Showing posts with label financial crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label financial crisis. Show all posts

The Bottom of the Sky Review

The Bottom of the Sky
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The Bottom of the Sky Review"You think a family means more than people in it? If one might kill the other one, which one would you save, Geno?"
William Pack's novel, "The Bottom of the Sky" poses this question early on... ...and answers it in such a way--two ways, actually--that I am lost for the proper word. Brilliant? No. That's on the dust cover. `page turner?' No, that's on the dust cover too. Timely? Well, yeah, but that's on the dust cover. Powerful? Poignant? Naw. People in the know already said that and were stunned.
Stunned. That's it. That's me at the end.
Stunned. Stunning. Stunning. The thesaurus has no suitable synonym for that.
I lost count of the places I wanted to savor again. On page 314, nearly two thirds of the way through, I started taking notes: "... his guts were processing a ball of nails."
You don't get this kind of writing just anywhere; hardly ever in a debut novel.
Page 320: "...I lose this, I become them." Levi's struggle in six words. Page 346: "I don't want my world to contract until I'm all that counts to me." His fear. He was on the way, too. Almost becoming all that counts to himself--much, much earlier, in the parts before I started taking notes.
In chapter 41, I wanted to jump through the book so I could personally strangle Dierdre, whom I started thinking of as `Devildre' because she was so... so... evil.
So read the book. You're a fool if you don't.
You'll be a fool not because you'll miss the word-choices, the rich, rich language few novelists dream of on their best day, even if they have a superb editor like Pack does. Not because you won't find your guts processing nails. Not because you won't confront yourself where you don't want to go in the darkest region of your fear. Or your hopes either, for that matter. And by the way, not because you won't find out what's really, really important in life: It's not the corner office.
Read this book for the education you'll get while you're doing all that.
You'll learn what caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Sound familiar? Recent? I never really understood it until I read "The Bottom of the Sky." William Pack explains it all in terms that will make you seethe even if you think 'sub-prime' is some kind of meat.
Bernie Madoff-like shenanigans on Wall Street: You'll come to understand the culture that makes such things possible in the financial world. The culprits are all here, in "The Bottom of the Sky."
"The Bottom of The Sky" sort of begins and ends in Two Dot, Montana. It's a real place. I've been there. It has a bank, and a hardware store, both vacant, both ghosts of something that never should have been. And a few die-hard residents who don't realize that the whole damn town is a ghost. Two Dot, Montana. Look it up on Yahoo Maps or Google Earth. It's a real place, all right. Real close to the Crazy Mountains--the bottom of the sky.
Young Levi grows up in Roundup, Montana, which is just down the road a piece from Two Dot. His mother collects dryer lint. If you don't shed a tear when you find out what she does with it, you have no heart. Don't hold your breath. You won't find out until the end, nearly.
Levi's the sort of kid who visualizes answers to complex mathematical problems without working it out on paper. As a young man he takes this prodigy--and a wife--with him to the financial world where he works his way up in the mythical firm of Bookman Stuart Securities on the sheer strength of his intellect. Those closest to Levi love him for his honesty and integrity, but some of his Ivy League coworker-superiors-competitors hate his success even though it's making them rich too. Some of them want to stab him in the back for it and take it all for themselves.
Levi brings common sense and honor to his job, but he pays a heavy price. You'll have to read the book to find out just how heavy it really is.
If you do read it, you'll be rewarded by a new understanding of human nature, of human greed, of human love. On top of all that you'll understand what's going on in the financial world at this very moment in time. You'll get an education on that.
William Pack should know. He was there. In Two Dot, and on Wall Street.
"Kill the firm, save the planet." That's one of the answers. There's another. Maybe you'll find a superlative for 'stunning' and write your own review.
Get this book and read it. Then wait until William Pack comes up with another. It will be a blockbuster, because everyone will know him by then.
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Stalking the Black Swan: Research and Decision Making in a World of Extreme Volatility (Columbia Business School Publishing) Review

Stalking the Black Swan: Research and Decision Making in a World of Extreme Volatility (Columbia Business School Publishing)
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Stalking the Black Swan: Research and Decision Making in a World of Extreme Volatility (Columbia Business School Publishing) ReviewIf you are serious about picking stocks, or making decisions generally, read this book. I am a portfolio manager that has valued the insights of Ken Posner for over a decade. I have long believed that the best and most useful analysts on Wall Street are the precious few that simply ask important questions about the companies they cover and set out to answer those questions without passion or prejudice. Peppered with what Charlie Munger calls "mental models", Ken explains how he does just that...and more. He reveals how he deals with the inevitable uncertainty in the answers he finds and, importantly, how he adjusts his conclusions for new information. Perhaps most interesting is the privilege of going along with Ken on his journey to revisit the recommendations he made on some of the most controversial financial companies during one of the most volatile times in modern financial history; essentially, a concentrated education in decision making during extreme uncertainty and volatility. Refreshingly, Ken balances academic contributions against the realities of a practitioner without jabbing at either side. The book is an essential read for all directors of research on both the "buyside" and "sellside" but also has broad appeal as a rare look into the mind of an effective decision-maker.Stalking the Black Swan: Research and Decision Making in a World of Extreme Volatility (Columbia Business School Publishing) Overview

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Investment Titans: Investment Insights from the Minds that Move Wall Street Review

Investment Titans: Investment Insights from the Minds that Move Wall Street
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Investment Titans: Investment Insights from the Minds that Move Wall Street ReviewThis book is the nonmath, condensed books version of much of the financial theory written by academics about stock investing, plus some perspectives by outstanding practitioners. If you can understand the math, you will learn a lot more by reading the original works. If you cannot, these side-by-side comparisons are not examined in enough depth to help you understand who's right and who's out of date. The book is well written though, for what it is. The book's concept is simply mistargeted from what investors need to know.
Of the thinkers who were interviewed for this book, the most useful information comes from John Bogle, Gary Brinson, Richard Thaler, Joseph Lakonishok, and Jeremy Siegel. You can read any of several books by John Bogle that are more helpful than this book, such as Bogle on Mutual Funds or Common Sense about Mutual Funds. Jeremy Siegel's Stocks for the Long Run is a classic that anyone can learn from. The Lakonishok studies suggest lots of inefficiency in the markets that Brinson talks about. Thaler's work is cutting edge in helping people understand the systematic tendency for professional and amateur investors to make mistakes.
If you ignore the Markowitz, Samuelson, Bernstein, and Sharpe material in the book, you will have missed relatively little.
Modern financial practice has moved well beyond the original academic perspectives built around the theoretical assumption of a perfectly informed and rational market composed of identically-minded investors. Those useful research-based distinctions are not made here.
If you want to understand what you should be doing as an investor, I would suggest looking elsewhere. Depending on your goals and circumstances, different paths may make sense for you. If you are between 46 and 56, I suggest that you start with Charles Schwab's new book, You're 50 -- Now What?
Of the key lessons in the book, you should pay most attention to the advice to diversify, hold as much in common stocks as your risk profile allows you to do, stay invested all the time, keep costs down (taxes, fees, and trading charges), focus on indexes of sectors that have historically outperformed (such as small cap, value stocks), start investing as soon as you can, add to your investments as much as possible, and . . . leave well enough alone (forget about chasing the latest hot stock or manager to try to beat the averages -- past performance is not an indicator of what will come next).
If you do decide to read this book, check your behavior against the principles I have just listed above. Most people violate these concepts, and have missed the chance to make more money.
May you achieve all of your financial goals!Investment Titans: Investment Insights from the Minds that Move Wall Street Overview

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