Stock-valuation

I would recommend this book to someone who wants a broad exposure of "Security Analysis on Wall Street." Mr. Hooke gives a great overview of the many facets of securities analysis. The drawback of this book is that it lacks specifics. For example, I was interested in getting a deeper analysis of valuation methodologies, however, what I found was a general overview of this section--the author then jumped right on to the next section. This example relates to all of the topic areas. Going deeper into topic areas so that more educated and experienced readers could get insight was not available for the most part. Nevertheless, I rate this book 4 stars because it does a great job of giving a strong overview of security analysis. I would recommend this book, especially for beginners and intermediate students and practitioners.

Hooke's book was a fine overall review of how Wall Street pros evaluate common stocks. He showed many examples of actual firms, and he supplies a lot of anecdotes. The book reads pretty well, and it covers a good variety of industries, including hi-tech, distressed companies and emerging markets.

MR. HOOKE HAS WRITTEN AN EXCELLENT BOOKOF THE SECURITY MARKETS, WALL STREET AND SECURITY ANALYSIS. IT SURPASSES A SIMILAR ONE WRITTEN BY GRAHAM & DODD. AS A 20 YEAR STUDENT OF BUSINESS AND SECURITY ANALYSIS, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND MR. HOOKE' S ANALYSIS OF SECURITIES, SECURITY ANALYSIS AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO THE ECONOMY.

THIS IS MR. HOOKE'S SECOND BOOK. HIS FIRST BOOK CONCERNED MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS . BOTH BOOKS USE PLAIN ENGLISH MAKING IT EASILY UNDERSTANDABLE TO THE AVERAGE PERSON AND NOT JUST A STUDENT OF THE SECURITY MARKET. THIS IS A GOOD BOOK FOR TEACHERS AND PROFESSORS WHO WANT THEIR STUDENTS TO READ , INFORMATIVE AND BOOKS WELL WRITTEN BOOKS ON THE SECURITY MARKET.

MR. HOOKE HAS 20 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE OF CORPORATE FINANCE, M AND A, INVESTMENT BANKING AND INTERNATIONAL FINANCE.HE HAS WORKED ON WALL STREET AND FOR THE WORLD BANK. HIS EXPERIENCE IS WELL EXEMPLIFIED IS HIS SECOND BOOK.

I HAVE REFERRED MR. HOOKE'S BOOK TO ALL OF MY ASSOCIATES ESPECIALLY THOSE IN THE INSURACE INDUSTRY WHICH IS MY PLACE OF WORK.

Anthony Spare and Paul Ciotti make a logical, but uninspired, case for making Relative Dividend Yield part of one's equity valuation and also one's buy/sell decisions. The book is clearly written and offers ample graphs to substantiate the notion of buying equities when dividend yields are high, and selling them once they are low.

Actually, the graphs may be too ample...readers of this rather expensive 248-page book will quickly learn that the text is a bit long on charts showing individual equity dividend yields relative to stock indexes over time, and a bit short on specifics concerning the avoidance of issues whose yields are high for good reason.

That's the book's essential deficiency: the authors devote a mere twelve overly general pages to "Pitfalls and Preventative Measures" (Chapter 6). Also, since investors will likely have a difficult time constructing the kinds of charts the Relative Dividend Yield methodology requires, it would have been helpful to offer tips on a cost-effective means to make this methodology applicable in real-time. The authors do, however, provide graphs with prior relative dividend yield histories, with room to continue plotting these yields, on several "blue chip" dividend-paying equities.

The coherent market hypothesis (CMH) presented in this book is an interesting alternative to the commonly used efficient market hypothesis. However, nonlinear dynamical systems have had less impact on economics than on other sciences. For good reasons. In economics there is rarely a theoretical reason for expecting to find one form of nonlinearity rather than another. As a result, the concepts presented in this book are quite interesting, but none of them is particularly convincing. In addition, the complex mathematics are not clearly explained. Empirical verification of the CMH is therefore extremely difficult, if not impossible. The practical value of this book is rather limited and does not provide enough reasons to abandon the assumptions of the efficient market hypothesis as a basis for day-to-day trading decisions.

The topic of this book: Using Chaos Theory for Market Timing, Stock Selection and Option Valuation--corresponds to that area of Economics reflected in the current Nobel Prize in Economics Winners for 2003! This book by Tonis Vaga, "Profiting from Chaos: Using Chaos Theory for Market Timing, Stock Selection, and Option Valuation", Dec., 1994; ISBN 0-07-066786-1 is about 9 years ahead of its time. The original definition of chaos emphasized the apparent unpredictable behavior arising in a dynamic deterministic system because of great sensitivity to initial conditions. If two arbitrarily close starting points diverge exponentially so that their future behavior becomes unpredictable then chaos has arisen! This is characteristic of weather, stock markets, and commodity markets. However, short term and middle term weather forecasting is performed regularly before the long term effects of chaos sets in. This is the same type of strategy used in this book for Market Timing, Stock Selection, and Option Valuation by use of Chaos Theory. There is an underlying regularity in a function that exhibits chaos which can be revealed by systematic perturbations to the trajectory. Just like weather forecasting can be successful by redefining the short and medium term (i.e., defacto systematic perturbations) then "Profiting from Chaos" in the short and medium term is also possible. The Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway has just confirmed the underlying thesis of Tonis Varga's book by this year's Nobel Prize in Economics award! I suspect that a revised edition will now be in the works, but get the original version before it is too late!