Investment-management

This 600-plus page book is written like a sterile academic textbook for a course devoid of any real world knowledge or experience. Ironically, the author states that the book evolved as a result of a course he teaches.

It is stated that the author was a floor trader with many years experience on a Wall Street futures exchange (been there, done that). If this is in fact true, there is not a single anecdote about his own trading experiences in the entire book, at least what I read of it. What we would be interested in is a chronicle of how the author achieved competency and his experiences on the road to trading success, if in fact he achieved this. Did he have a successful trader as a mentor? How long did he lose money as a trader before achieving success? What were some of his significant breakthroughs as a trader? Did he have a "trading epiphany"? What were the major mistakes he saw traders make who ultimately failed? What is his greatest advice for new traders?

Unfortunately, we will never know the answer to these questions, because this author completely missed the point in writing a book on trading.

In case you just want to have a close to nothing idea of the highly complicated trading or investment market, it's for you. In case you read in order to earn an edge to profit in market where 90% to 95% of the participants are doomed to fail, forget about this.

The author has a tendency to describe a simple concept which requires only a few sentences to outline in a complete fashion using 4 or 5 pages of ridiculous examples which often fail to even relate to the subject matter.

It is also painfully obvious to anyone who has read any of Bradley's writing that the 5 star review from "A reader" from "New York" is actually written by the author himself.

This is certainly an example of a simple book, about the ideas and principles behind risk, which the author explains thoroughly. It is full of insights too, and will probably never go out of date. It gives you a clear understanding of risk in any context, financial or otherwise.

A new, easy to understand risk measure, the author's invention, is central to the book. He uses it effectively to explain the well known but hard to understand standard deviation measure of risk. He also uses it to derive a new version of the risk equation that makes risk elimination and reduction possibilities almost obvious. The original risk equation, over which the author's version is a clear improvement, was first proposed by William Sharpe.

But be warned. This is a book for ideas people only. The author is clearly only interested in principles. (The front cover does state that the book is about practical principles, and means it.) All of the author's examples, many of them almost trivial, are geared to getting the reader to understand a unified set of principles represented by a few basic equations. Nowhere will you find a detailed method for carrying out some specific complex operation, either in finance or everyday systems. The author obviously assumes that if you have understood the principles, you will be able to figure out what to do in any situation, even an entirely new one.

Some people are not very comfortable with ideas, concepts and principles, however, especially application of principles to new situations. They are more comfortable dealing with complex specifics and standard procedures. Such readers may react negatively to this book, since it lacks specific information about any specific situation. With that caveat, I rate it five stars. I found one obvious typographic error near the end, inside an arithmetic expression that came out right.

p.s. This book contains the highest number of cartoon (eight) in those trading books I ever read. Sadly, most were drawn with one single theme, that "Day Trading would annihilate the brokers". That should have implied something about the direction and quality of the book, which I had mistakenly ignored.

The book in particular focuses on security applications for the accounting industry so accountants in particular should find this text worthwhile. However, the book is still relevant to all fields and industries that are looking to get in on the e-business revolution.

Here are the topics Greenstein and Feinman address:

1.The Role of Third Parties

2.The Regulatory Environment: Cryptography and International Laws, Libel Laws, Domain Name Disputes

3.EDI, E-Commerce and the Internet

4.Risks of Insecure Systems: Data Interception, Social Engineering, Sabotage by Current/Former Employees, DoS attacks, Viruses

5.Risk Management: Managing Security Gaps, Culture Management, Disaster Recovery Plans

6.Internet Security Standards: Standards Organizations, Security Protocols

7.Cryptography and Authentication: Encryption Techniques, Public and Private Keys,

8.Firewalls

9.Payment Mechanisms: SET, SSL, Smart Cards

10.Intelligent Agents

11.Web-Marketing

Overall, Greenstein and Feinman do a fine job of covering the various technologies and issues that deal with security in e-business. This book was used as a text for an e-commerce security course I took during the summer of 2002. Whether you are studying this subject independently or whether you are an instructor looking to use this book for your course, Greenstein and Feinman's "E-Commerce Security, Risk Management and Control" is a decent choice.

Highly Recommended

I recently read "The Millionaire Mind" by Thomas J. Stanley. Not nearly as good as Carlson's "Eight Steps....". Carlson gives the reader a lot of practical information on how people make money by investing long-term in stocks. Very interesting and useful stuff.

Eventhough the author mentions about mutual funds, I suggest readers go through other books available in the market regarding mutual funds as the focus in this book seems to be stocks stocks and more stocks.

Its a damn good book for beginners and answers basic questions like how to buy stock, what cost and the sources and also how to go about putting your initial investment.

I would recommend to beginners like me !!!