Book Description

The dollar rose by about 35 percent in real terms from 1995 through the end of 2001, supporting the booming US economy of the late 1990s but pushing the current account deficit to a record high of almost 5 percent of GDP. This Special Report provides alternative views of how large a dollar depreciation would be needed to restore a sustainable position (Jim O’Neill, Michael Rosenberg, and Catherine Mann), analyzes the impact of currency misalignments on each of the three major economies (Martin Baily for the United States, William Cline for Japan, and Daniel Gros for Euroland), and discusses the role of exchange market intervention in addressing the issues (Kathryn Dominguez, Edwin M. Truman, and Ernest Preeg). ... Read more

Book Description

The major purpose of the book is to illustrate that triangular arbitrage in the foreign exchange market can be profitable. This idea is reinforced by the recent evolution of an independent cross market, and the remarkable developments in telecommunications. The book illustrates how a dealer of Foreign Exchange can apply the "buy low and sell high" rule without taking any risk. The keys to avoid the risk are speed and precision. All the procedures are computerized so that speed and precision problems that are inherent in manual trading are now solved. ... Read more

Book Description

Most investors have been led to believe that stock market behavior is random and cannot be timed. Nothing could be further from the truth! Futures markets have been successfully timed by traders since the mid 1800s, and today's stock markets exhibit amazingly similar, recognizable trending patterns. Investors who understand and spot those patterns can—with a minimum of trades—double, triple, or even quadruple their long-term returns!

THE STREETSMART GUIDE TO TIMING THE STOCK MARKET explains for all investors how basic technical tools—well-known and popular in the futures market—can show you how to make the most of stock market opportunities. Using key indicators from the futures market, leading futures trader and advisor Colin Alexander has developed an innovative decision-making system for determining which stocks to buy and how to recognize when those stocks are poised for an upward move.

Case studies for market leaders, including IBM, Citicorp, Schlumberger, and others, demonstrate the book's techniques in action, and show the value of technical analysis in predicting stock movements. This groundbreaking system, similar to work done by John Murphy, Richard Dennis, and other legendary futures traders, will show you how to: Buy only those stocks most likely to have above-average performance; Run your profits and cut your losses; Sell when either the stock or the market is running out of steam; Monitor the risks—as you let the rewards take care of themselves; Take personal responsibility for your investments. That last point bears repeating. You wouldn't for one second think of driving a car without oil or going sailing without checking the weather. Yet that is precisely what the proponents of buy-and-hold would have you do: buy a stock or a mutual fund and hold it forever, ignoring cycles and trends which, quite frankly, could be understood and acted upon with a minimum of research.

THE STREETSMART GUIDE TO TIMING THE STOCK MARKET shows you how to conduct that research, and profit from the stock market's cycles and long-term trends. Whether you use its techniques to buy high-tech stocks or blue chips, you will effectively take control of your investments. Market timing secrets learned in THE STREETSMART GUIDE TO TIMING THE STOCK MARKET will give you renewed confidence and optimism. This breakthrough book makes advanced market timing techniques understandable—and makes it possible for you to achieve long-term returns superior to those of indexing, mutual funds, or buy-and-hold strategies. ... Read more

Reviews (10)

Outstanding
This book is a tremendous gift to future generations and should be the basis of a mandatory course for everyone in highschool. If it were already, many of my friends and acquaintances would not have lost their fortunes in the last 3 years' bear market.
There is a mountain of great advice and detailed checklists for buying, selling and shorting stocks. Some of my favourite quotes are as follows:

-"The mutual fund industry constantly trumpets from the rooftops the merits for the long term...However the benefits...diminish significantly when capital is constantly eroded by transaction costs and withdrawals to pay capital gains tax...Dickens observed that 'the business of lawyers is making business for lawyers.' Things do not change. The investment business is not immune to mutual back-scratching at the expense of the public...There is no doubt that the rapid turnover of stocks is one reason why so few funds come close even to equaling the performance of the stock indexes."

-"Never put a large amount of money into stocks all at once."

-"Buy bonds for retirement when you are retired."

-"It is as important to know when to sell a stock, or when to sell it short, as when to buy it."

-"It is an absolute certainty that in the future there will be stock market declines similar to the one in 1987. Some will be more severe and some will last much longer." [Alexander's book was published in 1999 before the major bear market of 2000 -...]

-"During a general bear market put [ALL] your money into cash equivalents like Treasury Bills until the storm blows over...Contrary to popular belief, for all practical purposes there are no stocks to own when the general direction of the market is down."

-"There is certain to be a sell signal for every stock you ever own...Warren Buffett...has shown that the stated policy of the mutual fund industry ['buy and hold'] does in fact work...in a bull market"!

"The market is always right; you either make money or you lose it!"

-"It often happens that the stock that doubles once goes on to double again...the greatest stocks always look expensive."

-"Buy strength, not weakness!"

-"Do not buy many different stocks...Aimless diversification merely increases the liklihood of investing in fewer great stocks."

-"Always place an initial protective stop as soon as you buy a stock."

-"A Lindahl price rule and a double reversal price rule are particularly powerful indicators of the potential for a stock to make a substantial move."

-"You should never own a stock making a new 52 week low but you might well consider selling it short."

-"In a general bear market you should generally do nothing but sell short, if you are in the market at all."

-"The downside [in] writing options is [they are] a waste of time compared with owning stocks like Microsoft and Intel when stocks are really running."

The book has many more gems and concrete action plans. It is the most useful book for the public I have ever read. It should top Hillary Clinton's autobiography and Harry Potter, but, regrettably, it won't! People will continue to listen to their liars - their brokers, financial planners and mutual fund salespeople, regrettably. A few will read the book, and be wiser, and richer!

A good and practical book on Technical Analysis
As good a book as you will read on Technical Analysis as it relates to the Stock Market. Very well written and edited with lots of charts demonstrating real case histories of the strategies employed. All the material was practically presented in a clear and logical manner. In short it was a an easy read which is good because you will want to return to it often to review key points of interest. Stresses the importance of looking at the markets from first the long term (months) to the intermediate term (weeks) and finally to time your trades using the short term (days). Well done and thanks.

mediocre would be kind...
When I picked up this book, I expected something similar to the book All About Market Timing, which overall I thouht was a good book. However, I got something very different in this book. This book consists of an introduction to a handful of indicators, such as on balance volume, the macd, moving averages, stochastics, and some subjective price patterns.
The description of these indicators seems okay to me, although nothing special. He has a brief section on options, where he makes a lot of extremely dubious claims, including the often-repeated professionals sell options, amatuers buy them. I suppose if you repeat this lie often enough, somebody is bound to believe it. He goes on to describe what is apparently his preferred option strategy: covered calls. There's nothing wrong with covered calls or being long premium or any other option strategy, but to claim that one is correct and the others are wrong is quite questionable.

He also is fond of uncovered puts, as a viable option strategy -- unfortunately, this strategy does not work out over the long term; you make steady small profits until you encounter a 10+ sigma event in the market, and get blown out. The lessons of LTCM and Niederhoffer should not be forgotten, especially given that equities markets trend far more than one would assume based on a log normal distribution. High probability trades are not always good trades!

I'm trying to get a handle on the intended audience of this book. It seems to be intended for people new to a technical approach to the market, and if that's the case, I don't think it'd make it to my top 100 list of such books. If someone is new to technical approaches, i'd probably recommend the much smaller (and in my view, much more useful) The Visual Investor by John Murphy.

Overall, I think this book should be avoided like the plague. There's nothing new in this book, just rehashed age-old advice, some of which is dubious, some of which is good.

Getting better with age...
The indicators for buying into stocks on both the short and the long side are all standard metrics that are known to intermediate level investors -such as VIX, TRIN, chart patterns such as triangles, lower-low and higher high analysis. Alexander's contribution is to put them together in an action plan. Given this I fail to see why some use this book and obtain poor results. This book is not a substitute for Murphy, or Edwards and Magee, Bulkowski, Achelis or other pure TA books. It is a description of how to integrate TA to actually make trades.

Does not pass the test
I bought this book swayed by the good reviews it has. Then I tested some of the buy/sell signals that the author proposes and found that they worked better if one is aiming to lose money.

To be fair, I did not test them all, and some may work. But I tested the Price Action indicators against more than one stock and had I followed those indicators to buy/sell stock I would have had lost money rather than make it. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Exchange Rate Misalignment examines the severe dislocations that can be caused by exchange rate misalignment and shows how there is no systematic guidance on the definitions and measurement of prevention. It explores how recent macroeconomic disruptions support the argument that growing financial integration has increased the need for providing accurate measures of long-run equilibrium exchange rates. ... Read more

Book Description

The Reuters Financial Training Series An Introduction to Bond Markets An Introduction to Bond Markets introduces novices to bonds, notes, derivatives and other instruments used in the world’s largest markets. Readers will learn how these products are traded and quoted in the financial markets. This comprehensive guide bridges the gap between academic texts that are often too theoretical, and the more technical practitioner’s works. Key features include:

• Introductory sections defining terms and giving background to theories
• Examples and calculations of various types of bond market instruments
• Summaries and overviews at the end of each chapter recapitulating key points and definitions
• Quick quiz questions and answers to reinforce learning
• Further resources which point to other books, articles and internet tools to widen readers’ comprehension and entrench their foundation in the subject.

Reviews (2)

Don't buy it!
You can't really use it. Huge amount of typos, omissions and errors. Just try to compute rate of return using formula from the book ROR = [(Selling price-1)/Buying price]*100. Buying for 90 and selling for 100 gives you a zero return rate, nice, isn't it. Worst book I've ever had.

Excellent title for self-training into a new job position
As a computer systems administrator, I usually support several applications without getting too involved in their inner workings nor with the business that they run. This book, however, allowed me to understand the bond markets and to be able to interact with computer users with definite knowledge and sure understanding of the business. The book is a cross between a text book and a do-it-yourself with examples. I couldn't have done it with out it. Next I'm ordering An introduction to Derivatives. ... Read more

Book Description

The authors provide an intimate knowledge of the fundamentals required to cope with the everchanging nature of the money and foreign exchange markets. Its emphasis is on the management of down to earth operations, covering how to read and take advantage of market quotations, the funds manager and the interaction between money and foreign exchange markets, funds management in a two-way market, problems and solutions in the trading room of a bank, problems and solutions of the multinational non-financial business, returns and risks, in foreign exchange operations, and control of foreign exchange and money market operations. This new edition is updated to account for recent changes and expanded to emphasize and broaden the treatment of money markets. ... Read more

Book Description

Fully revised and updated following the monetary inegration of Europe, this popular introductory textbook examines recent events from both economic and political perspectives, covering costs and benefits in a scrupulously balanced account. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Useful
I'm an undergraduate student in Finance and Economics. I picked up this book for a term paper for my Public Economics class.

If there's one thing to say about De Grauwe's book is that it seemed very useful, down to earth, in contrast to other economics books I've read. The concepts covered in the book were explained very clearly, and for someone interested in the area, the theories seemed ready for use for application in understanding the important issues of monetary integration.

Whether there are flaws in the theory are--honestly--beyond my grasp; I'd have to read more. The book seems written and revised fairly enough and hasn't received negative comments from the faculty at my university. If someone else has a contrary opinion, I'm sure it'd help for people to hear.

Check the sample pages if you want to see if this book would be good for you. ... Read more

Book Description

New Faces of the Fur Trade is a collection of fifteen essays selected from the Seventh North American Fur Trade Conference held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1995.These articles question the traditional focus of fur trade literature and suggest that there are richer, more diverse narratives to be constructed and new ways to look at the fur trade.Many focus on subjects and themes that either have been formerly overlooked or have been introduced and then neglected. Fur trade studies have been criticized for remaining outside the current mainstream of historiography, in particular for paying scant attention to the rich insights to be found in approaches adopted for the fields of social and gender history.This volume redresses some of those omissions. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Fur Trade History is Flourishing!!
This book presents the latest scholarship on a wide variety of topics in the lively field of fur trade history. By making available many of the best papers presented at the Halifaxconference, this book brings to a broad audience the research of scholars young and old who have studied several important aspects of what may fairly be described as one of the fundamental themes in early North American history. Topics range from biographies to economic, social, and cultural history. This book demonstrates that the field is alive and well, and that fur trade history can certainly offer important materials for students and teachers of American or Canadian history. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The Developers
firs of all i would pay to thank to the author of the book and then i would say that i am really impressed by the mind of the author any person can get knowldege from the endeavor of the author ... Read more

Download Description

The paper describes the operational characteristics of hawala in Afghanistan. It describes the system's geographic characteristics, convenience, effectiveness, cost, and its relationship with the formal financial system. It case studies of the domestic transfer of development funds by international aid institutions and nongovernmental organizations to discusses the hawala system's benefits as well as the operational characteristics that make it vulnerable to abuse. Finally, its presents the authors conclusions on the developmental role of informal financial institutions in the Afghan financial system; the implications for financial management practices of donor-financed development programs; and the regulatory and supervisory options for DAB. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Excellent work -- informative and scholarly
As someone who is not an economist, I am in no position to rate Tan's arguments vis-a-vis the positions of other economists. However, as an introduction to the complexities of the 1998 meltdown in Asian economies, this book is first-rate. It is very well organized.

Dealing with the crisis chronologically, and country-by-country, Tan is able to illustrate patterns that span the whole event, and unique events within each country. He treats the responses of each country, and does not shirk from providing a sober and often scathing assessment of the attitudes and policy responses of individual countries. His political analyses are just as useful, since the implications of the event have so much to do with the political makeup of individual countries, and their political and financial institutions.

Market data is used extensively to support his claim. There is a tremendous and often overwhelming plethora of data. However, if one is just looking for an identification of major patterns and analyses, Tan illustrates this very clearly within his chapters.

This book is a great resource for someone who wants access to source data that is relevant to the Asian Meltdown, as well as just a broad introduction to the phenomena that helps a reader trying to understand such a significant event (or series of events). ... Read more

Book Description

This volume analyzes the European Community's transition to economic and monetary union (EMU) in the light of the agreements reached at Maastricht last year.It derives from a conference held by the CEPR and the Bank of Portugal, and includes among its contributors a number of noted academic commentators on European integration.The issues addressed in the volume include:the relationship between a common currency and inflation convergence; the effects of monetary unification on Europe's increasingly integrated financial markets and fiscal systems; and EMU's implications for the EC's long-term growth. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Advanced Placement Chemistry by the REA
Much depends on how you are utilizing this text. I used it to
assist in studying for the Fundamentals of Engineering
Examination. The text has a good coverage of the periodic
table of elements, emphasis on the halogens, oxidation-
reduction, Boyle's Law, the atomic radii,pH, solutions,
precipitates,exothermic and endothermic reactions, the anode
and cathode, amphoteric substances, lattice points and a variety
of problem sets. Overall, the text is very helpful for studying
the Fundamentals of Engineering Examinations. I would supplement
this with a formal engineering review course and a reasonably
comprehensive text on organic chemistry. A strength of this text
is that it provides many practical examples. It is highly
abbreviated in form. I would utilize the contents to practice
a variety of problems customarily found on collegiate-level
examinations. The author has a detailed explanation of the
preferred solution set. I encountered several problems with

alternate solutions; however, this is a minor aspect.
The thrust of the text is good for preparing students in
applied chemistry.

Stay away: it is full of unrealistic questions and errors
This book provides six full-length practice exams. Unfortunatelly after going over them with my daughter I have discoverd that the questions do not realistically represent the coverage and the level of dificulty of recent AP tests. Even worse the book if full of errors, omissions, and logical flaws, in questions themself and in the provided explanations (and I know what I am talking about since I teach chemistry in college).

A Book that looks appealing, but is inaccurate.
At first glance, REA looks like the best choice in AP Chemistry- after all, it has 6 practice tests. But most of the sample questions don't reflect how the real test is like. You don't find complex logarithms on an AP Chem test, and ETS won't be nice enough to ask you which elements are considered Alkali Earth Metals. Avoid this book! It costs more than most other AP Chem tests. Instead, try the comprehensive Princeton Review AP Chemistry. REA may be good at covering AP history topics, but when it comes to science, try another brand.

Just The Straight Stuff
The entire REA series is great if you want a book with no B.S., with neither colorful anecdotes nor silly digressions. The Chemistry book is great because it provides a subject-by-subject "method of attack" for the real AP test. The sample tests in the back give a great sounding of how much you've learned, and the short-answer explanations are really informative. All around the best way to get ready for the AP. If you want regents level, though, this book is going to strike you a little abstract. Definitely AP only. ... Read more