Books 02 (Nov 08 - Nov 09)

Re: Books (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

Postby durio » Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:16 am

1. If Simon Sim is right, then there will be more shakes in the market for another 7 years or so. This will really shake any bulls left, leaving the strongest behind. Will I be shaken out of it? People say that they are long term investors, but until the true test comes, it's all just empty talk and brave promises. Am I willing to hold for 14 years or so to ride the full potential of my investments?

7 years is definitely looooooooooong bear!
Whatever will happen ~ i believe risk management & capital protection are important to both traders & investors
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Re: Books (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

Postby millionairemind » Sun Dec 28, 2008 12:45 pm

Just wrapped up on a book Technical Analysis and The Active Trader by Gary Norden.

For the sticker price of USD65, this book is NOT WORTH the price. Luckily I was a cheapo this time around and borrowed from the library :D

The 1st half of the 210page book, he goes thro' GREAT PAINS to deconstruct Technical Analysis and how it is worthless. He also spent a couple of chapters on how those stupid TA courses that are advertised in the papers are worthless (this one I got to agree :D )

Then he tears out the EMT. The second half of the book he gave praise to Behavioral finance and how combined with FA/TA, is better than TA alone.

I am not a chartist... but there is really NOTHING new in this book that is not covered in other books.

He does not cover on how well he is doing himself and when I reached the end, it was stated that he is owner of a firm that is a provider of training materials on trading strategies :?

For me, any investing/trading strategy MUST achieve 2 aims - Minimize your losses and Maximize your profits. If it does not do that, then that strategy is not good... doesn't matter if it is value investing, CANSLIM, TA or FA.

Looking forward to start on the book Panic by Michael Lewis, The Long Tail by Anderson and Three Cups of Tea :D
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Re: Books (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

Postby kennynah » Sun Dec 28, 2008 2:19 pm


He does not cover on how well he is doing himself and when I reached the end, it was stated that he is owner of a firm that is a provider of training materials on trading strategies :?


wahahahaha....i will skip this book then....wahahahahaha.... classic seller of shield and spear...
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Re: Books (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

Postby millionairemind » Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:25 pm

Happy New Year every1. Just finished off The Long Tail by Chris Anderson this afternoon which was quite an enjoyable read.

Here is a book review summary I found on the web.

Hidden Content:
The Long Tail Book Review: Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More
by Chris Anderson


Published by Random House (UK), Hyperion Books (USA),

Summary
The Long Tail Book Review: Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More (95%)The Long Tail is an important manual for the new economics of the Internet and digital culture. As well as demystifying the numbers it provides an essential guide to how to navigate a world where everything is available, all the time. Score: 95%

Review
Every once in a while a book comes along that completely captures and defines a particular period. Nicholas Negroponte’s Being Digital defined the blossoming digital culture of the mid 90’s, now The Long Tail shows how the Internet will radically change our habits and behaviour.

Chris Anderson illustrates how our buying habits have been shaped by the economics of big business, creating the blockbuster culture; the selling of a narrow range of products to the biggest possible group of consumers. Anderson shows how the Internet, through companies such as eBay, Google and Amazon, radically changes that, allowing us to be more exploratory and specific about what we buy.

“The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.”

Anderson provides and eloquent and detailed analysis of various aspects of Internet culture and business and illustrates how the explosion of niche markets and filtering tools will allow us to zero-in on things that interest us, potentially shattering the hold that large manufacturers and retailers have exercised since the mid 20th century.

The Long Tail Book Review: Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More (95%)The Long Tail effect is not limited to buying and selling, the process by which the book was written is a case in point. Anderson (editor in chief of Wired magazine) published the original Long Tail article in Wired back in October 04. The article rapidly became a hit and mushroomed into the Long Tail blog which Anderson used to publicly research and test his theories. Shortly before the publication date earlier this month, Anderson released copies of the book to bloggers across the globe for review. The process is a perfect example of a product being tested and developed publicly, thereby generating enough word of mouth interest to create a ready market for it. The strategy was proved a resounding success by the book’s appearance in Amazon’s top ten non-fiction list on its publication day.

Although The Long Tail is a business book, it is also about culture in general and how it’s changing. Freed from the constraints of the blockbuster culture, the consumer is able to delve into niches he never knew existed and also to contribute in a way that was not previously possible. The success of social software services such as Flickr and YouTube has allowed the audience to create and share their own material generating a genuinely new, interactive media which is actually competing in some respects with mainstream broadcast media.

The Long Tail Book Review: Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More (95%)Some have taken this to mean that Anderson is sounding the death knell for blockbusters, something which he was at pains to counter on his blog, “Hits Aren’t Dead” he said, “I never said they were. What is dead is the monopoly of the hit. For too long hits or products intended to be hits have had the stage to themselves, because only hit-centric companies had access to the retail channel and the retail channel only had room for best-sellers. But now blockbusters must share the stage with a million niche products, and this will lead to a very different marketplace.”

While not all the ideas in The Long Tail are Anderson’s own, like any good journalist, he manages to articulate the complexities of a difficult subject in a lucid and entertaining style.

Summary
The Long Tail is an important manual for the new economics of the Internet and digital culture. As well as demystifying the numbers it provides an essential guide to how to navigate a world where everything is available, all the time.


What did I get out of it? Quite a fair bit. It expanded my world view of the long tail and how things are rapidly changing from what he calls "HITS and MISSES" in the 70s and 80s to "HITS AND NICHES".

He touched on how things are rapidly changing from a "pre-filter world" where executives try to guess what will be hits to "put it out there cheaply and make it extreme searchable so the market will decide" post filter and how the breadth and depth of the marketplace is being changed by the Internet.

A couple of good examples of "The Long Tail" companies are Google, iTune and Amazon.

The enabler, of course, is the Internet.

I personally feel that this book would fall into the economics genre of "SuperCrunchers", "The Wisdom of Crowds" and "The World is Flat" which you would no doubt enjoy if you enjoy this book.

Available at your local library. :D
"If a speculator is correct half of the time, he is hitting a good average. Even being right 3 or 4 times out of 10 should yield a person a fortune if he has the sense to cut his losses quickly on the ventures where he has been wrong" - Bernard Baruch

Disclaimer - The author may at times own some of the stocks mentioned in this forum. All discussions are NOT to be construed as buy/sell recommendations. Readers are advised to do their own research and analysis.
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Re: Books (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

Postby winston » Sat Jan 03, 2009 9:38 am

A Little Post-Christmas Holiday Spirit By Michael Masterson

One of the best things about the holiday season is the Christmas spirit. But just because Christmas has passed doesn't mean you need to give up that joy. To get yourself back into the spirit - and to find some always-needed motivation - check out The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford.

The book is a good read (Les Standiford is a very good writer) and its subject - how Charles Dickens came to write A Christmas Carol - will inspire you. Here are some key points I took away from it:

By writing about poor and powerless people triumphing over adversity, Dickens became hugely popular. (One-third of England's reading public bought The Old Curiosity Shop.)

Like all people of great accomplishment, success for Dickens did not come easy. He worked like a horse throughout his career. While writing The Pickwick Papers,for example, he was also writing new material for the second edition of Sketches by Boz, editing a literary magazine, and working on Gabriel Vardon, the Locksmith of London.

After a run of amazing success, Dickens went to America and then wrote two books bashing Americans. Neither was popular. Lesson: When you have a working formula, stick with it.

Depressed by his recent failures, he conceived of A Christmas Carol as a way to get himself back on top. And it did. Lesson: Don't give up.
Because of his previous run of bad sales, he had to joint-venture with a book publisher, Chapman and Hall, for A Christmas Carol. Dickens took on risk and responsibility in the venture. And although he didn't make much money for his efforts (because he overspent on the book cover, among other things), he learned about the business side of publishing novels, which he used to his advantage for the rest of his career.

He had been thinking about the story for many years - but he wrote the book, while editing the color plates and working on the cover, in six weeks!

A Christmas Carol promotes Dickens's enduring themes: "the deleterious effects of ignorance and want, the necessity for charity, the benefits of goodwill, family unity, and the need for celebration of the life force, including the pleasures of good food and drink and good company."

The book changed the bird we traditionally eat on Christmas from goose to turkey.
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
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Re: Books (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

Postby kennynah » Sun Jan 04, 2009 10:00 am

After a run of amazing success, Dickens went to America and then wrote two books bashing Americans. Neither was popular. Lesson: When you have a working formula, stick with it.

i thought the lesson should also be : don't be stupid....know your objective...wana sell books to americans, then why bash them?....silly, right?
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Re: Books (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

Postby iam802 » Sun Jan 04, 2009 10:56 am

Lesson learnt: Best writer award and Best seller award is not the same.
1. Always wait for the setup. NO SETUP; NO TRADE

2. The trend will END but I don't know WHEN.

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Re: Books (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

Postby kennynah » Sun Jan 04, 2009 11:03 am

all these old english writers...who wrote in archaic english, makes for very difficult reading....macam like within each sentence, must refer to dictionary more than once...and then have to re-read each paragraph just to eek out some meaning to the words...

it was tough just to watch "pride and prejudice" ...and i tried reading this book before...can die.

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Re: Books (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

Postby kennynah » Sun Jan 04, 2009 11:26 am

Title : BIBLE
Author : many contributors


I thought, after so long, some one might add this to the list.... i guess, the honour is mine afterall... 8-)
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Re: Books (Nov 08 - Jan 09)

Postby Poles » Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:07 pm

The Importance of Living by Lin Yu Tang
http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=_EE ... ing&pgis=1

this book is my kind of bible.
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