Day: September 9, 2014

Post 2600

Post 2600

Every 100 posts or so, I take a step back and think about where I have been, and maybe, where things are heading. ?This time, things are a little different.

It started when there was a series of articles published where they were measuring the amount of social media influence various RIAs that blog have. ?The early ones placed me twelfth, and then one placed me fourth, without making a big thing?that the group was limited to RIAs. ?At present (thanks Michael Kitces!), I may be ranked fifth, for what it is worth.

That said, I don’t blog to be at or near the top of anyone’s rankings. ?I’ve learned over the years that blogging is a fickle thing. ?It’s one reason why I keep a wide variety of topics on hand, because those that specialize in one area (such as scandal or crisis) get put out to pasture when everything normalizes.

After that, I decided to write one post to explain my blog to those who were new readers, because there were a lot of them. ?Okay, that was the last century post. ?For what it is worth, that one was around 2530, and this one around 2615.

In the middle of this, I decided to update the WordPress software at my blog, and improve the ability of people to comment here using Jetpack, enhance social sharing, and allow people to log in using WordPress, among other things. ?If the ability to use my blog as a reader hasn’t improved, please let me know.

Then another weird thing happened. ?Yahoo Finance finally decided to cleanse the shire, and tossed out what I felt were a number of subpar content providers. ?That’s when I noticed the replacement which was Yahoo Finance Contributors. ?I asked to be admitted, and I was happily waved in.

What I didn’t expect was that it would roughly double the readers coming to?my blog natively. ?Email and RSS are up also. ?I suspect that there will be some fall-off from these levels, but it is interesting to see this happen after 7.5 years of blogging and?a relatively stable audience over the last five years.

About the only change long time readers should see is a picture at the top of almost all of my pieces from now on, unless like this post, I am not sending it onto Yahoo Finance via my intermediary tumblr blog. ?Additional note: if you want to comment at my blog using DISQUS, it is operational on the tumblr site.

I don’t intend on changing anything else at this blog — not topics, style, etc. ?I remain happy to answer questions via blog posts, and I have a number of book reviews coming, but the one thing I don’t have any more of are long series of posts on a related topic. ?I think all of those are out of my system.

As I end many of these memorial posts, I thank you for spending time on my blog reading my musings. ?I hope you always find it valuable, but I realize there are seasons in life, so if you eventually find me not as useful, well, that’s normal for many. ?My topics change over time, usually in sync with the markets. ?Phrasing it another way, if you find me less useful, you might want to check back in when?market events change, because you might find me relevant again (or not).

One final note: if anyone knows a cartoonist that might like to work with me, let me know. ?No guarantee that I will do anything there, but I have been musing about a few ideas. ?Bye for now!

Book Review: The Little Book of Market Wizards

Book Review: The Little Book of Market Wizards

9781118858691_MF5.inddOver time, I have reviewed a decent number of “Little Books.” ?I have a theory as to why I like some of them, and not others. ?I like the ones that take a relatively narrow concept and summarize it. ?An example of that would be Mark Mobius’ book on emerging markets, or Vitaliy Katsenelson’s book on sideways markets.

But when a concept is broad and not friendly to summary, a “little book” is not so useful. ?As examples, John Mauldin’s book on Bulls?Eye ?Investing went too many directions, and Scaramucci on Hedge Funds could not adequately summarize or describe a large topic.

There are other “Little Books” that I have read that did not even get a review… probably about 10% of the books I read in entire never get the review written because they were so bad, or just hard to decide what the book was. ?(What do you want to be if you grow up dear? 😉 )

Sorry, too much intro. ?For those at Amazon, there are useful links at my blog.

Jack Schwager is generally a good writer, and expert at talking with clever investors in order to break down the main points of how they invest (without giving away the store). ?In this “Little Book” he goes a different direction, and looks for commonalities among various clever investors, with each chapter covering a different?topic.

My view is that most clever investors fall into one of a bunch of categories, much of which boils down to time horizon for the preferred investment. ?Going down the continuum: day trader, swing trader, longer-term trader, momentum-oriented growth investor, growth investor, growth-at-a-reasonable-price investor, and value investor. ?After that, you might differentiate between those that go for relative vs absolute returns.

As such, the book posits a bunch of topics that apply to different groups of clever investors. ?I think it would have been better to have segmented the book by classes of investors, because then you could have a coherent set of commonalities for each main investor type.

As it is, the book relies heavily on anecdotes, which isn’t entirely a bad thing; nothing motivates a topic like a story. ?But if you were reading this to try to develop your own philosophy of managing money in order to fit your own personality, you might have a hard time doing it with this book. ?I think you would be better off reading one of Schwager’s longer books, and reading about each clever investor separately. ?At least then you get to see the full package for an investor, and how the different aspects of investing in a given style work together.

Quibbles

Already expressed.

Summary

If you just want a taste of what a wide variety of different investors do to be effective, this could be the book for you. ?For most other people, get one of Schwager’s longer books, and read about the different investors as individual chapters. ?If you still want to buy it, you can buy it here:?The Little Book of Market Wizards: Lessons from the Greatest Traders.

Full disclosure:?I?received a?copy from the author’s PR flack.

If you enter Amazon through my site, and you buy anything, I get a small commission.? This is my main source of blog revenue.? I prefer this to a ?tip jar? because I want you to get something you want, rather than merely giving me a tip.? Book reviews take time, particularly with the reading, which most book reviewers don?t do in full, and I typically do. (When I don?t, I mention that I scanned the book.? Also, I never use the data that the PR flacks send out.)

Most people buying at Amazon do not enter via a referring website.? Thus Amazon builds an extra 1-3% into the prices to all buyers to compensate for the commissions given to the minority that come through referring sites.? Whether you buy at Amazon directly or enter via my site, your prices don?t change.

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