A prudent guide for self-starting investors with plenty of time and programming abilities.
An instructional manual focuses on setting up computerized trading systems that can manage the vicissitudes of the stock market.
Bensdorp starts his financial self-help book with a familiar observation: The stock market is notoriously unpredictable, and that volatility induces many investors to make poor decisions wrought by panicked emotions. As an alternative, he proposes the establishment of an automated trading system that doesn’t depend on accurate predictions at all since it is designed to successfully respond to whatever financial circumstances arise. Moreover, since the system runs independent of constant management, it eliminates the problem of emotional decision-making and the “psychological pain” of owning a plunging stock. The author breaks down the basic options for readers, describing four basic styles of trading and seven different systems that can accommodate them. The core of his approach is to employ several “noncorrelated” systems that “combine different directions and different styles, that is, trade long and short and trade trend following and mean reversion.” In other words, the investor can benefit from a market of any variety, bullish or bearish. In lucidly accessible terms, Bensdorp—“a self-taught trader”—explains the fundamentals of his methodology. His approach emphasizes a customized financial profile, one that clearly defines not only investors’ objectives, but also their tolerance for risk and willingness to patiently put in the time to set up the systems in the first place. The author’s counsel is unfailingly sensible and realistic: He cautions readers that this is a “get-rich-slow approach” that “does involve a good deal of effort upfront” and concedes that it could take “years of trial and error.” In addition, this manual is only for those “skilled with programming” since Bensdorp does not walk readers through that aspect of the systems.
A prudent guide for self-starting investors with plenty of time and programming abilities.Pub Date: Feb. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0603-6
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
More uncommonly sensible investment guidance from a master of the game. Drawing on his experience at Fidelity's Magellan Fund, a high- profile vehicle he quit at age 46 in 1990 after a spectacularly successful 13-year tenure as managing director, Lynch (One Up on Wall Street, 1988) makes a strong case for common stocks over bonds, CDs, or other forms of debt. In breezy, anecdotal fashion, the author also encourages individuals to go it alone in the market rather than to bank on money managers whose performance seldom justifies their generous compensation. With the caveat that there's as much art as science to picking issues with upside potential, Lynch commends legwork and observation. ``Spending more time at the mall,'' he argues, invariably is a better way to unearth appreciation candidates than relying on technical, timing, or other costly divining services prized by professionals. The author provides detailed briefings on how he researches industries, special situations, and mutual funds. Particularly instructive are his candid discussions of where he went wrong as well as right in his search for undervalued securities. Throughout the genial text, Lynch offers wry, on-target advisories under the rubric of ``Peter's Principles.'' Commenting on the profits that have accrued to those acquiring shares in enterprises privatized by the British government, he notes: ``Whatever the Queen is selling, buy it.'' In praise of corporate parsimony, the author suggests that, ``all else being equal, invest in the company with the fewest photos in the annual report.'' Another bull's-eye for a consummate pro, with appeal for market veterans and rookies alike. (Charts and tabular material— not seen.)
Pub Date: March 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-75915-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993
Gates’s writing is strong–hopefully he’ll apply himself more seriously to his next subject.
Gates elaborates upon the age-old advice of parents to children–get a job–in this winsome if somewhat desultory treatise on political economy.
Regretting his youthful disdain for work and money, here the author makes a case for both. Hunter-gatherers and farmers, he notes, can hardly avoid the consequences of idleness, which leads quickly to starvation. Economies inevitably develop and diversify, a growing division of labor requires the performance of specialized tasks and trade for the necessities of life, and money replaces self-evident use value with mysterious exchange value. Gates extols the usefulness of money as a medium of exchange, appreciates the modern consumer cornucopia and, on a basic Darwinian note, explains that “those who adopted industry had better ‘reproductive success.’” He also appraises the discontents of work life. People often feel that their identities are bound up in their work, he observes, but they also feel alienated from their apparently pointless jobs as cogs in the corporate machine. Rising salaries don’t seem to bring more happiness either; the careerist rat race for wealth and status is unhealthy and leaves little time for family or personal fulfillment. The author offers his own resumé as a compromise solution: refusing promotion offers, he has settled on “a dead-end data entry job and part-time waitering,” which feeds the kids and leaves room for family, books on tape and other pursuits. Gates is an engaging if slightly aimless writer, citing Plato and Marx one minute and tossing out budget and investment tips the next. His Stoic combination of pragmatism and renunciation ultimately strikes a chord. His defense of remunerative employment makes the book a great graduation present from anxious parents to slacker offspring, while his defense of untaxing, ambitionless employment makes it a good graduation present from slacker offspring to anxious parents.
Gates’s writing is strong–hopefully he’ll apply himself more seriously to his next subject.Pub Date: March 31, 2005
ISBN: 1-933037-60-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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