Solid advice for thoughtful investors.
Investment guru Jubak (The Jubak Picks: 50 Stocks that Will Rebuild Your Wealth & Safeguard Your Future, 2008, etc.) analyzes the growing volatility of both the financial markets and everyday life (jobs, housing, an aging population, climate change, etc.) and offers strategies for profiting in a topsy-turvy world.
A former editor at Worth, the author now edits JubakPicks.com, where his portfolio has returned 445 percent since 1997. In this informative, often entertaining book, he details the many ways in which frequent zigzags since 2000 in the financial markets—especially abrupt changes of acceleration and direction—have combined with events in the housing, job, and retirements markets to increase our expectations about the degree of volatility in everyday life. Heightened volatility is now “embedded” in the stock market, writes Jubak. Furthermore, our aging world brings rising medical costs and requires more pension payments. China alone—“the world’s fastest-aging society,” with an inadequate pension system and underfunded health care—poses a global volatility risk. Drawing on his experiences of the last 20 years in the financial market, the research of behavioral economists and neuroscientists, and projections for the immediate future, Jubak describes ways to better understand the scope and direction of rapid changes in key areas and ways to “limit the downside damage and increase the upside potential from this volatility in our portfolios and our lives.” He stresses that by determining the distribution of volatility in a given market, it is possible to find a “haven of lower volatility.” Besides understanding the underlying forces at work, the author urges readers to resist the impulse to engage in the flight-or-fight response in reacting to dizzying changes. Whether discussing the effects of food and water shortages or the boom-and-bust real estate markets in such diverse enclaves as hipster Williamsburg (Brooklyn) and Boomer Sarasota (Florida), Jubak brightly illuminates the trends shaping our present era.
Solid advice for thoughtful investors.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61039-480-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's...
A fresh, provocative analysis of the debate on education and employment.
Up-and-coming economist Moretti (Economics/Univ. of California, Berkeley) takes issue with the “[w]idespread misconception…that the problem of inequality in the United States is all about the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99 percent.” The most important aspect of inequality today, he writes, is the widening gap between the 45 million workers with college degrees and the 80 million without—a difference he claims affects every area of peoples' lives. The college-educated part of the population underpins the growth of America's economy of innovation in life sciences, information technology, media and other areas of globally leading research work. Moretti studies the relationship among geographic concentration, innovation and workplace education levels to identify the direct and indirect benefits. He shows that this clustering favors the promotion of self-feeding processes of growth, directly affecting wage levels, both in the innovative industries as well as the sectors that service them. Indirect benefits also accrue from knowledge and other spillovers, which accompany clustering in innovation hubs. Moretti presents research-based evidence supporting his view that the public and private economic benefits of education and research are such that increased federal subsidies would more than pay for themselves. The author fears the development of geographic segregation and Balkanization along education lines if these issues of long-term economic benefits are left inadequately addressed.
A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's more profound problems.Pub Date: May 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-75011-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
An informative and creatively multilayered Google guidebook from the businessman’s perspective.
Two distinguished technology executives share the methodology behind what made Google a global business leader.
Former Google CEO Schmidt (co-author: The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business, 2013) and former senior vice president of products Rosenberg share accumulated wisdom and business acumen from their early careers in technology, then later as management at the Internet search giant. Though little is particularly revelatory or unexpected, the companywide processes that have made Google a household name remain timely and relevant within today’s digitized culture. After several months at Google, the authors found it necessary to retool their management strategies by emphasizing employee culture, codifying company values, and rethinking the way staff is internally positioned in order to best compliment their efforts and potential. Their text places “Googlers” front and center as they adopted the business systems first implemented by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who stressed the importance of company-wide open communication. Schmidt and Rosenberg discuss the value of technological insights, Google’s effective “growth mindset” hiring practices, staff meeting maximization, email tips, and the company’s effective solutions to branding competition and product development complications. They also offer a condensed, two-page strategy checklist that serves as an apt blueprint for managers. At times, statements leak into self-congratulatory territory, as when Schmidt and Rosenberg insinuate that a majority of business plans are flawed and that the Google model is superior. Analogies focused on corporate retention and methods of maximizing Google’s historically impressive culture of “smart creatives” reflect the firm’s legacy of spinning intellect and creativity into Internet gold. The authors also demarcate legendary application missteps like “Wave” and “Buzz” while applauding the independent thinkers responsible for catapulting the company into the upper echelons of technological innovation.
An informative and creatively multilayered Google guidebook from the businessman’s perspective.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1455582341
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Business Plus/Grand Central
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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