Packed with useful, clear information about the pitfalls of FX trading, despite some self-serving advertising.
In his debut work, a fictionalized account with names and personal histories changed, Hoang intends to show the many ways inexperienced traders in the foreign-exchange market can fail.
Ninety-two percent of all FX traders lose money after three years. Here, seven students who took two-day, intensive FX trading classes start an informal study group together. They all want to get rich, but they have very different personalities and backgrounds. Cynthia is a real estate investor and agent, Jane a housewife, Joey an immigrant from Hong Kong and an inveterate gambler, Ron a successful businessman, and so on. Hoang gets inside these characters—more like a journalist than a novelist—to show their motivations and reasons for success or failure. More importantly, Hoang ably shows that Harry, the FX trading trainer, is running a con game, and the deck is stacked against these would-be players. The FX trading world is analyzed with intelligence and clarity, showing how gurus like Harry fudge results and rely on hindsight bias and mathematical ignorance as they appeal to greed. Hoang explains the breathtakingly dishonest scams and tricks (slippage, price shading, shilling, etc.) that brokerage houses use to squeeze their customers and how they get away with it. The book is packed with good advice, such as avoiding FX trading if you’re impulsive and hot-tempered or why “setting daily trading goals and expecting to achieve them is a fool’s errand.” So far, so useful—but Hoang, it turns out, is also selling his company’s automated FX trading system. He does caution that this book “should not be viewed as a solicitation for the trading system” but then includes an invitation to join his free webinars. After being primed to distrust all hawkers and to remember that many long hours are required to master the difficult discipline of FX trading, readers may be wary.
Packed with useful, clear information about the pitfalls of FX trading, despite some self-serving advertising.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1484888988
Page Count: 302
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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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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