Investment-management

This work denotes nothing of true insight or interest. I was amazed at the general obviousness of this text, along with the manicured "perspective", that was nothing but book read.
I suspect Ms. Dunung has never even been to Asia, for, as a business man myself who has been working there for many decades, I see no hard earned knowledge or awareness in her assuptions.

Covers nineteen countries, providing background including history, economy, political structure, social customers and etiquette, and business practices. An impressive wealth of information including such unexpected tidbits as an appendix giving brief discussions of all major Asian religions, climate conditions, the number of computers per 1,000 people expected by 2000, and numerous key organizations, telephone numbers and addresses. If you're interested in traveling and doing business in Asia this book is an excellent value. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, Stern & Associates, author of Stern's Sourcefinder: The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and Stern's Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.

LJ's book is mostly a regurgitation of Warren Buffett's letters combined with a few exerpts from the Enron and other shareholder letters. She's clearly fallen under the spell of the Oracle from Omaha. I wish there were new insights here about evaluating people for business partnerships, but there isn't anything of the sort. Rather, we get a childlike and skin deep analysis of a few shareholder letters spliced into a sparse review of Buffett's letters. Very disappointing.

Drawing on examples from extreme ends of ethical spectrum in todays's bussiness world--Berkshire Hathaways and Enron--Ms. Rittenhouse puts forth a compelling argument about the benefits of remaining principled in one's business dealings.

Thanks to this book, I no longer believe that good CEOs must live in an ethical gray area in order to turn a profit in today's business world. This book should be the basis for a complete reevaluation of current accepted business practices.

The author also illustrates how an average person can thoughtfully gauge the ethics of a company through careful analysis of its annual report.

Bravo Ms. Rittenhouse!

Laura Rittenhouse has done us all a great favour in her book "Do Business with People you can Trust". It should be required reading for all CEO's and corporate communicators. At last we can see the propects for creating shareholder value by full and honest disclosure and she has created a useful technique for assessing the value (or lack of it)implicit in the shareholder letters published by CEOs.
All those who have had the uneviable task of writing reports or letters to shareholders know the temptations of the fashionable phrase or the piece of internal jargon. They are easy to write and get the job done - but we should all learn to stand back and ask "exactly what does that mean?"
Disclosure requirements are increasing in all countries but no amount of rules or legislation will prevent the use of meaningless phrases or words. The author helps us understand what works and what doesn't.
I only have two suggestions for improvement. First, I think we are benefiting here in the UK from additional disclosures about risk management and many companies are now reporting on the major risks they are taking and how they manage them. More on that would have been helpful. Second, She has focused on the "goodies" strongly represented by Berkshire Hathaway, and the "baddies" represented by Enron. The emphasis on these two companies is heavy and I would have preferred something a little more balanced.
Other than that I enjoyed the book immensely, it is well and intelligently written with a mischievous sense of humour. I hope Ms Rittenhouse will persevere with her theme and continue her analysis for an update in a year or so.

If you don't know the difference between a Savings GIC or CD and a balanced fund then this book is definitely not for you. Written to an audience of more savvy investors, DIY is designed to help experienced investors make the transition from a professionally managed portfolio to a self managed, successful investment future. DIY- Do it Yourself or Direct Invest Yourself is not for the faint of heart.

Knowledge breeds power and this book will help empower the DIY investor; filled with strategies designed to help the reader develop creative investment principles in a disciplined, intelligent manner. The book is written in three parts: Background, Trend Regression Portfolio Strategy and Portfolio Management Issues. Topics covered include: Market Timing, Stock Picking, Trading History and Risk and Reward, just to name a few. Investors are shown how to access and use MS Excel portfolio tracking spreadsheets to produce a comprehensive portfolio workbook. Sample graphs, models and illustrations are explained in detail. Many references and quotes from Robert F. Drach's, High return Low Risk Investment as well as the Drach weekly newsletter are included throughout the book.

Author, Lyle Wilkinson is Canadian earning his BBA and MBA in Hawaii where he now lives. In 1999, he began researching a disciplined, mechanical system's approach to the stock market. The result of that research is DIY-Portfolio Management.

Considering taking your portfolio into your own hands? This book is an excellent learning tool and a practical, comprehensive guide for remodeling your financial future.
Reviewer: Shirley Roe, Allbooks Reviews

It should be no surprise to anyone these days that over time money funds tend to track the stock indexes. Some do better, some worse, but over time they tend to track the average. So, how do you do better than average? How do you beat the indexes? Lyle Wilkinson proposes that the answer is really fairly simple. If the stocks tend to track toward a mean then trends can be examined to see where a stock is located on its mean. This fancy term for this is trend regression analysis. In his book "DIY Portfolio Management" Mr. Wilkinson provides a great explanation of trend regression analysis - what it is, what it is not, why it makes sense, and how to do it. For those who like statistics he builds the complete formulas and rationale, for those who don't he points out that many services provide trend analysis on their sites. You don't have to calculate the trend regression but you do need to understand what it is and how it works if you want to use it. This book shows how to use the information to pick a stock that is likely to rise or fall. However, this is not the only analysis in the book. He includes information on TRiPS, market timing, risk analysis, cycles, and even an action plan. "DIY Portfolio Management" takes a very technical subject and makes it available to the layman. Lyle Wilkinson's excellent and thorough job of explaining trend regression analysis and its use in the stock market is the primary reason "DIY Portfolio Management" is a highly recommended read for the technical investor looking to take control of his investments.

While Divorcing the Dow highlights some tried and true criteria for selecting individual equity investments, e.g. to focus on leading companies that dominate vital growing sectors of the economy, it also falls prey to a "new logic" approach that can be very misleading, especially to beginning investors. Worse, the authors don't understand a fundamental rule of financial arithmetic. On page 162 they discuss a hypothetical investment manager that turns a portfolio worth $100,000 into $200,000 in one year, and then loses half that value the next, resulting in an end year value of $100,000. The authors suggest that the "average return" from this is 25% (the arithmetic mean of +100% and -50%). Clearly, if we began and ended with the same dollar value, the average annual return is 0%, which is the result calculated by the geometric mean, the correct method to use in computing growth rates. A 25% average annual return on $100,000 would result in a portfolio value after two years of $100,000 X (1.25^2) = $156,250. The authors and their editors should know better. In my opinion readers would be far better served by such classics as The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel, or Contrarian Investment Strategies, by David Dremen.

Divorcing the Dow provided a provoking examination of how we have historically defined the financial "markets". This book challenges the reader to re-define how we have used outdated measurements to forcast future market conditions. The authors have presented a new and fresh approach to evaluating the next financial revolution! After a 3 year bear market, I feel more optimistic than ever before!

Finally a positive outlook.

The authors'extensive research and easy read format makes it hard to put down. Divorcing The Dow constitutes information from the past that can be used as a road map for future investing. The research alone is worth the price of the book.

Thank you for such a great book in these uncertain times.

The book gives a comprehensive review of the research that has been done about dividends. A great place to start your own research.

This book takes a very in depth view from an analytic standpoint as well as a practical standpoint. The conditions of a Perfect Capital Market are explored and then the realities of today's markets are evaluated with regard to dividend policy. It turns out dividend policy does matter - perhaps that doesn't surprise you but now there is better evidence to support the claims.

I was disappointed in the quality of the directory. Kennedy Information's Gold Book of Venture Capital Firms and Pratt's Venture Capital Directory are much better.

Everything I needed to know was in this book. I didn't wastetime calling tapped-out funds or people who didn't care. They also offer an electronic version delivered via email. They say don't do it, but I used the database for a personalized fax campaign Friday and Monday and received 13 reponses from cold calls in about 15 hours isn't to shabby. This is a whole lot cheaper than the directories that cost over $300 bucks.

A new, uptodated and expanded edition of this book is available here at Amazon