5 comments about Rich Dad's Advisors®: The ABC's of Real Estate Investing: The Secrets of Finding Hidden Profits Most Investors Miss (Rich Dad's Advisors).

1. If you are serious about investing in real estate and/or making money at it, then you must read this book. Anything associated with Robert Kyosaki is worth reading.



2. Rich Dad Poor Dad was great...this is not.
   
   The title of this book is totally misrepresentative of the contents. This book is about buying huge apartment buildings all over the US. Not what I would call ABC's of real estate investing. Furthermore, if you are buying apartment buildings then you are probably too advanced for this book anyway.
   
   The book is very basic and is easy to read. If you just want to get excited about the idea of real estate investing jump in.
   
   If you want something to actually teach you about real estate investing grab a book like "Investing in Real Estate" by McLean and Eldred. Also check out the podcast "Get Real, Real Estate Investing for the Rest of Us".



3. The book was very clear from beginning to end on how to invest in Apartment Complex's! It was step by step and logical. I would feel very comfortable using this book as my sole reference in evaluating and purchasing apartment complexes!!



4. Very simple to read and understand. Practical sound writen plans for real estate investing. Do recomend this book for any one interested in learning the real life basic's in begining real estate investing as a business small to large. Realistic reading of expearance. Made very good since. A straigt forward book of good information.



5. This was a thorough book. The author has real-life experience doing exactly what he writes about. He gives excellent advice on how to find the diamonds in the rough, and how to do 99% of your research BEFORE you spend a dime. I recommend this book to anyone in the industry. Fabulous!

5 comments about Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis.

1. Well written, well researched and has the juicy stuff too. A broker standing on his desk yelling at the loan reviewers to go faster, faster, faster in approving loans (so he can get his commission). Great background on Angelo Mozila, the king of subprime, and a fun story about Lewie Ranieri, whose Texas employees thought they were getting a mob boss instead of a banker.
   
   It will make you laugh, and make you cry because government has given away the bank to the crooks again. These crooks are in suits and rob all of us with a pen. U.S. taxpayers, investors, and pension funds will be trying to choke down these bad loans and ABSs for a long time.



2. I really liked this book - it is well written and describes the main actors of the mortgage market meltdown in a very engaging way. Back in the mid-90s I was working as an analyst for a bank that participated in syndicates that underwrote warehousing lines of credit for - among others, for Countrywide - and provided other services for mortgage companies. The authors explain very well how the how the mortgage markets work: from the homebuyer to the (far removed) overseas investor. They point out where the system may (and did) brake and how the unrealistic assumption about ever appreciating real estate market made many quite smart people lose their wits.
   
   So, what we see in the course of the book are a lot of "greedy" business people. However, they did not operate in a vacuum and what is missing in the book is the "greedy" consumer. I'm not taking away any responsibility from unscrupulous mortgage brokers, but they dealt with the consumer that threw caution through the window, too. The "ticking bomb", i.e. ARM resets were described in the loan documents - many just chose to ignore them, basing their "hopes" on the same assumptions as the "savvy" business executives - growing real estate values and low interest rates...Ultimately, shouldn't we all be responsible for prudently managing our finances?
   
   The authors bring an example of foreclosure raved Slavic Village in Cleveland. It is a sad part of the book - but the question comes to mind: why do we need to approach mortgage borrowers like we would easily deceived children?
   
   I think, the book would be more valuable if it addressed this link of the chain, as well.



3. An easy & engaging read. It connected most, if not all, of
   the financial dots for me.



4. Do your eyes glaze over when commentators try to describe the financial products that were at the heart of the recent real estate boom? The mortgage boom? This book described the instruments clearly--and gives the reader a great sense of what was fundamentally wrong with the whole process. The title is "Chain of Blame," but there is plenty of blame to go around.
   
   The book is well written and lucid. Nonspecialists can understand it well. I heard talking heads on TV and radio described tranches, REITs, "liar loans," "warehouse line of credit," and so on. The authors describe these terms--and others--clearly and in such a way that the reader can begin to see what had happened--and why the meltdown in the mortgage world should not be seen as so surprising.
   
   It is also the story of clever businessmen and women, who could develop new tools for investment from subprime loans. Subprime loans, simply, are (Page 325): "A loan originated by a lender that is A- to D in quality. Consumers with the best credit ratings. . .are considered 'A' credit quality." In short, loans are being made to purchasers who carry some to a lot of risk. If they can't keep paying their mortgages, the house of cards can fall down. And that is, in short, what happened (although the story is quite a bit more complex than that).
   
   Among the innovators were pioneers such as Roland Arnall (of Ameriquest and Argent) and Bill Dallas (of Ownit Mortgage Solutions). Then, those who adopted practices of the innovators, such as Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide.
   
   The book makes pretty clear that a number of factors contributed to the mortgage problem. Regulators didn't get involved; Wall Street firms ignored the volatile nature of subprime loans in a desire to realize enormous profits; banks bought into the profitable business.
   
   Anyway, if the reader wants a well written, if not overly deep, analysis of the mortgage crisis, this is not a bad place to start.



5. Excellent book and worth reading. Beware that it might make you angry just like the energy scandals did a few years ago. Offers considerable insight and information that would be very useful to business schools for their students. Recommended reading for professors to include in their markets and business ethics courses. Kudos to the authors for a well researched and written book.

5 comments about Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story.

1. This is a great book to read through. It disclosed how a hedge fund conducted detailed research to valuate a company and fighting the management of the company for some fraud accounting practices. Very informative, detailed and interesting!



2. This is an investment book that should not be missed (as long as your accounting and financial analysis skills are well-honed -- the critical analysis is detailed). This would be excellent reading for a CFA/MBA/CPA.
   
   David Einhorn writes the detailed story of his investigations into malfeasance at Allied Capital. He makes the case, with all the back-up detail, that this company is essentially a "Ponzi" scheme (like a financial chain-letter). Allied books SBA (and other Federal Agency) guaranteed loans, violating origination-risk criteria, front-ending income, managing and delaying loan write-downs while inflating earnings on the pretext of lack of objective value impairment (though they do manage to write-down their equity investments earlier!), increasing portfolio size which hides higher bad-debt experience on seasoned loans which they do not disclose, and distributing capital (if the accounting had been more conservative) through increasing dividends funded by new equity. All this, as well as documented fraud.
   
   These technical details and analysis are worth the price of admission alone. However, the most frightening thing about the book is the lack of interest in the Allied malfeasance shown by the SBA and the SEC, Congressional oversight committees, sell-side analysts and journalists, all for their own self-serving reasons. If you had any faith in government by-and-large acting in our best interests before, this book could well destroy that act of faith.
   
   As well as the Allied Capital story (most of the book), the early chapters describe how Greenlight Capital (David's Hedge Fund) works. That's a fascinating revelation in its own right. What is most impressive, though, about the book is the quality of analysis David has done. Why are Hedge Funds who sometimes run short-positions so reviled these days by regulators? David is anything but a shoot-from-the-hip trader, neither is there any indication whatsoever he is trying to manipulate the market in Allied stock with rumours (everything is backed up with hard evidence and detailed analysis). By the way, David is the person who publically took on the ex-CFO of Lehman and won. If you are a financially sophisticated shareholder in Allied Capital, please do read this book -- you most probably won't be afterwards.
   
   At the end of the book, I was left with one puzzling question: why has David devoted so much of his time to researching and telling this story (early on in the events, he even says he thought of quitting because it was becoming so time-consuming)? It's almost as if he is now a dog with a financial bone and just can't let go any more. Admittedly, he's doing us all a big favor in the process (and has agreed to give any proceeds from his short position to charity, so he has no personal conflict of interest).
   
   If anyone from the management of Allied Capital or SEC enforcement reads this review and thinks of bringing a lawsuit, do think again. I am only summarising David's book, which is in the public domain, and I never have had, neither do I, nor will I ever have any position in Allied Capital's stock. But then, of course, as David makes the point near the end, the SEC only seems to be interested in high visibility enforcement when a big company has actually failed (Enron, Worldcom), unlike Allied Capital (yet!), or it involves a well known figure (Martha Stewart). Where is the justice that we are all supposed to put our faith in?
   
   Many congratulations, David. I hope there can be more financial books of this quality in the future.



3. David Einhorn's book contains quite a lot of good advice, but its subtitle "A Long Short Story", says it all; this book does not need to be 350 pages long. In fact, I can give you a good portion of its wisdom here: 1) Avoid losing positions, as it takes winners to offset them just to get back to even; 2) Avoid "evolving hypotheses", which means that if you buy a stock for a reason, the catalyst occurs, and the stock doesn't respond as you wanted, don't sit around and create a new reason to own it; rather, sell it and move on. 3) A company's paying of a dividend does not necessarily signal financial strength..in fact in the case of Allied Capital they frequently raised capital in the equity markets in order to pay the dividend (which Einhorn accurately likens to a Ponzi Scheme).
   
   Where the book falls apart is the many dealings that Einhorn claims to have had with various agencies, most of which Einhorn claims wronged him. The reality is that only Einhorn and the counter-parties know for sure whether these dealings truly happened as he portrays, but there are strong signals that his book is a self-serving diatribe; for example, when Harvard Business School wrote a case about the Einhorn/Allied Capital issue, Einhorn says that the case was biased in favor of Allied, and that he wasn't offered the chance to comment on the case as was customary because of his conspiracy theory that the research assistant had formerly worked at Capital Research, which owned Allied Capital stock. Futhermore, he implicates esteemed Harvard Business School professor Andre Perold in his revisionist history account, claiming that Greenlight was denied the right to offer input in the case. That, I can state with great confidence, is factually incorrect. The fact that the one claim in the book that I chose to attempt to verify proved untrue makes me quite suspicious about the balance of its contents.
   
   In sum, there is some good financial advice from a great investor, but the book is twice as long as it should be, and there are too many self-serving stories of questionable veracity.



4. This is an excellent read with great insight into the way true hedge funds try to add value and how publicly traded companies can make perception into reality.



5. Although some claims against Allied appear to be exaggerated, or at least are not fully substantiated within the covers of the book, this is an excellent look into the critical bird-dog role of financial analysts.
   
   Plenty of literary criticisms to be made, but it is a relatively easy, even enjoyable, read.
   
   It is also informative, albeit troubling, to read of the indifference and incompetence of many government officials in response to Greenlight's more damning findings of fraudulent and misleading activity. Although this is something we have come to expect over the course of the George "heckuva job" Bush administration, we need more voices in this fight.

5 comments about The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Books. Big Profits).

1. I'm 29-going-on-30 and wishing that I had absorbed the wisdom imparted in this book when I first signed up for a 401k. But here I am, seven years later, finally having a real understanding of where I should stash my retirement nest egg.
   
   The premise behind this book is simple - index funds have proven to be the wisest vehicle to throw your money in to achieve long-term profits. Bogle does an excellent job of explaining why this is, utilizing the "humble arithmetic" behind his thesis. For those who are like my old self and unsure of the best way to invest your retirement savings, look into low-cost index funds. And don't just throw your money in there...purchase this book and understand WHY you should.



2. I have been reading about investing since the current market down turn began, including several other books by John Bogle, founder and ex-CEO of the Vanguard Group. This slim volume makes the case once again for investing in low cost indexed mutual funds rather than trying to beat the market, which most of the professionals fail to do. This book is perfect as a refresher course, or for your significant other who is too busy (or too intimidated) to read more detailed books on investing.



3. Jack Bogle has written a book for the ages...in simple language with illustrations that are easily understood, he makes a compelling case for index investing. This is the single critical volume of knowledge that the typical investor will ever need.



4. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Books. Big Profits)I thought this book was very clearly written, and its advise quite compelling. It hammers home the long-term advantages of investing in index funds. Of course, the author sells them for Vanguard, but none-the-less, his advise makes sense. He points out how difficult it is to select a mutual fund which consitently beats the market average over a long time period. According to the book, the odds are stacked heavily against it. So I think his point is for me to let go of my ego, and admit how extraordinarily difficult it is to beat the averages, and just invest in index funds and let it ride. Piled with fact after fact, lots of statistics, and bare logic, the book makes its case superbly. I recoommend it to all who own or plan to own stocks or bonds.



5. I love this book. Gave it to my nephew who was content to lose money for 20 years and get into sector funds to make his riches later.

5 comments about Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives with Derivagem CD (7th Edition) (Prentice Hall Series in Finance).

1. The best introductory/intermediate textbook for students of finance. Not overwhelming to read, but, of course, you still need to know some math.



2. If you are a total beginner, like I was 6 months ago, then you might want to tear your hair out when reading this book. I found the description of interest rates quite confusing. I would suggest you start with The Wall Street Journal Complete Money and Investing Guidebook (The Wall Street Journal Guidebooks) and then move to All About Derivatives (All About) and Investment Science. From then on it's quite a good book, but the mathematics is very cavalier (and would you trust someone who tells you that Pi is 3.14162?). Now that I have read a lot of these primers, I actually like Hull's book and find that his treatment of the Ito calculus, while lightweight is a good place to start before going on to a solid foundation.
   I can't say anything about the numerical methods because it's not my field yet.



3. I started a course in Financial Engineering last year and this book has given me all the grounding I need.
   
   Pros:
   
   * Very in-depth treatment of derivative basics, e.g. call, puts, swaps, forwards, futures.
   * Many, many examples to complement the material.
   * Many good practice problems to help further your understanding.
   * Covers binomial, Monte Carlo and Black Scholes pricing of options very well
   * Industry standard textbook - all the professionals use it.
   
   
   I can't think of many negatives for the book. So if you're a student of finance, go get this book!



4. I started not knowing a "put" from a "call," but I needed to know a fair bit about how financial engineers (coming from a family of PEs, I'm still not used to that term) use math. This has been the introduction I wanted - not the advanced stuff, but enough to help me understand that material.
   
   Methodical pacing leads the reader gradually through the basics, from just what a derivative is on through the brief story of how futures markets work - in short, they abstract buying and selling into buying and selling the right to buy and sell. I tend towards the concrete, so many of these transactions seemed a bit airy to me. Oh, I can follow the reasoning well enough, but I just never saw where the satisfaction of the thing solid and completed comes in. As it turns out, it doesn't. Once you've really got that in the pit of your stomach, then Hull's presentation follows smoothly.
   
   He gradually derives models of increasing complexity. Diligent reader with a little calculus or a lot of trust will follow along easily. Later chapters draw on more advanced concepts in probabilistic modeling, but present the reader with only the aspects needed for the discussion at hand - a mercy, considering the size of the specialized vocabulary involved in the rest of the explanation.
   
   This book ends when the foundation has been built. More advanced needs must be met with other sources - not a problem with this text, just a matter of its chosen scope. I needed that foundation, however, so I recommend this book to anyone with reasonaable math skills and a need to know the material.
   
   -- wiredweird, reviewing the 6th edition



5. For a book this expensive, you would think there would be solutions to the chapter problems but, beware, there are NOT. You must shell out another $40 to get the solutions manual. The chapters are well-written but how about the poor students?

5 comments about Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.

1. My husband has been struggling in the market for a good 5 or 6 years. Its really opened his eyes though. Of course its all common senses but when you've lived in denial for so long its a real eye opener. He was able to put himself into many of the positions and has stopped living on the if's and could've or should've been position. There's no more hoping for him he's looking for the signs now.



2. One of the most self-congratulatory, didactic books I've ever read. Taleb is a convinced ideologue whose expertise in stock trading has created the conviction that he sees the invisible hand at work.
   
   He constantly reminds the reader that he is writing, restating and recasting sections with a reference to his earlier statements (never trust a writer that quotes himself) while dismissing whole schools of thought by selectively quoting from philosophers to make them look silly and misguided--if you read any philosopher, they will eventually prove themselves silly and misguided. It happens when they take themselves too seriously, which Taleb certainly does.
   
   Overall, his ode to skepticism is well conceived, but very thin. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only idea he ever tested. He makes the frequent mistake of confusing the success of a rigorous analysis for the justification of a philosophy as a guiding system to thought for others.
   
   Ultimately, philosophy is what Taleb suggests science is, taking the ideas of Karl Popper over the top and placing them on an alter, "science is mere speculation, mere formulation of conjecture." Popper was a solid skeptic, while Taleb is a convinced acolyte.



3. This book reads a lot like a self-absorbed blogger's rant, but it is a rant that is highly satisfying to read. Almost all of us have a distant relative or friend who is allegedly a "stock market genius". Taleb argues that it is usually hard to know whether that person is truly skilled or just lucky. Those of us who tend toward schadenfreude (enjoyment taken from the misfortune of someone else) can take solace in the fact that this person might just be a dolt who is likely to blow up one day. He argues that most often trading success is either the result of ones arbitrary trading style happening to jibe with market conditions or a product of exposure to volatility in a way that allows for small regular gains followed eventually by a spectacular blowup.



4. Every once in a while, someone really intelligent focuses his thoughts on the most valuable skill a human can have--how to think. Nassim Taleb has done an admirable job at just that: not telling us what to think--but showing us how to think in ways we can apply to innumerable life situations. I'm talking about what Charlie Munger refers to as "multiple mental models."
   
   The most important ideas explored are those of Popper--the idea of the open society--one in which no theory is known with certainty--only with probability, and theories continually replace one another as more information comes in. Interestingly Taleb continually cites Soros as a famous investor who utilized Popper's ideas, but Warren Buffett, the ultimate realist, if queried, would no doubt acknowledge Popper in influencing his thinking. In contrast to Soros and Buffett would be Bill Miller, an intensely philosophic investor, who recently has classified himself as an optimist--but not a realist. In any case, the methods of thinking propounded by Taleb fit nicely into what Charlie Munger classifies as "mental models"--doubtlessly useful stuff for the introspective, philosophical investor.



5. Some years ago, I had a colleague who organized a Mark 6 pool among friends. They had a database of previous Mark 6 results and from it derived that some numbers were more easily drawn than others. They then collectively bet on such numbers which they believed would have a higher probability of winning. I asked him the basis of his action. He explained that the fact some numbers appeared more frequently was real as proven by the statistics. The reason could be the material of the paint of different colour, the difference in the shape of the numbers painted, or their different position before drawing. Although the factors would be too complex to compute, the results shown in the statistics were sufficient to show the bias. By the time I left the department, the pool was still losing money.
   
   It is not a coincident that the essence of the book is exactly on the same thinking. Taleb points out that human beings always overestimate causality, and we tend to view the world as more explainable than it really is. An example used in the book is the performance of stock and option investors. These investors use sophisticated statistical methods to analyze the performance of the market in the past and predict the future. The information they derived from analyzing the past may adequately explained what happened. However, the performance of the market on the following day has no relevance to the past. It is a Brownian movement which only depends on the factors at present. It is actually more random than expected.
   
   For that matter, people always confuse between randomness and causality. The book gives an illustration on the two corresponding sides of such thoughts:
   Randomness v Determinism
   Probability v Certainty
   Belief v Knowledge
   Coincident v Law
   Forecast v Prophecy
   Lucky idiot v Skilled investor
   Survivorship bias v Market out-performance
   Stochastic variable v Deterministic variable
   Noise v Signal
   
   It is not surprising that such thinking would attract objection from the skilled investors. There are a lot of comments on this book defending the reliability and almost certainty of statistical analysis and prediction of market movements. However, from the market performance in recent months, I tend to believe that the market is much more random than we thought.
   
   Since human being developed self-consciousness, or the soul if one likes to call it, we always wonder why things happened. This quest for reasons has also developed into the religion delusion. This innate property of the human mind makes it easy for us to attach reasons, whatever they are, to nearly everything. Thus we are easily fooled by the randomness of nature, which is now beginning to be recognized in modern science such as evolution biology and quantum physics. For the ordinary people, it is useful to reflect on the randomness misconceptions discussed in the book.
   
   There is a survivorship bias in many statistical data we gather. We see the winners and try to learn from them, while forgetting the huge number of losers. The case study used in the book is the survey of the earning ability of the stock and option traders. While a lot of data on the traders in business can be gathered, the survey is actually gathering only the data from the survivors. Data on many traders who lost money and dropped out in the previous years are all ignored. Thus the statistics is unreliable. Let's say we want to survey among government executive officers on how the university graduates adapt to government work. We are only surveying the survivors of the government recruitment. University graduates who do not make it are all missed. If we conduct a survey in an online forum on the habit of people using computer, we are only surveying those surviving in the forum. Such statistics need to be qualified on their target participants. However, there is a misconception that survey with survivorship bias can be applied universally.
   
   Many probabilities have skewed distributions. Many real life situations do not have a 50% probability like the two sides of a coin, but have unusual and counter-intuitive distributions. People can often be fooled by the fact that they won a bet 50 times and think that they will win next time with absolute certainty. Taleb opines that some aggressive stock and option traders eat like chickens and go to the bathroom like elephants. They earn a steady small income from selling the stocks and options, but when a disaster happens they lose a fortune. They are fooled by the randomness of the market which is hidden from them.
   
   There is the story of black swan on probability, on which Taleb eventually wrote another book. Swans in Europe are white. People may take numerous observations to prove that swans are white. So a fact is established that all swans must be white, and the probability is 100%. However, it only takes one twist in the DNA to turn one swan black and the probability is re-written. In fact, black swans are found in Australasia. The impact of the highly improbable is severe. The more improbable it is, the harder the impact when it happens. Another joke on the false improbability is when Taleb observes an old man everyday to see if he is still alive. For eighty years, there have been about 30,000 observations and the old man is still alive. With such a large number of observations, he could conclude that this old man must be a superman who is highly improbable to die. By the track record, he may even live forever. But it only takes one death to turn the probability to zero. The truly scary thing is that the black swan could be a random event. That means it is capable of happening any time to turn a high probability totally upside down.

5 comments about Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World.

1. Really, I figured what could it hurt to read & listen. Tried all his ideas, watched his picks on TV etc. Set up HIS ideal portfolios on my trading page where I trade stocks. After 2 years what are the results? Cramer's picks as well as Vectorvest picks got CREAMED compared to MY own idiotic attempts at making money long term as well as short term.
   So, do what you like, but if ever in San Diego & you want this book? You can have mine for FREE. Do however pay attention to his common sense "get out of debt" strategy.



2. After reviewing "Cramer's Real Money" my wife and I started to put this trader's guidebook method to work.
   
   I am happy to report that from last January until April we had a twenty four percent gain. We researched and searched and purchased and sold stocks that we felt comfortable with. Not bad for beginners. We now call Cramer a stock guru.
   
   After gaining our trust in Cramer we started watching Mad Money on MSNBC. We watched and learned. Every now and again Cramer would make stock pick suggestions. Saying things like boy if you can get this stock for under xxx amount then "that is a gift". Buy Buy Buy.
   
   So we thought this stock trading guru has helped us make money with his trading guidebook why not take his advice from Mad Money and trade those "gift stocks" that he gets so excited about.
   
   Well I can say that the stock guru is our leader no more. Since Cramer's guidebook clearly states "tips are for waiters" we feel foolish. The twenty four percent we gained is now less than one percent. If we would have not believed the tips from the stock guru himself and we would have just continued with the traders guidebook methods we would have been much better off.
   
   It is hard for us to believe that this man's reckless "GIFT" stock picks are from the same person that wrote the book. From what I have been reading online there are many that consider Cramer very reckless with total disregard for his own books methodology.
   
   So buy the book but do not take TIPS even if the TIPS come down from the stock guru himself.



3. His first book "Confessions of a Street Addict" was thoughtful and interesting. This book reads almost like one of his TV shows. He "co-wrote" this one and it feels like he just sat down with his assistants and let it rip in his usual stream of consciousness style for a couple hours. The book seems hardly edited from that. Meaningless digressions , backtracking, repetition -- all left in here.
   If you're a fan of the show, you've heard ALL of this on the show (repeatedly). If you're not, you won't get anything from this book. I was hoping for a more coherent and deep window onto how Jim Cramer views the current markets. Not what I got.



4. All I have to say is BOO YAHH!
   
   If your looking here you already know Cramer is King.
   
   Respectfully, Dennis Lloyd



5. Having read several investment books, this book is a much needed shot in the arm in that it opens the doors to the type of independent thinking that the mutual fund industry doesn't want individual investors to engage in. Cramer's book encourages readers to move beyond what may be an effective but somewhat restrictive investment philosophy, and utilize several strategic approaches to building wealth in stocks. I never could have guessed that Cramer could do so much to help me see investing in a different light and ultimately help me understand investing much better.

5 comments about Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street.

1. OUTSTANDING!! This is the single best book I've ever read for learning the basics of life in a Wall St. investment bank. Very accessible and humorous, yet informative as well.



2. this book is a must read if you are getting into the financial industry along with "when genius failed" and others.



3. An entertaining look into the life of a Salomon Brothers bond trader in the 1980s. The book offers a cursive overview of the financial innovations during that period, but the real contribution is in examination of the culture and the personalities of the Wall Street traders. Not without some embellishment, Michael Lewis does a great job of communicating the eccentricities and absurdities of the traders - 'the big swinging dicks'. At the very least, 'Liar's Poker' is an entertaining read, at best, an insightful look at what (and who) turns the wheels of our financial institutions.



4. Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker is a must read for anyone trying to understand the 2008 crisis in mortgage lending and home ownership. In fact, a new edition of the book should be published with a forward by Ben Bernake or Hank Paulson. The autobiography describes a mid-1980's newbie to Wall Street and his induction into the fraternity of mortgage traders at Salomon Brothers and junk bond traders at Drexel. This book rises above a rite of passage story because of the financial chaos which happened during the next three decades.
   
   The 41st trading floor of Salomon Brothers is where millions of dollars exchange hands in minutes. There is a blue collar culture of practical jokes, profanity, Mexican food and pizza. The characters might have come right out of Damon Runyon or Animal House. The main difference between the interns, the traders and the clerks is neither their demeanor nor education but their wealth. In contrast to other books which tell us about the best and the brightest, this book describes ordinary people with excess body fat, perspiration, greed and wealth.
   
   As more homeowners face foreclosure and the US dollar loses value, it is not clear what message to derive from this book. Were it not for these failures of economic policy the book would join other interesting stories about the rich and privileged of Wall Street. But because of this failure of oversight, the book takes us from humor to cynicism and from a sense of national pride to a feeling of national shame.
   
   Is there a ratio of capitalistic reward to risk which is unconscionable in a democratic society? Can this behavior be limited or controlled by financial transparency, tax code, money supply and credit leverage? How do we avoid these consequences of the creation and destruction of capital without moving down the path of socialism? Can we ever put to rest the saying that behind every great fortune is a great crime?



5. This book should be required reading for all wanna be I-bankers. The author very convincingly describes the inner workings of a major financial institution. From the outside, the public only sees the expensive suits and tall glass buildings and are suitably impressed by the knowledge and skills of those who works inside. But the author takes us behind the doors to show frighteningly how the lifeblood of the world is controlled by a bunch of 25 year olds who have little idea of the magnitude of their actions.

5 comments about Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer).

1. Marketspath is considered by some-as the masters of market timing. Since March 20, 2008-when we started tracking our etf pro-share trading system (we have been in business since 2004) we have made 43 etf pro-share trades and have recorded only 2 losing trades..with an unbelievable 95.63% accumulative profits.
   
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2. A great book by Jim Cramer to explain some basics of how you can use some simple rules and ideas to invest in the stock market. Cramer explains in simple terms how to understand the market and use the ideas he used at his hedge fund for your benefit. It's not a "get rich quick" book, and explains that this isn't for people who have no time and little interest in stocks, companies, and business. But for those that have time and interest, this book is a great resource. My only real negative would be that there isn't a lot of in depth information about what he means by "homework" for your investments... but for that, you can read his next book "Mad Money," which does cover that topic in detail. If you have time and interest in doing your own investing, read this book and then follow it up with Mad Money.



3. I love the third book. The section of the new rules are fascinating. I have learned a lot.



4. Wow Great book!!! Learning a lot about investing and managing money. Newly retired and happy to have time to read this interesting book. It's got lot's of good advise and it's easy to understand. Good investing is like many things in life. You have to do the homework Pete



5. Good and informative book . It could have been written in a better structured way . Overall I would recomend it .

5 comments about When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management.

1. Even supposedly smart people can get utterly carried away. Perhaps they weren't as smart as they believed. In any case, we should always remember to take information and advice from "the experts" with a grain of salt.
   
   Incidentally, Bear Stearns was the firm that cleared LTCM's trades. And now, like LTCM, Bear Stearns is pretty much no longer.



2. This is a great book detailing the failed Long term capital management (LTCM). Do not need a lot of time to read, and serves a great cautionary story for investors. Good buy.



3. Not a light read, but a captivating one - in part reads like a horror story where you're dragged into a sequence of events both exciting in their nature and progression, and epic in their ultimate failure. I'm not a finance type, but Roger Lowenstein did a great job of explaining how the hedge fund operated, and the types of trades it was involved in. It certainly throws a bucket of cold water on Econometrics, and demonstrates that beyond a certain point, economics is as much of an art, as it is a science.



4. The book is a thorough account on what happened at LTCM. Absolutely fantastic writing skills. What I liked the most though is how Goldman came on top as usual :-) Interesting, hein? Goldman is amazing.



5. Does an excellent job of recounting the events and the people involved in the rise and fall of the hedge fund. The length of the novel is short enough to make it possible to read it in one go, the pace is fast enough, with none of the detours that authors are sometimes tempted to take (describing in excruciating and needless detail minutae that seem to serve no useful purpose other than that to fatten the book and make the tome appear more scholarly than it is). The author also does describe, in non technical terms, some of the financial instruments that were used by LCTM. These descriptions are by no means technical, and there is not a single formula in the entire book. Also, unlike some other authors, Lowenstein does not fall into the trap of describing the lifestyles of the protagonists in lurid detail. We do get a glimpse into how the main actors lived, ostentatious or not, but it never gets so involved so as to distract from the main purpose of the book, which is to describe the rise and fall of LCTM.
   
   What is also clear is that the author has a soft corner for Merriwhether, the brain and the soul behind LCTM. The Nobel laureates at LCTM come off as having too much faith in the mathematical certainty of their formulae, while the experienced traders at LCTM as also having drunk the kool-aid. These people, like Hillibrand, Haghani, and others believed so much in their skills and the correctness and certitude of the formulae that they staked their personal wealth on LCTM's success. Markets and investors do not always behave with mathematical preciseness, nor can their behavior be modeled and predicted using past performance or normal distributions (bell curves). Events can cause highly improbable events to turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. Markets are interconnected, and when things go bad, the correlation turns to one. Leverage by itself is not bad, provided liquidity is not a concern. You can be illiquid, and you can be leveraged, but not at the same time. These are just some of the lessons the author draws our attention to.
   
   One drawback listed by many reviewers of this book is that the book is not technical enough. Which is fair enough. However, it would be quite difficult to write a book that did justice to the twin objectives of recounting the events and history of LCTM as well providing enough technical details and background into the various theorems and intricacies of the financial instruments used by LCTM. Such a book would either run the risk of becomg very long, thus losing much of its intended audience, or become disjointed, with the narrative struggling to juggle between the characters, the plot, and the technical details. There are other highly rated books like 'Inventing Money' that are more technical in nature, and could be read in conjunction with 'When Genius Failed'.
   
   Some other books suggested:
   Inventing Money: The Story of Long-Term Capital Management and the Legends Behind It
   The Scam: Who Won, Who Lost, Who Got Away?
   The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron