Money-market

There is an old joke about a guy who wakes up in a car in the middle of a field and has no idea where he is or how he got there. He flags down the first guy he sees and asks him where he is, to which he replies, "you are sitting in a car in the middle of a field". Our lost friend replies, "you must be an accountant, because while everything you say is totally accurate, it is completely useless".

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.

There are 33 chapters in this 639 page book which practically put everything you can think of about trading or investment into it. Technical Analysis, Fundamental Analysis, Trading Psychology, Options, Commodities... simply everything. The problem is: dont know whether it's the intent of the author to give so general an idea of everything to its readers or he is too agressive to encompass so much in one single book. He just used a page or two to describe very complicated items like MACD, Stochastics, Gann Fan, Fibonnaci numbers, Bonds, Computer Trading, Crude Oil, Platinum, Gamma, Theta, Rho, Delta Neutral 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.

Robert Rotella captures the essence of trading psychology. This book is a must read for all investors - regardless of timeframe, experience, or markets traded. I rank it in the top five trading books I've ever read.

Intellectual historians have traditionally done a bad job at making connections between thinkers' thoughts and thinkers' environments. Kaye succeeds by pointing out economy's influence on philosphy. I am convinced.

I reviewed every Money and Banking text I could get my hands on before selecting Mishkin's text to use while I was an instructor at one of the top universities in the US. Mishkin's text was hands-down the best text. But there weren't a lot of alternatives to choose from. This text gets used in a lot of MBA programs.

The thing I liked most about this text was its comprehensiveness. Mishkin did a far better job than the other text of introducing stock options. And of course, he covered the banking (money multiplier, bnak loans, etc.) side comprehensively. Good job with exchange rates, too.

Weaknesses: Need more on the insurance industry, particularly with the biggest banks now firmly in that business. Need more on financial futures. And finally, I'd like to see a little more mathematical rigor. I supplemented the text in an undergrad class with some more mathematical articles from the economics literature.