Books 02 (Nov 08 - Nov 09)

[helios]

wowW

must be this combo?

thanks Lena jie.

[LenaHuat]

SanSan mei mei
Not at all. Yesterday, KinoKuniya had a 20% storewide sale, not juz for members. I suppose no Chinese will buy books during CNY ("book" rythmes with "lose").

[winston]

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*** Book Review: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything - By Ken Robinson, Ph.D. ***
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Robinson -- renowned in the areas of creativity development, innovation, and human resources -- tackles the challenge of determining and pursuing work that is aligned with individual talents and passions to achieve well-being and success. The element is what he identifies as the point where the activities individuals enjoy and are naturally good at come together. Offering a wide range of stories about the creative journeys of different people with diverse paths to the element -- including Paul McCartney, "The Alchemist" author Paulo Coelho, and Vidal Sassoon as well as lesser-known examples -- he demonstrates a rich vision of human ability and creativity.

Covering such topics as the power of creativity, circles of influence, and attitude and aptitude, the author emphasizes the importance of nurturing talent along with developing an understanding of how talent expresses itself differently in every individual. Robinson emphasizes the importance of mentors and reforming and transforming education, making a convincing argument bolstered by solid strategies for honing creativity. Motivating and persuasive, this entertaining and inspiring book will appeal to a wide audience.

[millionairemind]

Been slowing down last week on my reading. Finished Panic By Mike Lewis. Here is a book review from the NYT.

Hidden Content:

Boom, Bust, Repeat
By DANIEL GROSS
Published: December 25, 2008

For the past two decades, Michael Lewis, the most charming and one of the shrewdest guides to America’s raucous money culture, has displayed a knack for being at the right place at the right time. He was a young trader on the Salomon Brothers bond desk during the 1987 crash; the experience led to “Liar’s Poker.” His boss at Salomon, John Meriwether, a decade later became a central figure in the downfall of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management. Lewis spent a chunk of the 1990s in Silicon Valley, where he profiled the serial entrepreneur Jim Clark in “The New New Thing” and happened on to his next great subject, the Oakland A’s (“Moneyball”). Now, just in time for the Great Credit Debacle of 2008, Lewis has curated “Panic,” a prose exhibition on the past 20 years of monetary madness.

The new book, Lewis writes, is an effort “to recreate the more recent financial panics, in an attempt to show how financial markets now operate.” Of course, after reading this lively, frequently fine collection of newspaper articles, magazine features, academic post-mortems and the odd blog entry, you’ll find the markets are still something of a mystery. The volatility and gut-wrenching jolts seem to defy any rational expectation. “The bottom line is, no one knows,” the economist Franklin Edwards wrote in his introduction to a collection of studies on the crash of 1987.

Still, paging through “Panic” is like wandering through an eclectic museum that houses old masters (Nobel laureates like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz), but also folk artists (the satirist Dave Barry), artisans (beat reporters) and figurative painters (magazine writers like Lewis, John Cassidy and Roger Lowenstein).

“Panic” covers four major episodes: the 1987 United States stock market crash, the 1997-98 emerging-market bust-ups (called “Foreigners Gone Wild”), the dot-com meltdown and the current housing/credit/stock market collapse. Each is a triptych — the first panel is a brief essay by Lewis, the second is filled with contemporaneous newspaper or magazine articles that set up the boom, and the third presents sober analysis of why it happened. While being anthologized is usually a badge of honor for writers, some of the articles were plainly chosen for the way in which they typified the dangerous pre-panic zeitgeist, capturing “the feeling in the air immediately before things went wrong,” as Lewis puts it. I suspect the authors of the Time article from July 1987 on how individual investors were riding the bull market, and of the January 1996 New York Times article extolling emerging market mutual funds, now regard these works the way my brothers and I regard bell-bottom pants — signs of youthful indiscretion that are best forgotten.

But there are plenty of gems, especially involving the 1987 crash, which now seems quaint. An excerpt from a book by the former Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Metz sheds light on the chaos in the markets then. More broadly, the entries remind us that before CNBC, Yahoo Finance and E*Trade, those not sufficiently with it to possess a hand-held Quotron had to visit brokerage offices to check stock quotes.

What else is noteworthy? Paul Krugman’s dissection in Fortune of what went wrong in Asia in 1998, a Jeffrey Sachs interview on what went wrong in Russia. The Wall Street Journal’s 1998 article on how the stock of the second-tier book retailer Books-A-Million went on a wild rise after the company introduced its new Web site and Katharine Mieszkowski’s May 2000 Salon account on dot-coms’ blowing millions of dollars on Super Bowl advertisements don’t taste as good as Proust’s madeleine. But they sure take you back. Mark Gimein’s July 2000 Fortune article on AllAdvantage, which paid people 53 cents an hour to surf the Net with a special advertising bar on their screens, is a howler. The headline: “Meet the Dumbest Dot-Com in the World.”

The most recent episode, which Lewis calls “The People’s Panic,” is less funny — it’s too close, it roped in many more people, and the costs to the public are likely to be huge. The bailouts are especially galling given the ample warnings, like those sounded by John Cassidy of The New Yorker, who warned in November 2002 that housing would be the next crash. A single entry from the Irvine Housing Blog, which shows how a person in January 2005 bought a $1.157 million house with $270 down, refinanced with a funky teaser-rate mortgage and then proceeded to open up a $491,000 home equity line of credit by 2007, neatly encapsulates the lunacy.

Some of the best entries are Lewis’s own, including his January 1999 New York Times Magazine article on the failed hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management. The quantitative geniuses who designed this vehicle had a tough time grappling with the fact that their model had failed. “It is interesting to see how people respond when the assumptions that get them out of bed in the morning are declared ridiculous by the wider world,” Lewis writes. In each of the episodes, the bottom fell out because a bedrock belief held by many participants — smart professionals, not the perennially stupid individual investor — suddenly evaporated. “Panic” is to a large degree a chronicle of the capacity of highly paid professionals for self-delusion.

This volume could just as easily have been titled “Complacency.” As Lewis shows, there’s something distinctly Ameri­can in our propensity to blow bubbles until they pop, spend a few months licking our wounds and then hit replay. “Yuppies’ Last Rites Readied,” declared the headline on a New York Times article of Oct. 21, 1987, which documented how the stock market crash was causing materialist, money-soaked urban dwellers to reduce conspicuous consumption and focus more on human relationships. Of course, that moral awakening lasted only as long as the downturn. And the same business publications that do such a great job of dissecting the bubbles once they’ve popped are the same ones that help promote and sustain the next one. What drives this? It’s not simply greed, or stupidity, but a kind of learned naïveté. We convince ourselves, over and over again, that nothing can go wrong, and that even if it does the smart ones among us will be insulated from any ill effects. Despite Suze Orman’s pleas, as financial beings we lack self-awareness and irony. In October 2000, Jerry Useem of Fortune called prominent players and asked what they had learned from the dot-com bust. James Cramer, hedge fund manager, media personality and founder of TheStreet.com, declared the Internet over and spoke of spending his time coaching soccer. “I’m done with the material stuff.” Riiight.

In these times, $27.95 may seem a steep price to pay for a collection of articles, many of which can be found online. But there are good reasons to splurge. The book’s profits are going to charity. And as of mid-December, used copies were trading hands on the secondary market (Amazon) for $13. In other words, after a few weeks of ownership, this book still retains about half its value. Which is more than can be said for Citigroup stock.

Its a collection of articles about boom and bust cycles covering the 1987 crash, The Asian Crisis, The Russian Debt Default, The Dot.com bubble burst as well as the most recent subprime fiasco.

You may remember Mike Lewis from his witty book Liar's Poker.

I have always enjoyed historical recount of devastating events on the stock markets. I found that reading such history and going back to review how the market responded to such events is interesting. It reinforces my beliefs that you must always respect and follow the lead of the market cos' it will tell you when to get out when there is trouble.

The few books talking about such crisis individually are When Geniuses Fail - The Rise and Fall of LTCM and Asia in Crisis. Even Alan Greenspan's book is interesting as you see the crisis thro' his point of view as the FED chairman.

I bot the book of Amazon last year but just found out that it has just been available at NLB.

I will leave the review of The Snowball to San cos' she is also reading the same book

[winston]

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*** Book Review: One Year to an Organized Life: From Your Closets to Your Finances, the Week-by-Week Guide to Getting Completely Organized For Good - By Regina Leeds ***
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Who would you be if you felt at peace and had more time and money? An organized life enables you to have more freedom, less aggravation, better health, and to get more done. For nearly twenty years, Regina Leeds -- named Best Organizer by Los Angeles magazine -- has helped even the messiest turn their lives around. Anyone can get organized -- she'll prove it to you!

"One Year to an Organized Life" is a unique week-by-week approach that you can begin at any time of year. Regina helps you break down tasks and build routines over time so that life becomes simple, not overwhelming.

* Master time management
* Make your kitchen efficient
* Permanently organize closets and drawers
* Deal with your finances
* Reclaim "dumping grounds" like the guest room, garage, and basement
* Declutter the kids' rooms
* Organize your travel plans -- and the vacation photos and souvenirs
* Entertain with joy

Regina reveals her magic formula for organizing anything, plus her method to stop the chronic cycles of clutter, misplaced items, and lateness. Whether you're living in chaos or just looking for new ways to simplify, this essential book will help you get the whole household organized -- and stay that way.

[millionairemind]

Funny how no one is doing a review of The Snowball... seems like alot of guys are reading the book.

I recently finished Anatomy of the Bear: Lessons from Wall Street's Four Great Bottoms by Russell Napier. Here's something from Amazon regarding the book.

Product Description
This is a good time to look at the financial bear. How does one spot the bottom of a bear market? What brings a bear to its end? There are few more important questions to be answered in modern finance. Financial market history is a guide to understanding the future. Looking at the four occasions when US equities were particularly cheap - 1921, 1932, 1949 and 1982, Russell Napier sets to answers these questions by analysing every article in the Wall Street Journal of either side of the market bottom. In these 70,000 articles he examines, one begins to understand the features which indicate that a great buying opportunity is emerging. By looking at how markets really did work in these bear-market bottoms, rather than theorising how they should work, Napier offers investors a financial field guide to making the best financial provisions for the future. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author
Russell Napier is a consultant with CLSA writing on issues affecting global equity markets. After studying law, he began his investment career at Baille Gifford in Edinburgh managing funds in the Japanese, then the US and finally the Asian markets. Moving to London he was responsible for managing Asian portfolios. In 1995 he relocated to Hong Kong to become Asian strategist for CLSA. He occupied that position full time until 1999 during which he was ranked number one for Asian strategy in all major industry polls. Since 1999, apart from fulfilling a consultancy roll for CLSA, Russell has created and established a new course called A Practical History of the Financial Markets which is taught through Edinburgh Business School.

The book is very well researched with alot of historical information and data. It has WSJ clippings before and after the mkt bottoms. Prior to reading this book, I did not know that US suffered a major deflationary phase in 1919-1921... interesting..

You will surprising see that unlike common Wall Street myths the bottom is not when things are the worse and everyone has a negative outlook, actually the WSJ article show that there was hope of a turn around, volume had dried up, P/E ratios were obviously absurdly low, and car sales were beginning to pick up. You will do very well to buy and read this book and add its information to your arsenal of trading and investing. While most of us sit out bear markets to keep our gains it is very important to know when to buy back in for the next up leg, this book can help you do just that.

I like to study from market history cos' I know they keep repeating itself, as human nature never changes. This book is available from the NLB.

[helios]

I will leave the review of The Snowball to San cos' she is also reading the same book

err ... bro MM,

you know what?

i am still kena stuck with 200pages left ... work is very busy, so i chuck it at office desk ... how ya?

[kennynah]

title : playboy
author : i duno and dun care

gist of contents : what else?

[LenaHuat]

Bought a hardcover copy of Taleb's "The Black Swan" at Kunokuniya store @20% discount = $21.36
Read the first 3 chapters and gonna say : "It tickles the mind. Very promising".

[millionairemind]

Just finished an easy-to-read trading book called Seven Deadly Sins of Trading by Ruth Roosevelt. Here is a summary of the sins of trading.

Hidden Content:

SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF TRADING
• One: THE SIN OF FEAR
The Most Ubiquitous of Trading Emotions. A Future Based Emotion. The Choice: Fear or Excitement. The Importance of a Sense of Control. Fear vs. Intuition. Fear as Protection. The Responses to Fear: Flight, Fight, and Freeze-up. Desire Replacing Fear. Accepting Your Emotions and Acting Anyway. Courage Overcoming Fear. Creating and Uncreating Fear. Minimizing Fear to Caution. Mental Clarity as Antidote to Fear. Don’t Fear What You Can Do Nothing About. Confidence not Fear. Allowing in the Love of Trading. An Exercise: Circle of Power. Taking a Fear Inventory and Adjusting. Supportive Beliefs.

• Two: THE SIN OF GREED
The Conundrum Between Risk and Opportunity. Some Examples of Greedy Behavior. Positive Aspects of Greed. How Greed Blinds Us. Some Costs of Greed. The Notion of Scarcity. The Notion of Grandiosity. A Look at a Greedy Trader. Dueling Consequences. How Greed Distorts Perception. The Issue of the Random Event. An Antidote to Greed. Assessing Your Place in the Universe. Taking Inventory and Adjusting. Supportive Beliefs.

• Three: THE SIN OF RECKLESSNESS
The Difference Between Risk Taking and Recklessness. The Dangers of Nothing More to Lose. Excitement Seeking. The Relationship Between Excitement and Anxiety. Protective Frames: Confidence, Safety-Zone, Detachment. Gambling as Recklessness. A Look at a Reckless Trader. The Many Forms of Recklessness. Some Considerations of Your Own Recklessness. Supportive Beliefs.

• Four: THE SIN OF PERFECTIONISM
Trading is Not a Game of Perfect. Some Examples of How Trying to be Perfect Backfires. An Impossible Task. Approximations Not Exactitude. The Origins of Perfectionism. Internal Critic. Anger. The Fear. The Disrupting Need to be Right. The Best You Can Do. Self-Acceptance. Self-Appreciation Engenders Self Esteem. Giving Up the Need to Control the Future. The Importance of Curiosity. The Big Picture and the Significant Detail. Recognizing the Goodness Within. Assessing Your Relationship with Perfectionism. Supportive Beliefs.

• Five: THE SIN OF PRIDE
Attaching your Ego to the Event or Situation Instead of Just Doing your Best. Two Faces of Pride: Hubris and the Effort to Mask Self-Doubt. A Look at an Arrogant Trader. Pride as Ego Pretension. Optimistic Confidence, Not Pride, is What You Want. The Significance of Positive Self-Expectancy. The Importance of a Healthy Self Image. Pride Interferes with Clarity. Pride Obscures Intuition. Loss Aversion. The Endowment Effect. Overconfidence. Under Confidence. An Open Mind. Appraising your Trading Relationship to Pride. Supportive Beliefs.

• Six: THE SIN OF ANGER
A Destructive Emotion Ubiquitous to Trading. Useful Purposes of Anger. Taking Effective and Reasonable Action. Becoming Aware of your Anger. Shifting Anger to Curiosity. Taking Timely Action. Looking at the Big Picture. Emotions: the Body’s Response to Thoughts. The Physiological Consequences of Anger. Losing Control in an Attempt to Gain Control. A Look at an Angry Trader. Moving from Blame to Responsibility. The Money Manager and the Analyst. It’s Not Personal. Fighting the Market. Forgiveness as Antidote to Anger. Anger into Learning. Some Steps to Calm Anger. Evaluating Your Tendency to Anger. Supportive Beliefs.

• Seven: THE SIN OF IMPATIENCE
A Common Trader Trait. A Look at an Impatient Trader. Jumping on the Tiger’s Back. Myriad Motivations. Learning to Wait. The Notion of Scarcity behind Impatience. Rushing to Disaster. Seven C’s for Timeliness: Clarity, Calm, Consistency, Courage, Caution, Commitment, and Confidence. Assessing Your Level of Impatience. Supportive Beliefs.

• Eight: IDENTIFYING YOUR OWN MAJOR TRADING SINS
A List of Negative Trading Behaviors. Your Personal Seven Deadly Behaviors. Destructive Attitudes and Emotions Underlie Negative Behavior. Possible Harmful Dispositions of Mind and Feeling. Your Personal Seven Deadly Sins. Preferred Trading Behaviors. Supportive Positive Emotions. Supportive Positive Beliefs. Creating a Vision of Your Trading Future.

• Nine: THE BALANCING ACT
Superb Trading Is a Moderating and Balancing of Many Attributes. A Look at the Many Qualities of a Model Trader and How He/She Balances Them. Supportive Beliefs.

It is a pretty interesting book for beginning traders to learn sense of control and balance (against the market).

Available at the NLB.