Read A Book? Not Exactly.
From the Washington Post comes a piece of wisdom from Mark Cuban about what book to read that will help to understand the current financial crisis:
“I don’t think there is such a book. In my humble opinion, people who actually believe they can understand all the issues are the ones that got us to where we are today. In reality, there are so many variables and so little data, it’s all a guess. I don’t think a book exists that can explain it. Is there a book out there called ‘No One Has a Clue What Is Going On and the Whole World Is Guessing’?”
And if you can’t understand it all (which is of course what many top traders believe) then the quant view of the world, the stats view of the world, the odds view of the world - sure makes a tremendous amount of common sense to deal with constant uncertainty.
Security And Prosperity Partnership Added:
September 7th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.JulesRenardJules Renard
Robert Added:
September 8th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Here’s something we could read. It’s called the constitution. It would have prevented these stupid GSE’s.
Matthew Added:
September 15th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Economic downturns are very difficult to predict, but sophisticated econometric modelling houses like Data Resources and Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions.
William C. Added:
September 15th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Having read George Soros’s book “The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it means” I came across a reference to Charles R. Morris’s book “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown”. Combined, these two explain pretty much. Soros looks to the philosophical side of things and Morris looks at the mechanical side. Both together are quite a satisfying explanation.
Wolfgang Added:
September 16th, 2008 at 5:30 am
In fact, there are a number of books that indeed can explain what currently happens in the markets I believe. It’s just that people usually tend to look for prefabricated answers, rather than do their own thinking. For starters, I would suggest reading “Fooled by Randomness” and “The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets”. Or “When Genius Failed”. Of course, they don’t give the answers directly. But readers should be able to come up with some. At least I did.
But on the other hand, what do I know? I’m just a boring Trendfollower who rode the trend up and currently rides it down again. I actually enjoy trying to understand why things happen as they happen. But besides that little intellectual challenge, I couldn’t care less.
Rick Added:
September 16th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
I understand human nature quite well, if I do say so myself. Human nature has a trend that is very repeatable and predictable. That much I do understand in a useful way. As far as another perspective on the financial mess, The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin reads like a script that was written fourteen years ago. It’s quite interesting to note the parallels with what’s happening right now.
Rick Added:
September 16th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Will I try to predict? Nope, not getting sucked into that one. Will I prepare? Yup.
bruce Added:
September 16th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
please, the biggest credit bubble in the world is popping, plenty of people know and understand what is going on……the difficult part was the timing of the bust…..and that is what the technicals are for.