Offbeat reminiscences and observations from a Wall Street pro who appreciates that there's more to life than balance sheets, income statements, and price charts. A champion squash player as well as world-class investor (whose associates include the storied George Soros), Niederhoffer grew up in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach, a bustling Jewish enclave that had a perdurable influence on his values and viewpoints. While unwilling to share whatever real secrets he has for making money in futures or securities, the author offers a series of discursive takes on aspects of a secular-humanist version of the Great Chain of Being, which in the aggregate afford would-be speculators some guidance on playing the markets. In addition to reviewing cost- effective lessons on self-reliance learned from boyhood chums like the neighborhood bookie, Niederhoffer examines what, if anything, links board games (chess, checkers), casino gambling, horse racing, music, sex, sports, and the weather to the capital or commodities markets. The author (who earned a Ph.D. in economics) also delves into financial panics, crashes, cyclical shifts in market trends, and allied issues. Trader Vic even constructs a comprehensive ecology of markets in which he credibly equates fixed-income investors with herbivores, hedge funds with carnivores, and brokers with decomposers (bacteria, crows, et al.). In a concluding chapter, Niederhoffer manages to combine a graceful, heartfelt tribute to his late father with a clutch of antic advisories for those who aspire to quick killings in the market; a highlight of this potpourri is so-called LoBagolo analysis, a plausible surmise that suggests bears may trap bulls along the path that bore the latter upward in much the same way as African villagers snare itinerant elephants on the routes the herd invariably takes to and from its starting point. Edifying pieces of a lively mind whose education has been both broad and deep.
Pub Date: Feb. 7, 1997
ISBN: 0-471-13747-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
For Gorman, creating customers is an act of cultivating delight–-a motto that most businesses would do well to follow.
Gorman, who runs a boutique creative-brand agency, offers a refreshing return to business basics, when competition was a novel concept and businesses actually put the customer first.
Not that Gorman is trotting out old business saws in a fuddy-duddy way; his style is energetic, and his delivery is keen and clean. He is not about to forsake branding, but he will tell you to forget the fancy dancing, the retro music and the airy cleverness. His emphasis is on delivering satisfaction to the customers—consistently–-with the ultimate goal of making them friends for the long term. Granted, it's not a revolutionary concept, but in the Age of Hype, it's certainly salubrious. Profits cannot be a guiding principle; business owners must understand the values, tastes and preferences of their audience, and then create a brand that becomes "the story that people will tell when asked to recommend your product or service to someone else"–-and one that exceeds expectations. In other words, create an identity and be all you say you are. Tag lines, logos, websites–-these are all brand articulations, and though Gorman acknowledges their importance, they are not value articulations and they can't carry the product if the consumer's experience isn't pleasurable and enthusiastic. Gorman even goes a step further: The product must be a delight. (He includes many amusing anecdotes, but the best involves him tipping a saxophone-playing spaceman in the subway.) Gorman also offers intelligent advice about making oneself attractive to prospects, about clarity of message, about elegance and about the importance of word-of-mouth for verifying quality (with a nod to George Silverman)–-though it would have been helpful to get a few examples of controlling and sequencing word-of-mouth marketing.
For Gorman, creating customers is an act of cultivating delight–-a motto that most businesses would do well to follow.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-9749169-0-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An accessible audit of Russia's efforts to gain a place at global capitalism's table after more than seven decades of Communist misrule and mismanagement. As Goldman (Economics/Wellesley; What Went Wrong with Perestroika, 1991, etc.) makes abundantly clear, switching from a centrally planned economy to a market economy is easier said than done. Goldman draws on in-country contacts, official records, and contemporary news reports to document how Moscow has gone wrong at critical junctures since 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev first set the Soviet Union on a restructuring course whose implications he did not fully grasp. After a lucid account of the sociopolitical events that allowed Boris Yeltsin to oust Gorbachev (in effect, by undermining the USSR), the author offers an unsparing critique of the current incumbent's stewardship. Like his unfortunate predecessor, Goldman points out, Yeltsin failed to facilitate the formation of new businesses. Nor did he and his chief adviser (Yegor Gaidar) do enough to encourage land ownership. They also neglected to institute currency reforms that could have dampened inflationary pressures and enhanced the ruble's convertibility. Banking, price control, and tax policies were botched as well; the regime has dithered disastrously on privatizing state-owned enterprises; and the government has yet to sponsor commercial codes that might restore much-needed order to a chaotic, crime-ridden consumer marketplace. The author goes on to weigh Russia's makeover prospects in the context of the bootstrap recoveries achieved by former Kremlin satellites (Hungary, Poland), mainland China, and WW II's losers (Japan, West Germany). Even without much foreign aid or investment in the short run, concludes Goldman, the Russians could eventually win their latest revolution, albeit at no small cost. An informed and informative analysis of the toil and trouble attendant upon a great nation's attempts to gain world-class status as an economic rather than military power. Helpful tabular material and graphs throughout.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-393-03700-2
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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