unions and religions.
Where the Innovation book adds to this book by Kaplan and Norton is in its focus of co-creating value with all indiviudals–cutomsters, suppliers, employees, regulators. Both, however, lack the sense that can be found in, for example:
The exemplar: The exemplary performer in the age of productivity
The Knowledge Executive
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace (Helix Books)
I also find both completely lacking in their appreciation for the green to gold, cradle to cradle sustainable design ENVIRONMENT of business, as well as the toxic immoral environment that most businesses accept rather than challenge. See for instance:
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
Finally, while strategy as well as information and intelligence (one in inputs, the other outputs) are buzz words in the business world, this book does well at demanding an Office of Strategy but does not reflect the best knowledge of strategic thinking such as represented by Colin Gray in Modern Strategy and other recent publications; and neither really appreciates external unstructured ANALOG or human information, although the innovation book tries with a second hand appreciation of humans.
A huge paradigm shift is coming, and the value of morality as a basis for trust (Nobel Prize awarded for the guy that gamed that trust lowers the cost of doing business) is upon us. We are now ready to create the Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth that Buckminster Fuller envisioned. See Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace for a sense of what 55 others are saying on this vital FOUNDATION for business enterprise.
3 Stars All head, no heart, an analytical strategist’s playbook, not a guidebook for executing a strategy
The Execution Premium is the crowning book of Kaplan and Norton’s series addressing the Balanced Scorecard and Strategy maps. This book is manual for strategists as it brings together all of the current best thinking related to how an organization establishes its strategy, uses strategy maps and leverages balanced scorecards. K & N continue to their tradition of providing good case study support and graphical examples to illustrate their point. K & N also continue their tradition of thinking that strategy coupled with measurement constitutes execution.
This is a must read book for strategists, consultants and aspiring MBAs as it is a compendium of all the current approaches to strategy setting. This book’s focus on integrative thinking is its greatest strength. K & N bring together Porter, Reichheld, their own work and other techniques such as PESTEL, TDABC and forceasting which are all relevant to one degree or another. If you only had money in your budget for one business book - I would recommend this one just for its sheer comprehensive coverage.
In the first paragraph K&N make an astute observation when they say that “operational effectiveness and strategy are both essential … but they work in very different ways.” That is true. Rather than providing a bridge between these two ways the rest of the chapter and the rest of the book focuses on the strategy processes. I was hoping for an operationally focused bridge between the two as that is how you move from strategy to results - but it was not there.
Do not let the title fool you, this book is about the execution of the strategy setting process. It is not about operational execution or even execution of the strategy (ala Bossidy and Charan’s best seller EXECUTION). It not about how you realize an execution premium - that premium is assumed if you execute the balanced scorecard and strategy maps.
Given the title I was expecting to understand the financial, market value and performance `premium’ one would get from following this approach. While some of that is in the book, its treatment seems to be more fortunate coincidence rather than an executed connection between the strategy and operations. That does not mean that this is a poor book, not at all, but if you are reading this to understand how to get an execution premium from delivering strategic goals in your operations, this is not the book.
Strengths - analytical and financial view of the company
* Comprehensive in covering all of the major tools and techniques currently used in formulating strategy. This is the strength of the first few chapters that focus on PETEL analysis and other techniques
* Consistent in their support and explanation of their key concepts, such as the balanced scorecard and strategy maps. This builds on the other K&N books.
* Process focused in laying out a strategy formulation process. The Roadmap for strategy processes is accurate and clear. The discussion of management meetings and reviews focused on the strategy (Chpt 7 and 
is a plus.
* Information and Analytics a practical guide to using operational data in the strategy process. This is the primary focus of the plan operations step. The discussion and detailed examples are strength.
* Financial focus in providing examples of the financial approaches to strategy setting. This is particularly in the plan operations and the use of Time Driven Activity Based Costing Model.
Challenges - limited connection between the strategy and the way you manage and change operations to achieve the strategy.
* Avoids any real discussion of operational management, it is assumed that operational managers who have the right metrics will make the right decisions across the enterprise to achieve the goals.
* Assumes that enterprise strategic goals are mathematically decomposable. By that I mean that I can take a goal, divide it into smaller parts that add up to the whole goal and assume that if I achieve the parts I will achieve the goal. This is a vertical top down strategy view of the company, and ignores the horizontal, bottom up, process reality that creates results.
* Asserts the alignment fallacy by concentrating on aligning on the financial ends with no consideration of the means to achieve those ends across the enterprise.
* Pays limited attention to the core “Learning and Growth Disciplines” like HR and IT and by their omission. In fact at the end the book asserts “The company assumes that achieving the strategic objectives for human, information and organizational capital will drive improvement in critical strategic processes.” P. 252 Anyone who has seen the impact of a less than successful HR, IT, or Re-organization knows that this is not an assumption that can be made with certainty, yet it’s the only real discussion of these things in the book.
* Based on a lite version of a central planning model where the corporate core knows more and is more skilled than the operational front lines. Embodied in the Office of Strategy Management (OSM) the book creates a rational why companies should invest more in corporate functions rather than in operational execution — very paternalistic view.
The fundamental challenge I have is that “The Execution Premium” is all head - analytical and financial with little to no discussion of the heart - how things actually work. The following quote sums it up from my point of view “The most successful Balanced Scorecard implementations have occurred when organizations skillfully melded the intrinsic motivation emanating from its leadership and communication program with the extrinsic motivation created by aligning personal performance objectives and incentive compensation.” Page 149. For any one who has seen one manager optimize their function at the expense of all others, or those how feel that the “beatings will continue until moral improves, you know that sustainable execution requires more than lining up metrics on a piece of paper.
Chapter 1: Introduction - provides an overview of the challenges associated with strategy formulation and creation. Here they outline their basic process for strategy formulation and deployment
1) Develop the strategy
2) Plan the strategy
3) Align the operations with strategy
4) Plan Operations
5) Monitor and Learn
6) Test and adapt the strategy.
It’s a good closed loop process - with the strategy as the primary object of the process. The rest of the chapters deal with each of these steps. The chapter ends with saying that this process is the responsibility of a new construct called the Office of Strategy Management
Chapter 2: Develop the Strategy - is the details in first step of the strategy setting process. Here is the detailed discussion of PESTEL (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal analysis framework). This is a good framework and the case study support is comprehensive.
The issue is that these are all discussions of how people have made strategies in the past - in an environment of predictable or foreseeable change. This is not the environment we are heading into, so it would have been good to see the strategy based on some latest proven best thinking rather than the strategy frameworks that are dominant for the past 20 years or so.
Chapter 3: Plan the Strategy - This chapter focuses on using K&Ns Balanced Scorecard tool and how it fits with strategy. This is a top down corporate driven process as it is performed by executives at the center. The examples are good and illustrative, but they also show the vertical thinking that dominates this approach (head) and the relative limited understanding of horizontal coordination and end-to-end implications (heart).
Chapter Four: Strategic Initiatives is based on a traditional view of corporate controlled transformation and organization. The initiatives break out into separate work streams whose plans and budgets all have to reconcile back to the core strategy - this is the decomposition issue mentioned above. There is some good discussion about initiative prioritization and funding through a new category called STRATEX - Strategy expenditure. The strategy deployment model discussed on page 119 - 122 is very traditional and corporate centric.
Chapter Five: Aligning Organizational Units and Employees is critical, but it’s largely assumed to happen through aligning performance measures rather than the means to achieve those measures. The center controls all is best illustrated by the following quote “Corporate headquarters is like the coxswain in an eight-rower shell … the coxswain adds value by understanding the competitive environment and the strengths and weakness of each rower and uses that insight to develop a coherent action plan.” Page 126. If you are in the corporate center you agree heartily, but if you are on the line, the view may be stretching reality.
Chapter Six: Plan Operations - Align process improvement programs should be the heart and meat of the book and to some extent it is. There is a discussion of the planning process, which again is based on cascading from the top. The chapter does not tell you how you change operations to achieve strategy in a coordinated way. From what I read it’s the use of TQM and/or Six Sigma to achieve you BSC goals - a sound approach, but hardly all that is required to deploy a strategy and get an execution premium.
Chapter Seven: Plan Operations - Sales Forecasts, Capacity, and Budgets. This is THE MEAT of the book and provides comprehensive discussions of new approaches to budgeting and Time Driven Activity Based Costing. This is the best part of the book, with some new ideas and great examples. Unfortunately again it’s a financial metrics decomposition focus, which is necessary but not sufficient on its own to achieve an execution premium.
Chapter Eight: Operational and Strategy Review Meetings is a good chapter and recognizes that strategy is a living breathing thing that needs to be marked to the market and market conditions. This is a welcome chapter to help structure these meetings and not have them turn into rebudgeting sessions.
Chapter Nine: Meetings to Test and Adapt the Strategy is another good chapter that focuses on the strategy management process and somewhat on the daily or line =.
If you are still reading this review, thanks and I hope you can see why this book is great for the strategist and less effective for the operational manager who needs to execute the strategy.
The book ends with a discussion of the office of strategy management — a corporate function that embodies the process that is discussed in this book. In that regard I am concerned about objectivity as the book is written to show all the work that needs to be done, begs the question who will do it, says that its the OSM that will do it and does not disclose that one of the authors consulting companies trains and certifies people to be in the OSM. I am not sure that centralizing these tasks into yet another corporate - non-operating function is the right idea and the commercial incentive implicit in the recommendation needs to be taken into consideration. It is not a huge deal, but something that the reader needs to understand and be aware of in terms of a bias.
5 Stars Brilliant!!
Strategy an operation need a common space. This spaces are critically for performance management today. This book of Kaplan & Norton focused now on these things and they explain many ways and how linkage operation and results, both time, and successfully.
very recommendable and outstanding!
5 Stars Detailed report on linking strategy with operations
Senior executives love to plan strategies. They believe this puts them in the exalted company of Napoleon, Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz. Indeed, for CEOs and their corporate colleagues, developing strategy is the heart of executive leadership. Unfortunately, most companies end up with strategies that are not linked to their actual operations. The result? Strategy that is not strategic, since companies are unable to implement it. Strategy experts Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton created the Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Maps and have now developed a versatile, six-stage program your corporation can use to mesh its strategy with its operations. Their approach already works for numerous top-flight organizations. getAbstract applauds this outstanding book. It is an exceptionally worthwhile read, especially given its valuable case studies. One caveat: Readers who are not grounded in sophisticated, strategic systems, such as Six Sigma and Balanced Scorecard, will be in over their heads starting on page one.
Investing Online For Dummies For Dummies Business and Personal Finance
September 7, 2009 by Investing · Leave a Comment
Investing Online For Dummies For Dummies Business and Personal Finance
Investors are becoming a lot more independent these days. With the stock market sinking and soaring from day to day, retirement plans becoming less certain, and a longer life expectancy in retirement, more people are looking for some control over their investments. If you’re one of them, Investing Online For Dummies, 6th Edition might be just what you’re looking for.
The Internet brings a world of investment resources to your desktop, but how do you find your way through the dizzying array of investment possibilities? The Dummies Way, of course! This book helps you set reasonable expectations, assess your risk tolerance, choose an asset allocation, analyze and select investments, and maximize your financial success. You’ll discover how to
- Determine how much you can afford to invest
- Choose an online broker
- Research, trade, and track investments online
- Measure the potential return of a stock
- Maximize your investment knowledge and build a profitable portfolio
- Buy bonds online
- Understand options, commodities, and IPOs
If you’ve decided to take control of your investments but don’t want to make it your full-time job, Investing Online For Dummies, 6th Edition gives you the important information that will also give you confidence. Completely updated to cover all the new online tools and resources, it even provides some bonus assistance on the companion Web site.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Timely Book
The internet is a two edged sword, and many investors have cut themselves with it. This shows investors the right way to invest with a computer.
5 Stars You’re only a Dummy if you don’t check out this book!
I don’t know how thorough or concise the first 5 editions of this resource were, but I can tell you this edition is both. I have just recently begun educating myself on the market, and started with the most recommended texts about - or by - Buffett, Lynch, Graham and others. I read the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Investing that was informative. But nothing I’ve read thus far puts so much useful, understandable and resourceful information at your fingertips. Like the reviewer above states, there are HUNDREDS of viable links to largely free sites that cover the full spectrum of investing; from terminology and fundamental/technical analysis, to screeners, analyst ratings, quant models, governance, taxation and how to avoid scams. As mentioned, have your computer close by to bookmark these invaluable resources. Three additional chapters to the book - available online - pick up where the book left off with more advanced concepts and strategies. I can’t recommend this text highly enough.
5 Stars A very complete guide!
The author starts out by building confidence in investing on-line. His eleven Getting Started points (Decide how much you can save and invest, Master the terms, Understand the difference between being an active and passive investor, etc.) set the tone for the entire book. He assumes you have never invested on-line and then shows you exactly how to do it. Not only does he explain how to invest at your computer but he also explains basic terminology (selling stock short, buying a call in options, shareholders’ equity, etc.) so that you are never lost in his explanations. Thankfully, he reserves the deeper topics (Capital-gain distribution nightmare, stock splits, etc.) for the gray sidebars. The hundreds of internet addresses he provides are enough to fill anyone’s bookmarks. This is the kind of book you read with your laptop so that you can check out the references and bookmark those which have meaning to you.
4 Stars Investing Online For Dummies
I started out on computers 15 years ago and loved the Dummies books. They made learning fun.
I have now moved into investing and enjoyed the cutting edge articles I read in this book. Much reading and learning is required in stock investing in order to prepare oneself for stepping onto Wall Street. This new 2008 edition of Online Investing is a big help.
DeMark Indicators Bloomberg Market Essentials Technical Analysis
September 5, 2009 by Investing · Leave a Comment
DeMark Indicators Bloomberg Market Essentials Technical Analysis
“Having observed his market calls real time over the years, I can say that Jason Perl’s application of the DeMark indicators distinguishes his work from industry peers when it comes to market timing. This book demonstrates how traders can benefit from his insight, using the studies to identify the exhaustion of established trends or the onset of new ones. Whether you’re fundamentally or technically inclined, Perl’s DeMark Indicators is an invaluable trading resource.” — Leon G. Cooperman, chairman, Omega Advisors
“Jason Perl has created a trading primer that will help both the professional and the layman interpret the DeMark indicators, which I believe represent the most robust and powerful methods to track securities and establish timely investment positions. Think of DeMark Indicators as the Rosetta stone of market-timing technology.” — John Burbank, founder and CIO, Passport Capital
“Jason Perl has taken the playbook from the market’s John Wooden, Tom DeMark, and translated it engagingly in a format that traders of all levels will appreciate. As one who has used these indicators for more than twenty years, I too am appreciative of Jason’s clarity.” — Peter Borish, chairman and CEO, Computer Trading Corporation
“Jason Perl is the trader’s technician. DeMark indicators are a difficult subject matter, but Jason shows simply how the theory can be applied practically to markets. Whether you’re day-trading or taking medium-term positions, using the applications can only be of increased value.” — David Kyte, founder, Kyte Group Limited
“Tom DeMark, the man whose work inspired this book, is a unique, interesting, and ofttimes iconoclastic technical analyst. Simply put, he thinks about the markets differently from the way you or I do. So why should you read this book? Because, having read it, you will almost certainly think about the markets and technical analysis differently.” — John Bollinger, CFA, CMT, www.BollingerBands.com
Jason Perl has taken the playbook from the market s John Wooden, Tom DeMark, and translated it engagingly in a format that traders of all levels will appreciate. As one who has used these indicators for more than twenty years, I too am appreciative of Jason s clarity. –Peter Borish, Chairman and CEO, Computer Trading Corporation
Jason Perl is the trader’s technician. DeMark Indicators are a difficult subject matter, but Jason shows simply how the theory can be applied practically to markets. Whether you’re day-trading or taking medium-term positions, using the applications can only be of increased value. –David Kyte, Founder, Kyte Group Limited
User Ratings and Reviews
2 Stars Lacks Clarity for Programming
I purchased the book based on reviews that indicated it provided a clear description of the formulas used by DeMark in his indicators. This is exactly what I was looking for in order to code my trading software. To be sure, some of the indicators and the corresponding formulas are explained clearly but too often clarity is lost. When this happens it is impossible to code the indicator without going to other resources.
If you want to use the book for programming purposes be prepared to do a great deal of digging in other books and articles in order to extract the formulas for some of the indicators. The bottom line unfortunately is that “DeMark Indicators” is not a one-stop source for DeMark’s indicator formulas.
3 Stars Disappointing reference - NOT for programmers nor traders
This book is quite a good reference to DeMark indicators, it walks through lot of indicators and explains how to compute them, for some of them he also explains how you can trade them [Edit: the explanations on computing the indicators are very general and fuzzy, not something you can program but only get the general idea].
The down side as I see it is that the writer does not contribute to the book from his experience (except from few sentences here and there), for example Chapter 12 (”Putting it all together”) is only 2 pages of text (4 of charts). I got the feeling that towards the end of the book the writer got tired and the quality of the explanations quite decreased (some sections I needed to read 5-6 times and still to go online to verify I understood correctly).
I’m planning to program few indicators so overall this book was good for me from that point, but as for trading this book is not so helpful hence giving it a 3.
2/10/2009 - I edit my comment: I tried to program some indicators into NinjaTrader and unfortunately the step-by-step explanations of calculating the indicators are POOR, very poor. Finally I just got Thom DeMark book and using it.
Bottom line - I would update this book to 2 stars but Amazon won’t let me, this book adds nothing to Thom’s original book: “The New Science of
Technical Analysis”.
2 Stars Difficult to Understand
This book is written in a that is very hard to understand, even the simple short-term patterns are hard to understand what he is saying. Most in this book is not clear and when trying to write a code that identifies the pattern its almost impossible.
3 Stars Handbook if you subscribe to DeMark’s indicators
This is a handbook on the DeMark indicators. The book is useful if you subscribe to the indicators on Bloomberg, etc. You won’t find these indicators on Esignal, Tradestation or on free websites.
So does this book contain anything useful for the rest of us? Yes, if you want to program the indicators yourself in whatever system you are using.
And for the rest of us that are not programmers? No. This book is not for us.
However, I would assume these indicators will be available for all systems in a couple of years. So I give the book 3 stars.
I have written several short reviews on trading books. The best way is to compare the score on the books I’ve read. Many reviews on amazon.com are just glorious 5 star reviews. I use all five categories; sorry but everything isn’t “great”. Books rated 5 are very good. Books rated 4 are good solid books well worth reading. Books rated 3 can be bought by some people who read a lot or have very specific needs. Books rated 1 or 2 I would not recommend buying or reading. Naturally all in my humble opinion.
5 Stars Invaluable primer on Demark indicators
This book provides the clearest exposition of Tom Demark’s work that I have seen, explaining both how to implement the indicators and giving suggestions for interpreting them as a discretionary trader or as part of a mechnical system.
It is written from the perspective of a practitioner and targets that audience - Jason has been extremely generous in disclosing many tricks of the trade in applying the indicators that one otherwise could only learn painfully from watching several years of market behaviour under different regimes. For example, he explains how a trend-follower can use TD Setups in combination with TDST lines - an idea not explained elsewhere.
Jason Perl is the expert on the application of TD Wave (Tom Demark’s rigorous variation of Elliott Wave), and the explanation of how to use this tool in combination with other indicators is on its own worth a multiple of the price of the book.
Stabilizing an Unstable Economy
September 3, 2009 by Investing · Leave a Comment
Stabilizing an Unstable Economy
�Mr. Minsky long argued markets were crisis prone. His ‘moment’ has arrived.� -The Wall Street Journal
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In his seminal work, Minsky presents his groundbreaking financial theory of investment, one that is startlingly relevant today. He explains why the American economy has experienced periods of debilitating inflation, rising unemployment, and marked slowdowns-and why the economy is now undergoing a credit crisis that he foresaw. Stabilizing an Unstable Economy covers:
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- The natural inclination of complex, capitalist economies toward instability.
- Booms and busts as unavoidable results of high-risk lending practices .
- �Speculative finance� and its effect on investment and asset prices .
- Government’s role in bolstering consumption during times of high unemployment.
- The need to increase Federal Reserve oversight of banks.
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Henry Kaufman, president, Henry Kaufman And Company, Inc., places Minsky’s prescient ideas in the context of today’s financial markets and institutions in a fascinating new preface. Two of Minsky’s colleagues, Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Ph.D. and president, The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and L. Randall Wray, Ph.D. and a senior scholar at the Institute, also weigh in on Minsky’s present relevance in today’s economic scene in a new introduction.
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A surge of interest in and respect for Hyman Minsky’s ideas pervades Wall Street, as top economic thinkers and financial writers have started using the phrase �Minsky moment� to describe America’s turbulent economy. There has never been a more appropriate time to read this classic of economic theory.
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User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Excellant Analysis of the Real World of Economics
Minsky has done the work outlining the reality of capitalistic systems. Intuitively I knew his points as he made them. This is how our economy really works. Booms and busts are the result of natural human tendencies but are not the preferred nor inevitable outcomes. Humans can also modify their behavior.
Instability is obvious to anyone who has been involved with commodities. The tendency to throw fundamentals to the wind and bet the farm on a bull run is without question a fundamental in and of itself. Minsky has outlined the new economic order that universities should embrace and teach our future generations.
5 Stars THE book to read on the current crisis
I have been trying to understand the roots of the current financial crisis. I have found a number of fairly good journalistic descriptions of the particulars of this crisis. What I have found lacking, by and large, is any book of economic theory, which explains what just happened and why.
One of the few good books, with more of an academic foundation is Kindleberger’s book, Manias, Panics and Crashes. That is the classic book on the business cycle. In the end, however, Kindleberger basically just describes the cycle; he does not really give a good theory of it.
Kindleberger, however, referred me to Minsky. Minksy’s book is not recent. It was written back in the 1980s. Despite its age, Minsky’s book explains what just happened better than the new books. He is the only economist I have ever read, who takes seriously the actual mechanics of our actual economy. His basic idea is that our modern post-New Deal economy is both more and less stable than the economy that came before. It is more stable, he believes, because massive government spending and major Federal Reserve interventions tend to prevent depressions and classical meltdowns. It is less stable, however, because there is nothing in our economy which constrains the tendency of the financial structure to create ever wilder speculative bubbles. On the contrary, our present system makes far worse the perennial capitalist problem of creating speculative bubbles by bailing out the system when it gets itself into trouble. In essence, the system rewards financial types with all of the upside from bubbles, but then protects from the downside when the bubbles burst. Not surprisingly, we get more and more bubbles.
Minksy really understands this stuff. Usually, when I read an academic economist I always have this feeling of a greater or lesser disconnection between theory and reality. Economists, as a whole, love their theories and do not have much use for the grittier aspects of reality. Minsky is a very, very welcome alternative to this. This book is simply indispensable; it is only book of economic theory to deal with the present crisis.
Which is not to say that I love every aspect of the book. I do not. I like books to be written in standard English, not jargon. Minsky writes in jargon. I like books to be fun to read and to flow well. This book was a bitch to read, and a really hard slog to get through. This book is no day at the beach; it is very, very technical.
I have two major reservations about the substance of the book. First, Minsky is a big fan of Keynes. Minksy is persuaded that no one but Minsky understands Keynes; he says many times that if the rest of us dolts ever caught on to Keynes, economics would be revolutionized. I am not persuaded. What I find compelling about Minsky is his analysis of the POST New Deal economy. In this book, he does not really argue for the Keynesian explanation of the Great Depression; instead, he just assumes that you buy off on it. I do not, and Minsky did not persuade me to change my mind. The fact that Minsky loves Keynes so much has made me reconsider my prior view that Keynes’ thought is nothing but rubbish, but I am not sure how far in the pro-Keynes direction I am willing to go. At this point, all I will say is that Keynes has at least one really brillant follower, Minsky, so he was not a total washout.
My second issue with the book are the policy suggestions. Some of them are very good. The heart of the analysis is that the financial structure is unstable, because the ordinary constraints of the free market do not prevent it from blowing the economy up periodically. Minsky has very good ideas about the financial structure might be made more stable. Oddly enough, the heart of those ideas seems to be a variation on the old-fashioned “real bills” doctrine of Fed financing. But Minsky has a bunch of other policy issues that strike me as pretty stupid. Minsky is, in a weird idiosyncratic way, pretty far to the Left. He is not a socialist, but he is not a fan of capitalism either. He is very willing to consider lots of Big Government ideas that make absolutely no sense to me.
5 Stars I cannot believe that I’m the first reviewer of this book
I
The main theme is that our economic system, corporate capitalism, is essentially unstable because of the existence of the financial industry necessary for financing investment. It is very clear explaining the neoliberal synthesis and demonstrating that is useless to use it as a guide for our economy. It builds and explains which kind of economic theory will fit the real world we are living in.
It explains very well how we arrived at this desperate situation but Hyman Minsky could never imagine how to get out of today’s catastrophic disaster when all the possible economic remedies have been used (interest rates near 0, gigantic liquidity injections, without even asking about the existing total debts of the financial institutions,…) because what is lacking is trust in the market and between the market players. In brief liquidity preferences are huge compared with investment ones.
I recommend it to everybody interested to know what to do now and what to avoid in the future.
Fast Track Photographer The Definitive New Approach to Successful Wedding Photography
September 1, 2009 by Investing · Leave a Comment
Fast Track Photographer The Definitive New Approach to Successful Wedding Photography
Dane Sanders is a genius at breaking down advanced marketing ideas into simple formulas that everyone can apply. This book is a must read for any photographer who wants to skip the trial and error process and move straight into a successful career path. —-Mike Col
La riqueza en cuatro pisos Four Steps to Wealth Spanish Edition
August 31, 2009 by Investing · Leave a Comment
La riqueza en cuatro pisos Four Steps to Wealth Spanish Edition
In these tough times when millions of people do not have savings, they live paycheck to paycheck; times when they don’t have control of their finances, and stress about debt or even lose what little they have, it is necessary to start building a solid base and start looking towards achieving financial freedom. In this personal finance self-help guide, Xavier’s goal is to help those who are not ready to face financial crisis as the one’s we are living during these hard times. We are living one of the greatest economic crashes in decades, with jobs and investments lost, foreclosures and bankruptcies up. Millions of Hispanics feel useless in the midst of this financial chaos, and are overwhelmed with fear and uncertainty. However, these are also times of opportunity to start fresh and put order to one’s personal finances and build solidity in order to withstand another economic tsunami. Four Steps to Wealth starts from that premise, and teaches in a refreshingly direct and sincere manner, how we can build our personal finances from the bottom up. Step 1, concentrate on what is necessary; Step 2, protect what we have, prepare for the unexpected and obtain security; Step 3, cautiously plan investments and a retirement plan; and Step 4, reach the desired independence. He walks readers step-by-step on a path towards financial freedom. Description in Spanish: La riqueza en cu4tro pisos es el manual de autoayuda financiera para los Hispanos. Este es el primer paso para emprender el camino hacia la independencia en tus finanzas personales. En estos tiempos cuando millones de personas no ahorran, viven de cheque en cheque, no tienen control de sus finanzas, el estres por las deudas los agobia o terminan perdiendo lo que tienen, es imprescindible comenzar a construir bases solidas y buscar el norte que nos llevara a la paz financiera. En estos tiempos estamos experimentando uno de los derrumbes economicos mas grandes en decadas. Despidos, perdida del dinero invertido, mas embargos hipotecarios y negocios en bancarrota. Millones de hispanos se sienten en un abismo enfrentando este caos financiero con sentimiento de miedo e incertidumbre. Tambien son tiempos de oportunidad para tomar un nuevo rumbo, traer el orden necesario a nuestras finanzas personales y construir una riqueza solida que sea capaz de enfrentar otro tsunami economico en el futuro. Sobre estos cimientos es que se construye La riqueza en cu4tro pisos. En un lenguaje simple, balanceado y honesto, Xavier Serbia explica de manera clara en que consisten cada una de las etapas de la riqueza y las ilustra por medio de casos de la vida real. Ladrillo a ladrillo nos establece un orden para vencer la ansiedad que produce manejar el dinero, nos motiva a ir mas alla de vivir de cheque en cheque, balancear los deseos presentes con las metas futuras, salir de las deudas, manejar el credito y no que el nos maneje a nosotros. Comprar una casa sin tener que perderla y que debemos incluir en un plan de retiro e inversiones. La riqueza en cu4tro pisos sera el plan de finanzas personales necesario para establecer las bases solidas de nuestra futura independencia financiera.
The Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio How to Build and Grow a Panic Proof Investment Portfolio
August 29, 2009 by Investing · Leave a Comment
The Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio How to Build and Grow a Panic Proof Investment Portfolio
“The best place online for talking with investors… amusing as well as educational.” — Barron’s
“Their panache is a cover for a belief in the old-fashioned virtues of patience, simplicity, and prudence.” — U.S. News & World Report
“They
The Official LSAT PrepTest 52 Official LSAT PrepTest
August 28, 2009 by Investing · Leave a Comment
The Official LSAT PrepTest 52 Official LSAT PrepTest
