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100-Year Market Theory

AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE OF INVESTMENT-RISK

An alternative approach to investment management, explained in detail.

A finance professional refines and promotes his strategy for maximizing investment gains by understanding stock market trends through a long-term view.

In this new edition of his book originally published in 2003, portfolio manager Tuttle presents the latest version of his stock-picking strategy. The strategy demands an understanding of the business cycle over years and decades, rather than the shorter horizons most analysts rely on, and sees smaller cyclical ups and downs as components of larger, secular trends. The theory accounts for nine secular phases from 1906 to the present, with detailed looks at the ups and downs of each trend. Tuttle challenges the accepted theories of asset allocation, including the efficient markets theory and the capital asset pricing model. Fusion analysis, including a ratio called Tobin Q, drives Tuttle’s theory, which argues that both risk and return are cyclical instead of linear and returns can be maximized by understanding the progression of the cycle. Tuttle acknowledges that his theory is outside mainstream investment thought, but he notes that it has gained adherents: It is now “considered thought-leading radical work in the financial arena [and] is used by countless management firms as their basis behind risk correlation in relation to market cycle comprehension.” Dozens of color charts throughout the book help illustrate aspects of the theory and of the long-term trends Tuttle describes. Elsewhere, the book is hampered by occasional awkward sentences: “It seems as if the definition placates the defining of a person’s or firm’s time objective”; “Considering in the year 2000 the U.S. poverty population accounted for 15% and children under seventeen accounted for more than 20%, this equates to only 15% of the working class not invested in the stock market.” In the end, though, the theory isn’t an approach to choosing individual stocks to buy or sell but rather a new way of looking at the market and the economy as a whole.

An alternative approach to investment management, explained in detail.

Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2014

ISBN: 978-1492821960

Page Count: 196

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014

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THE CULTURE MAP

BREAKING THROUGH THE INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES OF GLOBAL BUSINESS

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.

“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

Pub Date: May 27, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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