Money well spent

Although the title is more an eye catcher than applicable to the content, the book gives a very good understanding of the different persons you may face during your sales presentation and how you should react to them in order to maximize the effect. Real life examples and a good construction makes this book fun to read. Money well spent.

EXCELLENT STUFF!

The chunky green book might seem a bit daunting at first to the options novice, but well worth the read. To really appreciate it, read it cover to cover more than once. Natenberg makes more sense the more you read it. Have a browse at other scary books on options to see what I mean!

A cracking good read!

How refreshing to find a book on communication that keeps you interested from page one to the end. Focussing on SSF (story, status and focus), the authors steer us through the minefield of presentations, the pitfalls to avoid and techniques for success, backing up their narrative with anecdotes and examples from the world of acting. The book ends with examples of Clinton's memorable speeches (plus a chapter on the dreaded Powerpoint presentation!) The book is laid out clearly with points to remember at the end of each chapter to consolidate what has been read. I found the use of Stanislavski's acting techniques particularly helpful and it is difficult not to get carried along by the enthusiasm that the authors have for sharing their information with the reader. If only this book had been around when I started doing presentations - I know a few people I'll be giving this book to as a present! I recommend this book to anyone involved in, or scared of, public speaking.

Everything is a risk

Are you a private investor looking for handy tips on hot stocks? Good luck, but this might not be for you. You won't find get-rick-quick advice in this scholarly work, but you might learn why you're drawn to actively managed funds despite their history of market underperformance. You'll also be enriched by the stories and depth of research here. Another reviewer objects that Bernstein credits the Greek mathematicians with less understanding of probability than a school child. It seemed to me that Bernstein is saying something different: Even if Socrates had a private opinion about the frequency of VI on an astragali roll it wasn't a respectable part of his intellectual framework. He might of known it, but he refused to study it.

The author clearly considers his subject the most important in history, and in 330 pages identifies every significant step in the development of *thinking about* risk. In some ways though, the focus is too narrow. It becomes clear towards the end of the book that he has been building up the strands of probability theory as precursors to the 'taming of risk' in modern financial theory. I was hoping that an ambitious work on the history of probability would include the discovery that all of reality is based on chance, but you can search the index for 'Quantum Mechanics' in vain. (However 'Quant' is there - Bernstein himself was once a financial mathematician.)

In a subject as huge as risk there will always be more to say, and what is included here makes a cohesive whole whilst being important or interesting in it parts. Ok, maybe you don't love chance as much as me - what you need to know about portfolio theory is in Chapter 12 onwards - you'll still have 140 pages of important results. It's even topical, Kahneman's Prospect Theory is covered in detail (and he won the Nobel last year).

Good, but not the Investment Biker

I'm a great fan of Jim Rogers and his insights into the world economy, especially when his personal enthusiasm makes its way into what he is writing and his latest book on Investing in China is no exception.<br /><br />I'd recommend it as a good starter on the general situation in China and its comparison with the USA 100-150 years ago, though overall, despite being an interesting read, I know little more about how a normal investor like me can invest in China at reasonable cost, and if and when I should be doing it than I did before reading this. I also found he often talks about market highs and lows, but without any real help as to how we might identify them. Some charts showing performance of key indicators such as the major chinese markets / indexes, rises in commodity demand, etc. would have been very useful.<br /><br />One more thing about this book, it's the first mainstream publication I have ever read which appears to have utilised the services of Print-on-demand, and that probably tells us clearly where the publishing world is heading.

The gold standard in investment titles

This classic book on investing belongs on the bookshelf of every investor. The principles that Benjamin Graham outlines are the very precepts that guided such great investors as Warren Buffett, and such mutual fund innovators as John Bogle, the noted Vanguard Group founder, who wrote this edition's foreword. First published in 1949, the text shows a few signs of age, most notably in its discussion of interest rates, investment vehicles such as savings bonds and other time-sensitive subjects. However, those are minor issues. When Benjamin Graham writes about categories of investors, approaches to security analysis, the proper disposition investors should have toward market moves, and other fundamental investment subjects, his advice is timeless. We highly recommend this seminal book.

Good overall guide to the stock market

A comprehensive guide to the main aspects of the stock market aimed at beginners. Good starting point for anyone thinking about buying shares, you need information, an entry and exit strategy plus a broker to execute and a good knowledge of how the market works.

where many things began

I loved this book, not for it's economic content but for it's wonderfully overarching principles and view of history, philosophy and economics. I have never studied economics in any way and read this book purely on it's historical importants, and yet I found it facinating. I would not say this is the book for anyone wanting to understand the complexeties of the modern ecomemy, interest rates, futures markets or whatever, but for those who whant a very complete and well thought out examination of how the human world is put together this work cannot be faulted.

Though it was writeen over 2 centuries ago this edition makes perfect sence of the text without changing it, it's almost 200 pages of footnotes provide innumerate refrences to interesting asspects of history and sociaology meaning that that you never have to go and look things up anywhere else, whilst the decision to mix smits own spellings and spellings and inconsistancies with a more modern english gives the book an atmosphere when reading it of what the authour really meant.

It's use today is primerilly one of historical importance, his analesis of tax collection for example bares hardly any relation to modern tax systems, or at least those in the weastern world, but wht it does do is represent a model of the world on which it is very easy to hang modern principles and situations, havingt read this book you realise just how integrated things can be, and how things have evolved.

Smith explains all this in wonderful deatail with many examples and explanations which mean that though his ideas may seem confusing the dedicated reader should not get to confused, and at the end I was very much left with the impression that it had all been worth it.

a real gem

The best practical business book you'll ever buy

I'm quite fond of dreamy manifesto-style business books- they accept the limitations of what you can learn from a book and have no other aspirations.

Many so-called paractical business books leave me cold- they are unreasonable, impractical and often impossible to apply to your own organisation."Strategy maps" is different. The principles within apply to ALL organisations- charities, big banks, small start-ups, widget manufacturers. Crucially it gives a way of measuring and assessing your intangible assets, which is brilliantly useful. The principle of"what can't be described can't be measured" is a great jolt for the imagination.

A completed strategy map allows everyone within any organisation to figure out exactly how they add value and what their contribution can be. On one page of A4 it is possible to describe everything an organisation does- makes you wish more companies would give them out with annual reports :-) it also allows you describe current strategy and gives you tools to analyse it. I found the book particularly useful for my own startup- it made me think clearly about what exactly i had to do, even giving me hints on strategy formulation.

I really can't recommend this book highly enough- clealry written, easy to understand, provocative and actually genuinely useful. This is especially recommended for start-ups, of those thinking about start-ups.

A good insight into financial markets

Quite an interesting book with numerous anecdotes and a lot of historical information in there. It provides an interesting insight into the late 80's and the 90's financial markets from the perspective of someone who was obviously high up in the organisation and would have seen what was going on.<br /><br />The book does seem to focus very much on the author's time at Morgan Stanley and Salomon/Citi though, with only a small amount of information on his time at Moore or Ziff Brothers which I would have liked to have seen more information on. <br /><br />Definitely worth reading but don't expect it to be another FIASCO or Liars Poker with lots of stories about greedy traders and salespeople.

An easy read with a few pearls of wisdom.

I found The Warren Buffet Way to be a very enjoyable book. I also feel that Hagstrom does himself (and WB) credit by pointing to BH's shareholder's reports as often as he does. If you don't have a computer or the $2500 to buy BRKb to obtain shareholder's reports, this is a good replacement.

Also, with regard to A Reader in California, the introductory anecdote about meeting WB is written by Peter Lynch, not Hagstrom.

journey practitioner

A very impressive manual. Julie has a real gift for imparting knowledge in an easily absorbed manner. Of the coaching books I have seen, the vast majority are what I would call stuffy and tedious to wade through, but from the first page of this manual the words captured my imagination and made me want to read more.<br /><br />It is brilliant,the whole format is so clear and easy to read and understand. It is an excellent book not only for those already coaching, but particularly for those just starting out as coaches. It is also a great book to help people with their own personal development even if they have no desire to work with others.<br />

Classic text for software manager

This is a must read for anyone wishing to understand why software development is not always as successful as it should be. The list of references is also a useful source of further reading.<br /><br />You should, however, be prepared to be rather depressed when you realise how little of the book's advice you are currently following and how unlikely it is that your employer will agree to implement anything from the book.

Stimulating but wrong-headed

In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark asks good questions: why did we wait so long for the industrial revolution? why did it occur when and where it did? why has it still not taken universal effect? He attacks the conventional story which sees the crucial pre-condition as the inalienability of property rights, first occurring in England. In other words, he argues that institutional arrangements don't matter that much. <br /><br />A Farewell to Alms has three broad strands. First, from the agricultural to the industrial revolution, accumulated capital and improved technology served largely to increase population. This section of the book presents some wonderful data, but Clark's argument is close to circular and less novel than he suggests. In any event, by his own account his analysis allows for a substantial variation in living standards between one and another society. <br /><br />Second, the industrial revolution was triggered by a slow accumulation of habits and values in English society, making for successful economic practices, which did not occur in (for example) China and Japan. If true, this would be very interesting, so let's explore it a little. Clark's argument draws attention to literacy, violence and interest rates. Let's focus on interest rates, which have the most objective data and are most relevant to economic life. Clark points out that rates in Western Europe fell from 10% or so in the middle ages to 4-5% on the eve of the industrial revolution. He goes on to note that rates include a"risk premium" and a"time-preference", capturing the universal inclination to consume today rather than tomorrow. The customary account of this fall emphasises the decline in the risk premium due to the improvement of property rights. By contrast, Clark argues that property rights were always pretty secure in England. Instead he proposes that there was an alteration in time-preference: that over the 400 to 500-year period, Englishmen became more willing to defer immediate gratification. <br /><br />His explanation for this is bizarre: that middle-class values (or possibly genes) permeated English society, because of the downward mobility of the surfeit of children born to the wealthy (but not the aristocracy, who killed themselves in battle with such gusto as to fail to reproduce altogether). On its face this is plain odd: everyday observation tells us that those undergoing downward mobility are keen to forget their parents' values. In addition, Clark's evidence won't haul the freight. He compares the surfeit of children born to wealthy testators (makers of wills) in England to the relative dearth born to Samurai and the royal family of Qin Dynasty China. But this fails to compare like with like. Wealthy testators in pre-industrial England were a mix of aristocrats, gentry-farmers and merchants. Samurai were military retainers (presumably not unlike the English aristocrats who also failed to reproduce), while members of the Chinese royal family were just that. We learn nothing from this comparison: Clark has failed to provide a reason to focus on time-preference rather than risk-premium in interest rates. So perhaps property rights are more important than he allows.<br /><br />Finally, Clark tries to account for the divergence in economic performance between the developed and less-developed world. To simplify matters, he argues that folks in the third world simply work less hard, once again possibly because their genes may incline them to do so. Setting aside the insalubrious whiff of this reasoning, it doesn't dispel the need to consider institutions and property rights. How otherwise to explain the comparative performance of East and West Germany; the success of China after Deng or Spain after Franco, the latter suggestively excluding the Hispanic economies of the Americas over the same period.<br /><br />A Farewell to Alms presents some wonderful data but its author strains for controversy so much as to undermine his arguments' effect. Clark is stimulating but wrong-headed.<br />

Illuminating saga of Nobel-winning microcredit hero

In 1974, while Muhammad Yunus was teaching economics in Bangladesh, the country was ravaged by famine. Increasingly uncomfortable teaching abstract theories while starving people shuffled by outside his classroom, Yunus realized his economic education was incomplete. To complete it, he went to local villages to"learn from the poor" about what they actually needed rather than what a textbook said they should have. The answer was credit, so Yunus founded a bank to provide it - Grameen Bank. The name means the"bank of the village." Today, Yunus is a Nobel Peace Price winner and Grameen Bank has extended credit to more than 2.6 million people. This down-to-earth, unsentimental autobiography recounts what inspired him, the obstacles he overcame and the ultimate success of this project, his life's work. We highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know how one person's efforts can have a huge impact.<br />

If this book was taught in schools, HIV AIDS in Africa would be halved within a generation.

One of the largest corporations in the world pays no tax on billions of dollars worth of investments in every kind of commodity on the market. From weapons to contraceptive drug companies. But because the sacred heart of Jesus communicates via telepathy with men in strange hats, the centuries old cover-up has remained intact.<br /><br />Yallop asserts that when in 1979 gentle, meek and mild Albino Luciani became Pope John Paul the first and began ridding the Vatican of these corrupt practises, the Mafia within the church had him murdered. Yallop goes on to ask only two things of the Vatican in their as-yet unforthcoming response. That firstly they provide evidence that contradicts his, that what the pope was holding in his hand when he was found dead and who found him are incorrect. On delivery of this information Yallop will hand over the profits from the book to cancer research.<br /><br />The book was first published in 1984 and updated in 2007 - at which time there has been world-wide best seller praise for this masterpiece of investigative journalism and near complete silence from the Vatican, except to claim that it is pure fiction.<br /><br />If this book was taught in schools, the Catholic church would return to it's core values of provision for the least of God's children within a generation. But instead it would appear that, for as long as they deny the undeniable evidence, they continue to be owned and operated by untouchable criminals.

A must read for all investors

This is an investment classic. The first edition was published in 1973 and has been revised every few years. This 2007 edition is the 8th revision and includes a new chapter on Behavioural Finance.<br /><br />The author says:"The message of the original edition was a very simple one: Investors would be far better off buying and holding an index fund than attempting to buy and sell individual securities or actively managed mutual funds. Now, over thirty-five years later, I believe even more strongly in the original thesis." And he gives data to evidence this.<br /><br />The book describes the thinking behind technical and fundamental analysis, including simple expositions of complex subjects like Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) and The Capital-Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). Whether you agree with the author or not, it would be well worth knowing why the author considers that it is very difficult to profit from either technical or fundamental analysis. For those who nevertheless cannot resist the temptation to pick their own stocks, he gives four rules though these are easier said than followed.<br /><br />It is also a very entertaining read, e.g. he describes the various periods of speculative madness that have occurred - starting with the tulip craze and the south sea bubble to the more recent growth-stock/new-issue craze, the conglomerate boom, the concept stocks bubble, the nifty fifty"one decision" boom, the Japanese land and stock bubble through to the internet bubble.<br /><br />The author also highlights other useful considerations, e.g. in the penultimate chapter"A life-cycle guide to investing", he highlights the importance of"distinguishing between your attitude toward and your capacity for risk".