Snopes: A Trilogy (Modern Library) Review

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(More customer reviews)The three novels that comprise the Snopes trilogy, The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion, were published over a thirty year span of Faulkner's career. For this reason these books, now published in a single Modern Library volume, provide an incedible insight to Faulkner's evoloution as a writer. At heart, these works are concerned with the rise to power and influence of the Snopes family in Faulkner's mythical town of Jefferson. The Snopes are complete embodiments of evil, and their unique brand of deviousness and complete lack of scruples allows them to overwhelm the inhabitants of the town. The reaction of these people against the tide of corruption, their resistance to this Snopish threat is central to this work. And at the base of all three is a changing attitude toward the Snopish absurdities and evils of the human condition, an attitude that evolves from fierce repudiation to cooperative antagonism. Perhaps these are not the greatest of all the great work that Faulkner produced in his career, but the depth of human understanding and characterizations that are the superlatives applied to Faulkner's work are here in force.

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Here, published in a single volume as Faulkner always hoped they would be, are the three novels that comprise the famous Snopes trilogy, a saga that stands as perhaps the greatest feat of Faulkner's imagination. The Hamlet, the first book of the series chronicling the advent and rise of the grasping Snopes family in mythical Yoknapatawpha County, is a work that Cleanth Brooks called "one of the richest novels in the Faulkner canon." It recounts how the wily, cunning Flem Snopes dominates the rural community of Frenchman's Bend—and claims the voluptuous Eula Varner as his bride. The Town, the second novel, records Flem's ruthless struggle to take over the county seat of Jefferson, Mississippi. Finally, The Mansion tells of Mink Snopes, whose archaic sense of honor brings about the downfall of his cousin Flem. "For all his concerns with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man," noted Ralph Ellison. "Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics."

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Financial Institutions and Markets Review

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(More customer reviews)Great book. Very clear and concise. Good, clear examples. This is the best book for someone seeking to understand how the financial markets really work.

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Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender Review

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(More customer reviews)Make an estimate of the amount of time you have spent on preparing yourself to earn money, on getting it, and of taking care of it when you have it. Wouldn't it be worthwile to really understand what it is you are spending all this energy on?
Tom Greco has been doing some of that work for you, with integrity, passion and enormous dedication.
The time has come to shed some light on the mysterious workings of our money. Read why it is a losing game for most people, of why it is our master instead of our servant. More important still: what you can do to change it for yourself and for your own community.

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Cash. Loot. Scratch. Lucre. Bread. Coin. Scrip. Moolah. Green. We all think we know intuitively what money is, and what it can do for us. Tom Greco, director of the Community Information Resource Center, understands and explains money on an eye-popping, fundamental level. Moreover, he provides a roadmap on how to make alternatives to the "legal tender" work for individuals, communities, and local economies.Money will set your mental gears spinning with fantastic ideas. This book explains the mysteries and realities of money in clear and accessible prose, and reveals the true workings, and alarming fragility, of our existing financial system. It also describes concrete and realistic actions that individuals, businesses, social service agencies, and governments can take to enhance productivity and purchasing power, to protect local economies from the ravages of globalization, and to strengthen the bonds of community. Money is a radical critique of our existing financial system, but also a practical and inspirational how-to manual for creating a vibrant and effective community currency system.You'll learn:
the truth about how money is created, and what it actually represents;
why we're all in debt;
how the financial system is structured to inevitably transfer wealth from the poor to the rich; and
how to start a financial revolution in your local community.A retired professor of business and economics, Tom Greco has spent twenty years studying community currency systems around the world, including historical models (such as during the Great Depression), and the scores of contemporary examples now operating in the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. He helped establish the Tucson Traders currency in Arizona, and he has served as a consultant for many others. No pie-in-the-sky idealist, Greco offers a realistic vision of how healthy local economies can be supplemented with flourishing community currencies.Anyone who works routinely with money needs this book--this means bankers, stockbrokers, merchants, community organizers, loan sharks, gamblers, investors, bank robbers, hedgefund operators, sports agents, and ordinary people.

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The Prince of Silicon Valley: Frank Quattrone and the Dot-Com Bubble Review

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(More customer reviews)As the hot stocks offered by social media start-ups revive speculative fever on Wall Street, take time to read this wise and cautionary tale of the "dot.com" bubble that collapsed as the current century began. It should be required reading in every business ethics course in the nation's universities.
This book was five careful years in its research and writing but was mostly overlooked when it was published because the book's principal focus -- street-smart Frankie Quattrone of Philadelphia who became the boldest and most successful investment banker doing Internet IPOs in the late 1990s -- had his 2004 criminal conviction overturned by an appeals court in 2006. The tale is still worth the telling and it is told here by one of the best.
The author, Randall Smith, is now the dean of investigative reporters at the Wall Street Journal - and by far the most respected. Smith has won or shared the nation's very highest journalism awards. I was Randy's first editor in the distant 1970s when he first returned to New York City from a tour as a U.S. Naval officer. I was impressed then at his skill and powerful writing. I was even more in awe when I read this careful, detailed account of a financial decade every bit as clever and dangerous as our own.


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100 Years of Wall Street Review

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(More customer reviews)This book, rich with wonderful old photos, gives a concise history of the last 100 years of the financial culture that has come to be known as Wall Street. A good blend of text, photos, and charts make this book interesting to the non-financial reader.
The author divided the book into decades and each chapter outlined the changes that occurred over those years.
At the beginning of the last century, Wall Street was known for its lack of financial regulation regarding trades. Scandals and outright swindles abounded. Four years after the Crash of 1929, FDR's administration passed nationwide banking and securities laws to make sure that this kind of disaster did not happen again.
Unfortunately, the real and distasteful inner workings of Wall Street were revealed in the Senate hearings. An SEC commissioner called investment bankers "financial termites". This knowledge scared investors away for the next 20 years.
In the early 50s, investing became popular with middle class investors for the first time in a generation, and mutual funds were developed after being gone for 30 years.
The 60s brought the birth of the modern mergers and acquisitions business in the U.S, and the days of small brokerage firms were coming to an end.
The 70s brought extensive reforms concerning commissions while the 80s were the years of junk bonds, insider trading scandals, and the savings and loan crisis.
The author called the 80s the decade of greed and the 90s the decade of boom. The Internet has brought about a totally new way of trading stocks and has made up-to-the-minute financial news available to everyone.
The changes in the last 100 years on Wall Street have been phenomenal, mirroring the technological changes in our society.

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Volatility and Correlation: The Perfect Hedger and the Fox (Wiley Finance) Review

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(More customer reviews)I have read this text from cover to cover twice. It is much easier to understand its organization the second time around. The reviewer who complained that it feels disjointed perhaps simply didn't connect with the key messages running through the book. Having assumed (incorrectly) that the intro chapters were a bunch of fluff typical of these texts, I glossed over the intro the first time around. You'll benefit greatly if you scan the book, then go re-read the intro. It's all there put together painstakingly by an author who must have spent an inordinate amount of care and effort trying to make his points clear.
Another reviewer complains that it's verbose. Perhaps, but Rebonato really drives his points home by explaining the same thing from multiple angles and repeats himself at just the right points to keep you on the right track. I can see how somebody impatient can get annoyed by it, but if you are willing to invest time and read his prose - especially the intro chapters - carefully, the insight gained is definitely worth it. Not verbose at all in my view. Every paragraph has a purpose if you understand what he's trying to communicate.
It's an advanced text. Don't waste your time if you just learned what a call option it. There are more relevant texts for you out there. You should also have covered basics of stochastic calculus (see Neftci for one). For somebody who has traded vol and wanted to go deeper this book is pure gold. I love it as much as I love Taleb's Dynamic Hedging, albeit Taleb is much less formal and rigorous. What's common betw the two is the depth of original insight relevant to a trader not typically found in the sea of literature on derivs.

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Treynor On Institutional Investing (Wiley Finance) Review

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(More customer reviews)Jack L. Treynor's newest text, Treynor on Institutional Investing, is destined to become the New Testament of financial economics.With an informative foreword by the President and CEO of the CFA Institute, Jeff Diermeier, as well as a preface and new section introductions by Mr. Treynor providing useful context, we now have most of Mr. Treynor's life's work assembled in this easily-accessible anthology from Wiley Finance.
Mr. Treynor, the protégé of Franco Modigliani and the mentor of Fischer Black, is uniquely qualified to provide investment wisdom. Although Mr. Treynor is not well-known to the mainstream, fortunately for the investment community, his story has become more popular recently. Trained as a mathematics major at Haverford College, he completed Harvard Business School with distinction in 1955 and stayed on for a year afterwards writing cases for Professor Robert Anthony. In 1956 he coauthored a paper on capital equipment leasing. At Harvard, Treynor had been taught that the way to make long-term plant decisions was to discount the 20, 30 or 40 year stream of future benefits back to the present and compare its present value with the initial investment. Importantly, the discount rate should reflect the riskiness of the benefits. Treynor noticed, however, that when the stream of benefits lasted that long, its present value was extremely sensitive to the choice of discount rate; simply by changing the rate, a desirable project could appear undesirable, and vice-versa. Treynor resolved to try to understand the relation between risk and the discount rate, and this was the impetus for his most famous "idea in the rough", the Capital Asset Pricing Model.
Treynor began working in the Operations Research department at the consulting firm Arthur D. Little in 1956. In 1958 he spent his three weeks of summer vacation in a cottage in Evergreen, Colorado, and generated 44 pages of mathematical notes on the risk problem. From then on he spent his Saturdays and Sundays working on it in his ADL office, an atmosphere conducive to productive cogitation -- quiet and virtually empty. Treynor's solution to the capital budgeting problem was that the proper discount rate is the one that the capital markets themselves utilize to discount future cash flows. This is the kernel of CAPM.
By 1960 Mr. Treynor had a draft, which in its 1961 incarnation was titled "Market Value, Time, and Risk" . He gave a copy to John Lintner at Harvard who was the only economist he knew even slightly, but Lintner failed to give Treynor any encouragement. One of Treynor's Chicago-trained ADL colleagues, Stephen Sobotka, sent the draft to Merton Miller. Miller and Modigliani had co-authored their great 1958 and 1961 papers while Modigliani was teaching at Northwestern. Now Modigliani was moving to MIT, and he called Treynor and invited him to lunch. Modigliani said it was clear from the draft that Treynor needed to come to MIT and study economics, to "learn the lingo". So Mr. Treynor took a one-year sabbatical from ADL to study at MIT. Since the first part of Treynor's draft dealt with the one-period problem, Modigliani suggested breaking the paper into two and naming that part "Toward a Theory of the Market Value of Risky Assets". Treynor did so, and presented the first part to the finance faculty seminar in the fall of 1962 and the second part, titled "Implications for the Theory of Finance", in the spring of 1963. Later, months after Treynor was back working at ADL, Modigliani called to tell him about William Sharpe's CAPM paper, and suggested that Treynor and Sharpe exchange drafts. "Toward a Theory of the Market Value of Risky Assets" was never published until Robert Korajczyk published an anglicized version in 1999. This pioneering paper is presented in the "Risk" section of Treynor on Institutional Investing.
After Treynor's return to ADL his manager, Martin Ernst, asked him if this work had any practical applications; Treynor suggested several applications and Ernst focused on performance measurement. The result was two Harvard Business Review articles, the first, titled "How to Rate Management of Investment Funds", on measuring selection, appeared in 1965; the second (with Kay Mazuy), titled "Can Mutual Funds Outguess the Market?", on measuring timing, followed in 1966. Both of these innovative papers are included as chapters in the "Performance Measurement" section of Treynor on Institutional Investing.
When Fischer Black arrived at ADL in 1965, he took an interest in Treynor's work. After Don Regan hired Treynor in 1966 to work for him at Merrill Lynch, Black inherited Treynor's ADL case work. Treynor and Black coauthored three published papers , but only one, a very clever and utile approach to active management titled "How to use Security Analysis to Improve Portfolio Selection", made its way into Treynor on Institutional Investing, in the "Active Management" section. Black also radically rethought and rewrote Treynor's second MIT presentation, publishing it, titled "Corporate Investment Decisions", as chapter 16 in Myers' 1976 compilation, Modern Developments in Financial Management. Unfortunately neither the 1963 version nor the 1976 version of this paper are included in Treynor on Institutional Investing.
Mr. Treynor went on to apply his theories for practical purposes in the investment industry. He shared his wealth of knowledge with a younger generation by teaching at several universities. He served a dozen years as the editor of the Financial Analysts Journal, helping authors to present their ideas coherently and with clarity. Many of his papers over the years were published in the FAJ, some as articles and some as editorial commentary. Of the nearly 100 chapters in Treynor on Institutional Investing, two thirds of them are from the FAJ; some were originally published under his own name and others under his nom de plume, "Walter Bagehot". A substantial number of these papers won awards, including the FAJ's Graham and Dodd awards (multiple times) and the Roger F. Murray Prize. In addition, nearly one fifth of the material is from Treynor's publications in the Journal of Investment Management, where he is a Senior Editor and Advisory Board member.
The book is organized in ten main sections corresponding to the areas of financial economics Mr. Treynor has studied over the years. His ruminations cover a broad swath of the investment universe, including risk, performance measurement, micro- and macroeconomics, trading, accounting, investment value, active management, pensions, and other miscellaneous papers. The book is not compiled along a "timeline", but rather along "thought lines".
Although Treynor on Institutional Investing includes most of Mr. Treynor's work, it is not a perfectly comprehensive anthology. Several of the earliest known works, including Treynor and Vancil (1956), Treynor (1961), and Treynor (1963), are not included, and this is disappointing primarily from a historical perspective. Treynor and Black (1972), Treynor and Black (1976), and Treynor and Wagner (1983) are also missing from this new tome, which is also too bad although they can be obtained with reasonable ease elsewhere. Even Teldec's "Bach 2000: The Complete Bach Edition" is not comprehensive, missing a substantial number of cantatas and lost concertos; however it is as comprehensive a compilation as one can find. Likewise, aside from several omitted gems, Treynor on Institutional Investing is a complete representation of Mr. Treynor's work on investment analysis. For financial economists and market participants, it is music for the mind; Treynor is the Bach of Finance.
References
Bernstein, Peter L. (1992). Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street. New York: The Free Press.
French, Craig W. (2003). "The Treynor Capital Asset Pricing Model". Journal of Investment Management, Vol.2, No. 1, second quarter, pp. 60-72.
Korajczyk, Robert A. (1999). Asset Pricing and Portfolio Performance Models, Strategy and Performance Metrics. London: Risk Books.
Mehrling, Perry (2005). Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance. Hoboken: Wiley Finance.
Mehta, Nina (2006). "FEN One on One Interview: Jack Treynor". Financial Engineering News Issue No. 49, May/June, pp. 5-12.
Myers, Stuart C., editor. (1976). Modern Developments in Financial Management. Hinsdale: The Dryden Press.
Treynor, Jack L. (1961). "Market Value, Time, and Risk". Unpublished manuscript dated 8/8/61, No. 95-209.
Treynor, Jack L. (1962). "Toward a Theory of Market Value of Risky Assets". Unpublished manuscript. Subsequently published as Chapter 2 of Korajczyk (1999).
Treynor, Jack L. (1963). "Implications for the Theory of Finance". Unpublished manuscript.
Treynor, Jack L. (1965). "How to Rate Management of Investment Funds". Harvard Business Review 43, pp. 63-75.
Treynor, Jack L. (2007). Treynor on Institutional Investing. Hoboken: Wiley Finance.
Treynor, Jack L. and Fischer Black (1972). "Portfolio Selection Using Special Information, under the assumptions of the Diagonal Model, with Mean-Variance Portfolio Objectives, and without Constraints", pp. 367-84 in Mathematical Methods in Investment and Finance 4, edited by George P. Szego and Karl Shell. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Treynor, Jack L. and Fischer Black (1973). "How to use Security Analysis to Improve Portfolio Selection". Journal of Business 46, No.1, pp. 66-86.
Treynor, Jack L. and Fischer Black (1976). "Corporate Investment Decisions", pp. 310-27 in Modern Developments in Financial Management, edited by Stewart C. Myers. New York: Praeger...Read more›

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Advances in Behavioral Finance, Volume II (Roundtable Series in Behavioral Economics) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is a good guide for Behavioral Finance. This book is excellent paradoxically for someone who already know traditional efficient market hypothesis.

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Fair Trade: A Beginner's Guide (Beginners Guide (Oneworld)) Review

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(More customer reviews)If you're looking for a cut-and-dry approach to fair trade, this is not the book for you. I was looking for something that really got into the functional side of fair trade business relationships, and was disappointed to see the author took the typical, tired, aid-focused approach. I firmly believe that artisans and agriculturalists in developing countries have a lot to offer in trade, and if we approach relationships with a win-win mentality, progress and development will follow. The author seems to believe the developed world needs to engage in these relationships as a form of assistance - I disagree 100%. Until we start to recognize the TRUE VALUE of products and services from developing countries, we will be trapped in a cycle of aid and handouts.

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Wheels of Fortune: The History of Speculation from Scandal to Respectability Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is a history of the futures and derivatives markets from the 1850s to the present. It painstakingly traces the history of the markets as they developed in Chicago and later in New York. What I liked was that the author mixed a good amount of the institutional history with stories about trading scandals to keep the reader interested and entertained. The markets showed that they were always two-faced -- dealing with the public and also for themselves. They got more mature after futures and options were introduced in the 1970's but were still seeing scandal until the late 1990s when the narrative ends. The book also discusses the battle between the markets and the government along the way and it is an interesting part of the story. Makes you wonder whether Enron would have happened if there had been stronger regulators in place. A highly recommended book since it is the first history that I know of that covers this material. Seems a vital part of American history that has been overlooked until now.

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An intriguing history of the futures market and speculationFrom Jay Gould's attempt to corner the gold market in the 1860s to the Hunt brothers' scandalous efforts to control the silver market in the 1980s, Wheels of Fortune traces the rich, colorful history of the futures market on its quest for respectability and profit. This comprehensive account shows readers why the markets have been grabbing headlines for over 100 years as both respectable economic institutions and hotbeds of gambling activity and scandal. Charles Geisst brings the personalities and strategies behind the futures market and speculation in general to life, against a backdrop of American life that begins prior to the Civil War.

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Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an outstanding book about a finance revolutionary. This biography is as interesting as Sylvia Nazar "A Beautiful Mind" about John Nash, the pioneer of Game Theory.
Fischer Black, the human being was as interesting as Nash. As a young man, he was quite the adventurer and engaged in casual sex and taking LSD. But, after suffering a failed marriage and the death of a close friend he recognized the risk of those activities. Thus, he started to live by the CAPM motto to manage the risk in his own life. He drove safe cars, wearing seatbelts before it was mandatory and adhering to a strict diet (fish and vegetables). He married another two times to finally get it right. During his second marriage, when it was not working out, he would seek female companions by posting personal ads in the local paper. And, he would encourage his wife to do the same! Later, he met his third wife through a dating service.

Fischer Black became famous for what he cared less about: the Black Scholes option model. Options were just a passing interest. He cared more about CAPM developed by Jack Traynor. His lifelong ambition was to apply CAPM to economics.
He failed to leave a legacy in economics. Perry Mehrling explains why. Fischer Black had degrees in physics and mathematics but no formal training in economics. His General Equilibrium theory clashed with both Keynesians and monetarists. While at Chicago, his General Equilibrium theory got no respect from Milton Friedman, the leading monetarist. Later, Paul Samuelson, the leading Keynesian at MIT, treated him just as badly. He could not get his economics papers published. In academia he became recognized as cutting edge in finance, but out of his depth in economics.
Fischer was very much egoless. He took all the rebuttals from economics luminaries in stride. They never discouraged him to pursue his economics research. Also, he quickly adopted the binomial tree option model developed in 1976 by Cox-Ross-Rubinstein. He viewed it as faster and more flexible than his own Black Scholes model. Other common mortals would have hung on proudly to their own model. Not Fischer Black!

Before Fischer Black finance was a minor discipline to economics. After Fischer Black, the reverse is truer. Even though he was the original quant on Wall Street, he really did not think like one.
Fischer Black thought like no one else. While his MIT colleagues would attack problems head on with formulas and models, Fischer Black would not. He would explore a problem from as many different angles as he could think. Once he had essentially solved the problem conceptually in his head he would finally generate the formula. The formula was just the concrete representation of his solution. If you developed a formula first and a solution second, as his MIT colleagues did, you would get stuck in a thinking rut dictated by your formula.
His teaching methods were bizarre. He got bored teaching already acquired knowledge. Thus, he felt regular lectures were a waste of time. It would be better for students to spend the time studying the textbook directly. However, he developed a teaching style he and his students found engaging. He came up with a list of 50 questions explorative in nature. This helped him pick ideas from brilliant young minds. His students loved it, because it turned the class into a vibrant seminar.
Fischer Black pioneered many concepts that resulted in new financial markets. In 1969, as a consultant for Wells Fargo with Myron Scholes, they propose three passive investment strategies never thought of before. One was the equivalent of an index fund and another a hedge fund. As a result of this work, Wells Fargo introduced the first S&P 500 index fund to institutional investors in 1973. And, John Boggle of Vanguard did the same for retail investors in 1976. His work on options in the late 60s lead to the opening of the Chicago Board Options Exchange in 1973. His work on valuing futures in 1976, lead to the Merc introducing such contracts on the S&P 500 in 1983. Later, when working for Goldman Fischer developed the first computer trading system. There, he also co-developed the Black-Derman-Toy model to value any fixed income derivative product. Thereafter, the entire derivative market really took off.
If you like this book, you will like Roger Lowenstein "When Genius Failed. The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management." It describes the fascinating tragedy of how Fischer Black colleagues Myron Scholes and Robert Merton tarnished their reputation by co-founding a hedge fund that needed to be bailed out. Fischer Black was prescient in figuring out they were loading on risk (time dimension) and turned down the offer to join LTCM. Thus, Fischer Black legend goes on.


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Paving Wall Street : Experimental Economics and the Quest for the Perfect Market Review

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(More customer reviews)Miller provides in-depth insight into past financial market events and by doing so sheds light on what might happen today on several fronts. Three examples: His discussion of the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management debacle is relevant for understanding current risks in hedge funds. His analysis of 1980s portfolio insurance should add to concerns about the proliferation of capital guaranteed notes. His take on market circuit breakers, which he describes as regulatory folly, raises the question of what would happen today if these were triggered.
While the book reviews a large and varied body of academic research, focusing heavily on the experimental economics that the author subscribes to, it offers practical conclusions that anybody interested in finance will find worthwhile. As a financial journalist, I found it very useful.
However, because it covers a lot of ground, readers may want to pick and choose what they want to read from the index. The chapter and section headings, while entertaining, are not good guides for this purpose.


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Praise for Paving Wall Street"This is a remarkable book that weaves the deep scientific roots of modern finance and modern financial institutions with humorous perspective and considerable wisdom. Few understand the pervasive and complex economic principles that govern our world of finance. Few are aware of the academic and scientific origins of financial practices and market instruments that are commonplace today. Ross Miller uses his experience and talents acquired as an experimental economist to help us understand a world that is contradictory, potentially dangerous, and paradoxical. He entertains us while doing it." --Charles R. Plott, Edward S. Harkness Professor of Economics and Political Science, California Institute of Technology"Decisions by millions of individuals produce the fierce tides and churning seas of Wall Street. Miller wields his microscope in the laboratory of experimental economics to provide a sprightly and insightful analysis of investor behavior." --Richard Zeckhauser, Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University"Dramatic new ways for buying and selling-spectrum auctions, e-commerce, derivatives-are the economics profession's contribution to the Information Revolution. This book explains how many of these innovations began with simple experiments at Caltech. The style is a refreshing combination-dramatic and fun to read, but also historically and scientifically accurate. So, I can send one to my Dad, a salesman, and another to my girlfriend, a patent attorney." --Colin Camerer, Rea and Lela Axline Professor of Business Economics, California Institute of Technology"Paving Wall Street is a first-rate insight into bubbles and the experimental research performed on the topic by leading academicians such as Vernon Smith." --David Dreman, Chairman, Dreman Value Management"Academic ideas have revolutionized how Wall Street operates. Entirely new markets have been created. This revolution continues today, accelerated by the rise of increasingly automated markets. Ross Miller has produced a book that makes the leading-edge financial and economic thinking that shapes these new markets accessible to practitioners and professionals. With no equations and a deft touch, this is an excellent guide to the future of greater Wall Street." --David J. Leinweber, PhD, Economics/Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology

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Alchemists of Loss: How modern finance and government intervention crashed the financial system Review

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(More customer reviews)I wanted to like this book. And I did in many ways. But not enough to give it a higher rating. I appreciated the detailed discussion of "Modern Finance". I appreciated the discussions of the various transgressions of financial institutions without blaming "the free market". The discussion of managerial capitalism was fascinating. Nuggets such as the impact of the estate tax on corporate structure were also illuminating. There is also an interesting and fresh discussion on how Greenspan's policies evolving over his term.
I did find some chapters were so dense with mathematical analysis that I mostly skimmed them. (To the authors' credit, they acknowledge such at the beginning of chapter 15 by suggesting that it could be optional for some readers.)
The broad recommendations of stricter monetary controls, reduction in the scope of deposit insurance, and restrictions on future bailouts of financial institutions seemed quite sound. The overall tone that our financial systems would be better served with less government actions and less regulation was also compelling to me (acknowledging my own confirmation bias.)
I did find chapter 16 to be a little muddy. The authors suggest various reforms of corporate governance while seemingly ignoring how these reforms might be implemented without additional government interventions. To my eyes, the authors fell into the trap that all we need is better regulations of financial institutions and corporations without acknowledging the incentives that governments and legislatures have when crafting such regulations.
For US readers, keep in mind that the book is mostly written from a UK perspective. Not completely, for sure, but enough that I was forced to pause regularly to make sure I understood what was being presented.

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Investing in One Lesson Review

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(More customer reviews)As a financial journalist for 25 years, I'm constantly asked to review investment books. Due to time constraints, I generally don't.
However, in the case of Mark Skousen's Investing in One Lesson, I found it well worth the time to both read and report on his new work.
Throughout the book, Mark systematically eliminates all the "noise" that makes investing appear overly complex. By simplifying many concepts that investors often view as incomprehensible, he leaves readers with a clear understanding of the difference between price and value, a company and its stock, and a business venture from a publicly traded entity.
When he begins teaching his investment classes at Rollins College and Columbia University, Mark Skousen holds up two pieces of paper -- a lottery ticket and a stock certificate. He asks, "Are these mostly the same, or are they mostly different."
Knowing the answer to this seemingly simple question could be the difference between investment success and failure.
It's a must read for the novice investor who frequently does not understand the counter-intuitive notions that a good company is not always a good stock or that good news does not necessarily spell higher prices for a company's shares.
Even for the most experienced investor, he offers compelling insights into the "efficient" market, investor psychology, the real stories behind the 1987 crash and the Internet bubble, the pros and cons of technical analysis, the misconceptions of growth versus income, and an in-depth look into his unique brand of contrarian analysis.
Despite a world of increasingly "sophisticated" computer models and technical strategies, Mark's exceptional new work helps remind us all that a combination of experience, knowledge and common sense remain the long-term investor's most important ally.


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Quantitative Financial Economics: Stocks, Bonds and Foreign Exchange Review

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(More customer reviews)This is fast becoming one of my favorite books, simply because it packs so much into one volume (where I previously had to turn to three). "Quantitative Financial Economics" rivals Bodie, Kane and Marcus, and Elton and Gruber in scope and quality.
It almost goes without saying, but this book is much better than anything by Frank Fabozzi.
No one book can contain everything, but lord knows Cuthbertson and Nitzche try. Here is a quick list of chapters: Basic Concepts in Finance; Basit Statistics; Efficient Market Hypothesis; Are Stock Returns Predictable?; Mean-Variance Portfolio Theory and the CAPM; International Portfoli Diversification; Performance Measures, CAPM and APT; Emperical Evidence: CAPM and APT; Applications of Linear Factor Models; Valuation Models and Asset Returns; Stock Pricve Volatility; Stock Prices: the VAR Approach; SDF Model and the C-CAPM; C-CAPM: Evidence and Extensions; Intertemporal Asset Allocation: Theory; Intertemporal Asset Allocation: Emperics; Rational Bubbles and Learning; Behavioral Finance and Anomalies; Behaviorla Models; Theories of the Term Structure; The EH-From Theory to Testing; Empirical Evidenceon the Term Stucture; SDF and Affine Term Structure Models; The Foreign Exchange market; Testing CIP, UIP, and FRU; Modeling the FX Risk Premium; Exchange Rate Fundamentals; Market Risk; Volatitlity and market Microstructure.
Whew!
If I had to recommend a single book to someone who had the energy and discipline to teach themselves the basics of modern finance, this would be the book I'd recommend. I'd also recommend this as an excellent "one stop shopping" refresher for PhD in Finance candidates who are about to take comprehensive exams, for this work serves as a very strong and efficient outline of the most important topics in empirical and academic finance.
Weaknesses are few, but I will say that the chapters of foreign exchange have a "tacked on" quality to them that does not compare to the strengths of the other chapters on CAPM and EMH.
An additional strength is that Cuthbertson and Nieztche are United Kingdom-based authors, and so the tone throughout is one of conscious international focus and attention. Bodie Kane and Marcus and Elton and Gruber often allude to an implicitly US biased market tone, which, as global capital efficiency increases, is becoming a liability.
This is an excellent, highly recommended work for an introductory text, a support text for intermediate studies with a particular focus, or for support and review for advanced students. Cuthbertson and Nietzche have every reason to be proud, and "Quantitative Financial Economics" should be used by undergraduate and graduate programs, and widely available in reference libraries.

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The Candlestick Course Review

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(More customer reviews)Steve Nison, CMT, the author of two previous volumes on candlesticks, and an educator, trader, and seminar speaker, has written a basic workbook on the fundamentals of candlestick charting and how to interpret and use only the most significant patterns. I attended one of his Nison's candlestick workshops at an investor expo, as well as reviewed his video and found them to be excellent educational vehicles.
This book is for those individuals who like to read about certain candlestick characteristics, and then test themselves on their level of understanding. Each chapter begins with a bullet-pointed list of learning objectives and key terms to watch for. It then explains the concept, shows examples, provides highlighted key points, and then provides review questions, and detailed answers. In most all of the chapters, the review questions and answers take up more pages than the explanation of the candlestick pattern or the concept being taught. So, this is more of an instructional and teacher-student approach to the subject.
One chapter entitled "Progressive Charting" is about 50 pages long and contains a walk-through of an unfolding market scenario, a few candles at a time using 88 annotated charts. The purpose of this approach is to help the reader interpret each candle or pattern in a real market situation and learn from his/her experience.
The last chapter entitled "Bringing It Altogether" asks you 42 questions about candlestick charting and provides the detailed answers. This allows the reader to determine his/her level of understanding and areas for further study. The book contains a short "visual" glossary illustrating candlestick patterns.
For readers who are avid students and like to work through numerous exercises and examples of the basics of candlesticks, this book will serve their needs well. For other investors who want more "meat" and detailed information and explanation, then I would recommend Nison's "Beyond Candlesticks" instead.

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Expert instruction on the practical applications of candlestick charting
Candlestick charting is more popular than ever before, with a legion of new traders and investors being introduced to the concept by some of today's hottest investment gurus. Having introduced the candlestick technique to the West through two of his bestselling books, Steve Nison is regarded as a luminary in the field of candlestick charting. In his new venture, The Candlestick Course, Nison explains patterns of varying complexity and tests the reader's knowledge with quizzes, Q&As, and intensive examples. In accessible and easy-to-understand language, this book offers expert instruction on the practical applications of candlestick charting to give every level of investor a complete understanding of this proven, profitable, and time-tested investing technique. Straightforward answers quickly clarify this easy-to-use charting method. This guide will allow readers to recognize and implement various candlestick patterns and lines in today's real-world trading environment–giving them a noticeable edge in their trading activities

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Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations Review

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(More customer reviews)I read "Peddling Prosperity" over a vacation, expecting to read a few pages, put it down, and pick up something more entertaining. (I had the latest Grisham waiting in the wings.) How interesting can a book about economics be? Answer- my Grisham never got read. I couldn't put this down.
Typically economic treatises are uniformly dull, the author spending pages re-stating his thesis, over and over and over. As one of my college professors told me, economists have two basic rules-
1) The market can decide best. 2) Anyone who questions rule #1 is a communist.
I would add a third-
3) bore the reader with technical jargon.
Krugman, mercifully, avoids these traps. He distills economics down to its most basic elements in plain English. Krugman is also a more critical thinker than most of his counterparts, carefully making the argument for Keynesian economics and debunking the myths of Reaganomics. Even the most ardent free market enthusiast will find it difficult to explain away Krugman's notes about wealth distribution during the 1980s (the rich got richer, the poor got poorer) and about the disastrous effects of Reagan overseas. Protectionists will have difficulty as well in refuting Krugman's analysis of the disastrous effects of tariff barriers and the insignificance of America's trade deficit.
The author has it all correct- the fallacy of protectionism (the strategic traders), the failure of Reaganomics, the positive role government can play in American economic life. What makes "Peddling Prosperity" such a good book is Krugman's skill in translating his thoughts into passages a reader without a Phd can understand. Good work.

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