No comments about Understanding the Fibonacci Ratio in Financial Markets.

No comments about Cash Flow Turnaround Seminar 180 Degrees in 180 Minutes.

No comments about Transforming Debt into Wealth.

No comments about The Standard Deviants: The Eye-Popping World of Financial Accounting (Part 1).

No comments about Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, Volume 5, Retirement & College Planning, Buyer Beware.

5 comments about Suze Orman - The Courage To Be Rich.

1. Suze Orman's Book is well written and thoughtful, that being said, she doesn't provide anything beyond common sense and basic knowledge: Stop accruing debt, live within your means, pay off those high interest credit cards, distinguish between good and bad loans, save money, INVEST YOUR MONEY. All this is the same material you will find in every beginning personal finance book, and online for free. The problem is that after peddling all these little trinkets of knowledge, with an over indulgent helping of self-pity, she doesn't help you make a plan or answer some fundamental questions. Like...HOW? This book does not provide the basic mechanics of how to do what she says, and gives no details on how (in financial basics) she got where she is. How do I redistribute my debt so I can pay it off (what is a good time horizon), how should I save money so I don't get burned out by saving, how do I mentally control my spending, and most importantly how do I invest the darn money? If you tel people to save and invest, you need to give them a hint of a plan (e.g., save 10% of every paycheck, but no more, so you grow to hate saving money) or maybe also just a single chapter on where to invest the money beyond, use your 401(k). Maybe one on why being too risk averse is bad. Ultimately, this book simply provides abstract goals, that require you to go out and get another book to help you get perspective on getting there. So just skip it, and get the next book.



2. I'm a little sorry to see all of the negative reviews this book has gotten, since I found it to be one of the most eye-opening things I've ever read and, by following some of its advice, have gotten my finances into better shape than they have been in years.
   
   Let me clarify some things. This is not a book for the financially advanced, for professionial money managers or financial advisors, or for stock brokers. The intended audience here is the "Average Person" who works at something else every day but wants to better understand how to handle their money. This person probably has credit card debt, spotty savings, and some bad financial habits. I had none of those things when I picked up this book and I still learned tons from reading it.
   
   The principal message here is that being rich begins with your thoughts. They way we think about money determines to a huge degree what we do with it, how we invest it, and how we spend it. I think no one will deny that fundamental truth, but Suze's gift is finding the ways to connect our thoughts with practical advice to change bad habits for the better. Many people could make a few simple changes in their lives and end up with a lot more money, and over time, that could mean real wealth.
   
   It is true that some of the conclusions here will seem obvious to the financially savvy. But I question the idea that this is all "repackaged common knowledge." It isn't. Her messages are of the kind that bear repeating. How many people still buy a $3.50 latte every morning, stick thousands of dollars in a bank savings account at .2% interest, and have credit card debt well beyond what they can afford? If it were so obvious that these are unwise things to do with money, fewer people would do them! Suze shows that it's not enough just to recognize financially unhealthy behavior, you must also understand your personal history with money, the way you have been taught to think about it and value it, and understand how that history influences your financial decisions. Her recognition of the emotional value of money gives her the edge over other financial how-to books, which typically assume that money is a raw numbers game. It's much more than that, and Suze is right on insisting so.
   
   Her most controversial advice is that you, and not a financial planner, must ultimately be responsible for your money, and I think a lot of the one-star ratings below are from frightened financial planners who know that Suze is onto their game. She does not, for the record, say that you should never work with one, but simply acknowledges that the ultimate responsibility for your money is with YOU and not someone you pay to organize your investments. I think she's right, and with all of the online resources available today, there's no reason to be ignorant about how money works in our society. A little more attention from you can mean a lot more peace with your money, and being responsible makes it much easier to make money grow.
   
   One of the best sections of this book comes at the end, when she talks about the importance of giving. I just loved her discussion of how important it is to give and wish everybody would read it! In our greedy world, it's a message that needs to be heard.
   
   I found this book lifechanging and hope others can too.



3. In Suze Orman's book / CD there is tons of excellent information. Listening to this CD and reading her book has helped me very much. I encourage anyone to buy this and study it throughly!



4. I won't say much but the book will help a lot of people who are lost about saving money or spend too much money. Suze's common sense is simple but it comes from personal experiences. I was surprised to learn that her father dropped out of law school to run the family chicken stand business. I knew about Suze's work at the Buttercup Bakery and her life after college. Of course, Suze does leave out her personal. It was only recently that she came out of the closet and announced her lesbianism and long-term committed relationship to her producer, Kathy Travis, known as K.T. Suze does not write about gays or lesbians at all in this book. She writes about mostly heterosexuals who have misplaced their own common sense about money. SHe writes about her own losses and mistakes along the way which has infused her with knowledge to correct herself and others from making the same mistakes. This book is to help and assist people in difficult situations. This book may help somebody out but it would be nice if she came out with her own autiobiography.



5. This is one of my favorite books and messages. I recommend it to everyone.

3 comments about Cash Flow Planning.

1. This CD was my introduction to Dave Ramsey and I am now a huge fan. In less than 3 years we paid off over $80K in debt, our income has gone up and we are working on paying off our mortgage. Simple practical advice - stop borrowing, pay cash, have an emergency fund and pay off your debt. Dave is very motivating.



2. The only thing better is to have the kit and the DVD's so you can see him speak rather than just listening.



3. I got the CD in the mail yesterday and listened to it right away. Quite honestly I have to say that this person sounds looney. I think that the average person, if he or she were to let Dave come into his or her life, would be able to get something out of his system of using envelopes and zero-based budgeting.
   
   If you are in debt, there might be more benefit from listening to this CD. It seems that half of the message is how to get out of debt, and it didn't pertain to me because I am not in debt.
   
   Despite his style, I think I might get the entire DVD set.
   
   Overall, I have to give this product 3 stars because I was disappointed that it didn't seem to live up to its title of Cash Flow Planning. I think a more appropriate title would be "Planning Your Expenses" rather than "Cash Flow Planning" because he does not seem to address the issue of Flow.

4 comments about Dumping Debt.

1. Excellent, helpful, informative, and humorous. Loved it. Played it for many of my friends and children. Everyone that has heard it said they wished they had listened to this earlier. An inexpensive, excellent buy. A must for everyone.



2. A very entertaining and educational recording about conquering debt. Dave Ramsey offers an often funny approach to steps one can take to manage debt. I thought it did go a little long into some of his illustrations (a little too much about cars for my interest) but the actual guidance and steps given were helpful and practical. As a result of hearing this recording I am curious to research more of Dave Ramsey's material.



3. This has really been an asset to me. I've enjoyed listening to it over and over again. I learn something new each time or am reminded of something I need to be doing.



4. I saw Dave Ramsey on TV and instantly thought this man can really help a person I Know who is facing bankruptcy. I bought it and gave it to them and they have made life changing moves. Can't give Dave Ramsey enough praise. He is logical, funny and to the point. The Dr. Laura of finance.

No comments about You Be the Judge 18 segments DVD.

5 comments about Nova - Trillion Dollar Bet.

1. This is really a great video. If you have a passion for finance, you do have to watch it. It's an excellent opportunity to see the smartest people in the world of derivatives both "practitioners" and academics from top Universities. It is very clear and easy to understand even for those who have just entered the world of derivative evaluation using Black, Scholes and Merton formula. The opinions of all the protagonists are really inspiring and will give you a real feeling of this world, where advanced math, economics and practice are all melted together.



2. Telling the story of Long Term Capital Management and the mathematical formula underlying its investment strategy, this NOVA special traces the development of the formula which helped to create a multi-trillion dollar industry--and its 1997 meltdown, which threatened markets around the world. In a clear presentation geared for an audience of interested novices, non-mathematicians, and financial wizards alike, NOVA explains the search for a formula which could solve the problem of risk and return in the stock market and turn financial investment into a science.
   
   Economist Paul Samuelson in the 1950s first discovered the turn of the century work of Bachelier, a French graduate student, who posited that the development of options could protect investments against stock fluctuations. In the 1960s, Myron Scholes, Fisher Black, and Robert Merton further investigated the subject of options in an effort to discover how one could take only the upside and not the downside of options and how one might calculate the correct price of an option at any moment in time by knowing the current price of the stock. By devising a system of "dynamic hedging," they believed that they could eliminate uncertainty of movements and neutralize risk by spreading risks across individuals, financial markets, and through time. Scholes and Merton won the Nobel Prize for this pioneering work in economics, Black having died the year before the award.
   
   When traders actually began to use this formula in financial markets, Scholes and Merton joined John Meriwether of Salomon Brothers to set up Long Term Capital Management, a company which was wildly successful until mid-1997, when two unforeseen, but ultimately crucial, events occurred--property prices plummeted in Thailand, and Russia reneged on its debt payment. LTCM continued to hedge its global investments, even as markets continued to diverge. Since LTCM stood to lose an astronomical $1.25 trillion if it collapsed, the Federal Reserve stepped in to prevent a global economic catastrophe.
   
   Extensive interviews with Myron Scholes, Robert Merton, traders on the Chicago Board of Trade, Alan Greenspan, and others make this story come alive, offering cautionary notes about the continued use of models when unprecedented events, not included in such models, can have such profound effects on the world economy. Fascinating and thought-provoking for even the neophyte investor, this production illuminates the dictum that "Mathematics does not drive financial markets. People do." Mary Whipple



3. This program attempts to give an overview of the history and investment strategies of Long Term Capital Management, an investment firm and hedge fund that began in the mid nineties and was finally closed in 1999. The program is both interesting and informative, for it not only educates the viewer in some of the history behind quantitative finance and options trading, but it also illustrates current attitudes about mathematical modeling in finance. Quantitative finance is still a huge part of institutional investing, but there are still those traders who feel that it is used too much, and a certain amount of hostility exists between the "rocket scientists" or "quants" and the "intuitive" traders who depend only minimally on mathematics. What is interesting about this tension is that no one has really conducted a study that would shed light on which approach is more optimal in terms of making money for either individual investors or financial institutions. Such a study would be fascinating, and would give valuable information on trading strategies.
   
   The viewer will learn of the attempts to find a mathematical formula for risk, which after some decades of research was finally arrived at by Myron Scholes and Fisher Black, with important contributions from Robert Merton. The `Black-Scholes equation' is now ubiquitous in financial engineering, and as the program mentions, is used millions of times a day in trading pits to estimate the price of an option. This part of the program is actually very interesting, for it discusses the historical origins of quantitative finance, one of these being the thesis of Louis Bechalier. His thesis, entitled "The Theory of Speculation", is described as being the first complete mathematical model of stock market fluctuations and one that discussed the use of options to control risk. The contributions of Bechalier were ignored for many decades unfortunately, giving another example of the extreme bias in academia.
   
   Many of the conclusions drawn in this program are suspect. For example, it is not known what factors really caused LTCM to go into liquidation. The viewer is also led to believe that the LTCM organization, through its vast positioning, aggravated the financial turmoil at that time. No evidence for this is given in the program, and many of the guests reflect a certain bias against quantitative finance. For example, one of the guests on the program, Stan Jonas of FINAT Brothers, refers to a collection of people who one would want to "manage their money." But who are these people and what justifies imputing to them this rare ability? What is their track record in investment? Do they consistently make money, and is this consistency verifiable to an external observer? Jonas does not give any names or examples unfortunately, and his statements do reflect to a certain degree a bias against mathematical modeling in finance. Such a bias in and of itself is not necessarily bad, but a reader who is really interested in studying the difference in efficacies between trading strategies, i.e. maybe between those that exploit complex mathematics and those that do not, will not gain anything from Jonas' statements.
   
   And then there is also Leo Melamed, the "intuitive trader" who is described by the narrator as being "business savvy" and being the founder of the financial futures markets. Melamed makes the somewhat outlandish statement that "academics make terrible traders," but he offers no evidence that this is true. Has he conducted an historical study where a collection of academics and a collection of "intuitive traders" engaged in financial trading and the results compared? No, he has not, and his statement reflects the tension that still exists between those who favor quantitative approaches to trading, and those who trade "from the gut."
   
   In the program Myron Scholes expressed the opinion that it is an open question whether the models they used exacerbated the financial turmoil at the time or indeed whether the instabilities of the financial markets were a cause of flaws in the mathematical models used. He is certainly correct in his opinion, and to this day there have been no serious and objective studies of the LTCM debacle. What really caused it, and what kinds of actions should be taken in the future if a similar series of events happens again? Financial modeling is of course still being done actively in all major financial institutions at the present time. Simulation modeling, using Monte Carlo techniques are one of the more standard approaches used to price options. But there are other techniques using highly advanced artificial intelligence that being deployed also. The field of quantitative finance is thus a thriving one, despite the skepticism expressed by some traders, reinforced as it is by the statements of this program. It remains to be seen whether trading based on financial engineering is always advantageous over trading based on more `intuitive' approaches. There is no doubt though that the behavior of the financial markets of the twenty-first century will be totally different than what has been observed before. This behavior will arise both because of the nature of the financial instruments used and because of the specific models used to study them.



4. Very nice video! Tells the story of LTCM. It's not a deep documentary...they don't tell the details of operations LTCM did. They only tell about the mathematic formula that they got to manage the fund.



5. This is the most engaging and informative video on the subject of trading and speculation that exists. As Jesse Livermore stated, Speculation is as old as the hills. This video captures many of the aspects of speculation and shows that the same pitfalls that small individual investors get tripped up on are the same ones that multi-billion dollar hedge funds get tripped up on. Human nature is the same at all levels. Controlling human nature creates extraordinary returns.