easy reading for this beginner
A great 'workbook' to build a solid foundation on for investing. The exercises at the end of each chapter as well as the suggested links and reference books are the reason why I feel confident entering the market today. This book is the course book for the Author's Audio CD, "Big Picture Investing." Either one or the other will do, having both is overkill-- as I did.
An Excellent Book. One of Best I've Read.
Navarro's book is just excellent. He is a very good writer and an educator and knows how people learn. When you read this book you will want to keep your highlighter handy. He uses a very logical flow of concepts and supports them with good information. Of the over 200 stock market and investment books I've read over the past few years, this one is one of the best and you will go away saying...that really makes sense. This book easily stands on its own, so if you haven't read his If it is Raining in Brazil, don't worry about it. Just give it a read and you won't be sorry.
A good book for investment novices
Though the title of this book leads one to take it as the sequel to the author's first book "If it's raining in Brazil, buy Starbucks", it is quite different from it coz "if" is more like an "if then if then" excercise/reminder for relatively veteran investors, whilst this book is more like a beginner's guide to the author's concept of "Macrowave Investing", essence of which can be described by its three golden rules and four stages:-
R1. Buy strong stocks in strong sectors in an upward-trending market
R2. Short weak stocks in weak sectors in a downward-trending market
R3. Stay out of the market and in cash when there is no definable trend.
S1. Diagnose and prognose on corporate earnings news, flow of macroeconomic data, conduct of fiscal and monetary policy of govt, and exogenous shocks like wars and rain in Brazil, the so called four dynamic factors.
S2. Determine broad market and individual sector trends wrt business cycle, stock market cycle and interest rate cycle.
S3. Screen individual stock thru fundamental and technical analysis.
S4. Uses risk/money/trade management tools
The author said that this book is for all. As a professional trader, I believe that it is much more suitable for amateur long term stock investors who favors fundamental analysis. The coverage on S1 and S2 are brilliant, but not for S3 and S4. Serious investors should read some books else to compliment the inadequacies on TA and risk/money management.
In short, a good book. The Q&A and resource reference in the end of each chapter is very helpful. A value buy!
Excellent book with some nice strategies
Very well written, clear, and concise book on the market, emphasizing using both fundamental value and technical chart analysis to play the market. Perhaps the most important point made in the book is the author pointing out that one must pick strong stocks in strong sectors in order to be really successful. This tip might be worth the price of the book by itself, since 3 out of 4 stocks will ultimately follow the broad market anyway. (You can get that sector strength information from the Investor's Business Daily paper or the paid version of the website, but you'll have to pay the premium subscription price to get it). One other extremely interesting section is where the author shows that buying stocks during the cold months and selling them during the warm months of the year can produce almost twice the gains of holding them throughout the year. This strategy tested out as valid in the American market going back several decades and incredibly was valid in the British market going back to 1694. The basic point is that holding stocks from October to April resulted in an average return of about 12%, whereas holding them throughout the year resulted in a performance of almost half that, because stocks often declined during the warmer months. Again, that little tidbit of advice might be worth the price of the book by itself, and is reminiscent of the strategy of buying the index and going long when the stock market crosses its 200-day moving average on the upside, and shorting it when it crosses the 200-day moving average on the downside, which has produced an average return of 17%. I've looked at dozens of simple and complex strategies but I hadn't heard of this sort of seasonal strategy before and was very interested to find that out, and may give it a try myself. So overall, a fine book on the market that should be useful to the beginning as well as more experienced investor and trader.
great top-down investing book!
In this book, the author takes a top-down approach to investing. He combined macro economic factors with fundamental/technical approach to the market. In many ways, this book reminds me of Martin Zweig's Winning on Wall Street, which in my eyes is one of the greatest investing books ever published. This book gave me a great number of possible ideas I can use to develop potential models from, and for that it is well worth the purchase price, even if none of them pan out.
(6 reviews)
