Dow-Jones-Industrial-Average

This is one of the easiest to read and understadn investment books I've ever found. Teaching children the value of long-term investment and money is a wonderful gift to give anyone. Adults will find the clear explanations, sound advice, and tips on getting started no matter how much you have to be valuable as well.

This and Jason Kelly's "Neatest Little Guide..." series are my favorite introductory investment books.

This is the type of book I wish I had when I first became interested in investing. It is so elementary that I can actually understand what the stock market is all about, and how I personally can benefit from getting myself educated about investing. What's more my teenage daughter is learning about investing and investment clubs and students from her class are getting together weekly to talk about the stock market, using this book as a guide. This is a wonderful book to introduce kids and teenagers to investing.

I found this book to be extremely helpful in decoding a very intimidating topic. The forum in which the book was layed out made for an easy and exciting read. I finally feel comfortable and adept to invest, in addition to having various resources for doing research. I highly recommend this book and have bought several copies for friends and family with and without children.

Charles Carlson's recent book is a variation of the "Dogs of the Dow" and like the Dogs books, this one also is flawed in the overall strategy. I suggest one take the data as presented in Carlson's book and calculate what percentage advantage the worst-to-first stocks have in order to double the DOW 30 from 1931 through half of 2003. When I checked out the ten worst price performers, Carlson's top performing portfolio, I found that the advantage only amounted to 1.22%. That means Carlson's strategy of selecting the ten worst performers by price as the stocks to purchase the follow year, outperformed the DOW 30 by 1.22% per year. This small advantage results in a portfolio that is doubles the DOW 30 over a 72 year period.

What Carlson fails to tell investors, or at least does not emphasize, is that commissions, taxes, bid/ask spread, and market impact will more than use up that 1.22% advantage. Therefore one is significantly better off to purchase an index of the DOW 30, sit back and do nothing. This is an investment book where you can save your money and invest in an index. You will be further ahead seventy years from now.

Charles B. Carlson's Winning With The Dow's Losers is an excellent resource for today's investor. The wealth of information provided between the covers is both unbiased and rich in content.

Carlson provides extensive charts and graphs displaying key statistical information where anyone can easily evaluate for their own purposes. The section where Carlson evaluates each of the 30 DOW stocks is quite exemplary. Even though the information is pretty current, Carlson keeps into account the trends of the market. He is conscience that such DOW Stocks as Eastman Kodak and AT&T might not be in touch with the current market conditions. Therefore, it may not be profitable to investment money in thoses stocks even after a battered down prior year. He also provides insight on future changes in the DOW and possible new candidates in the 30. Further analysis into the DOW Transport and Utility stocks are given as well.

The main focus of the book is to guide the reader on the simple stragegies of investing in reliable DOW Stocks and to turn over your portfolio systematically from year to year. However, the supplemental points as illustrated above certainly make this book fully loaded with valuable information. Therefore, I say keep this one handy on your shelf.

Charles Carlson, the author of seven previous investment books, has uncovered a simple strategy using the worst calendar-year Dow performers to beat the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) at its own game! Carlson's strategy is a twist to the Dogs of the Dow (DoD) strategy presented in Beating the Dow (1990) written by Michael O'Higgins. O'Higgins selected the ten highest paying dividend stocks in the DJIA and bought them at year-end and held them for a year, and then bought the next batch of highest yielding stocks, etc. That strategy did great in back-testing, but has not done well in the past few years.

For the uninitiated, Carlson provides the historical basis of the DJIA and devotes an entire chapter to the DJIA components, developments, and changes in the index. At least one page is devoted to each stock in the index with complete information on its historical significance and business. Another chapter is devoted to counterpoint arguments against the naysayers of his strategy.

Carlson's strategy does not use dividend yield as his selection criteria, but instead focuses on those stock(s) that have the worst yearly percentage price performance. He simply buys the DJIA stock(s) with the worst annual performance at the end of the year and holds it for one year, then he selects that year's worst performer and buys it, etc. In addition to the one stock portfolio, Carlson also shows the comparative results using the worst performing 3-stock, 5-stock and 10-stock portfolios. The 5- and 10-stock portfolios show the most consistent performance and have less risk than a one stock portfolio.

The book focuses on the performance of the worst 1-, 3-, 5- and 10-stock DJIA portfolios, and provides statistical information showing how these different stock strategies compared to the DJIA annually since 1931 (using back-testing) on a dollar-term, percentage, annual return, and percentage difference from its 200 day moving average basis. He also provided comparative results for last 30 year, 20 year, 10 year and 5 year periods. In addition, there is as 37-page appendix containing the performance of each DJIA stock since 1931 as far as annual performance change, the DJIA annual change, and the performance of each of his stock strategies in each of the years.

In a separate chapter, he even compares his strategies with the Dogs of the Dow and indicates their superiority over the DoD since 1999. The performance before that time showed mixed results depending upon which of Carlson's strategies are used.

Overall, the author presents a credible case for considering his DJIA strategies. He warns investors that they should only invest a portion of their money in any of these strategies, and to be sure to have a diversified portfolio overall to be successful. This book offers investors a mechanical stock selection process that takes the emotion out the investment equation. In that respect it has much to offer.

The stock market barometer is a completely unecessary defense of what the stock market is. It provides an incredible amount of uninteresting and completely trivious information. It is definitely NOT a must read.

This is a great book. There is just one update in the introduction. The rest of the book still maintains its 100 year old roots.

As a financial author I am always inclined to look to the past for answers. This book orignially written by Mr.Dow, of Dow Jones Industrial Average fame, still is very relevant today.

William Hamilton was the successor (both at the Wall Street Journal and in expounding the Dow Theory) to Charles Dow, and the one who clarified the Dow Theory as most people understand it today. To students of the Dow Theory, and of Wall Street and Investment history in general, this is a must-have volume. Also see works by Robert Rhea.

This book is very easy reading, with a lot of pictures and charts, and doesn't bore you with pages upon pages on text. It traces the history of the DJIA, showing what was happening in the world when the Dow hit certain benchmarks, and provides a "Readers Digest" version of market trends, biographical profiles, and cycles in the Dow. A great coffee table book.

Yes, this book actually recommends Worldcom (among a host of other lesser losers). It's interesting as a historical relic of the irrationally exuberant nonsense that pervaded in the late 90s. It should have been called Dow 4,000.

At least Harry Dent made a lot of $$$ with his silly, highly inaccurate stuff, this poor guy Elias is similiarly hopelessly wrong and the book is already out of print, just 3 years after release.
Sy Harding is flexible enough to make money in all types of markets, check out his personal website and read his outstanding book "Riding the Bear." One would need the leverage of options (specifically put option buying) to recoup $$$ lost by listening to silly bulls like Elias, read "Tools of the Bear" by Charles Caes.
Books like Dow 40,000 are a sure sign of a market top.

Call David Elias an optimist. He expects the Dow Jones Industrial Average to hit 40,000 by the year 2016, and he stands by his prediction, even in the wake of the stock market down turn. His target doesn't sound so outlandish if you consider that, in order to hit 40,000, the Dow must rise by only 9% annually in the next 16 years. (Investors already have accustomed themselves to much grander annual returns.) However, Elias, an investment adviser, might strike some readers as a bit too cheery. He says interest rates and inflation will remain low for a decade, and he predicts that the developing world will goose profits by buying ever-increasing quantities of products from U.S. companies. Elias also argues that the much-feared backlash from Baby Boomers pulling out of the market after they retire will prove a myth. While Elias' outlook is relentlessly buoyant, we [...] recommend his information to investors and his book's ripe conversational fodder to futurists and analysts.

The Dow 36,000 Theory is all about predicting a paradigm shift in current investors' perceptions. Tomorrow's investors are expected to forsake the old paradigm and embrace a new one. Authors James K. Glassman and Kevin A. Hassett present the "discounted dividend" model of the stock market as their reason why stock prices will soar, eventually. In 1999, they said it could happen anytime but put a window on it of 3-5 years. Hasn't happened yet. But this book is important as a look-see into how academic constructs originate and work their way into "commonly accepted stock market wisdom." The P/E was once a kernel of an idea in someone's head. Now, it's the basic way to value stocks. So, conceptions do change over time.
Dividends, say Glassman and Hassett, whether paid out quarterly or totally retained in the company, are the only important way to determine a company's true worth. They call it the PRP (perfectly reasonable price).
To justify lofty expectations, the words "assume" and "assumption" are used dozens of times and lie at the bottom of what, so far, is wrong with this concept. Just because they calculate something as being worth many times what it's selling for today doesn't mean prices will skyrocket tomorrow. It requires acknowledgement and action by investors. We're back to the old high school conundrum of whether a tree makes any noise if it falls in a forest without anybody hearing it. It this case, the question is whether a stock will ever sell at its "true value" if nobody ever bids the price up that far? Obviously not.
Their credo, "Buy anytime, hold forever," as well as the recommended use of index funds is a recipe for never having to admit you're wrong regardless of what happens to your investment account. You never have to confront performance because that far away goal just hasn't been reached yet. Continue to hold. It's an enviable position, if you can get people to take you seriously. But Dow 36,000...is it possible? Sure, anything is possible if the paradigm shifts. It's shifted before and will shift again. The trouble with paradigm shifts is like Greenspan's recognition of a bubble. You won't know about it until it's already happened...and then it's too late,,,

Here's why I think this is a valuable and important book.

1. It looks forwards instead of backwards at what a stock should be worth to you. The histories of companies and stocks can certainly be entertaining, but I'd much rather know what's in it for me! A lot of the apparent uncertainties of the market get washed away when you can look at a reasonable stream of future dividends and figure out that it's several times a bond yield. You can easily plug in your own assumptions and get a straightforward, rational answer that helps you make decisions.

2. It demystifies market risk. Millions of column inches get written every day about how the stock market bounces around; all that ink is just a distraction that confuses people about the long term stability of the growth of economies. If you're planning to take all your money and buy a car in a year (like a friend of mine), stocks may be the wrong choice. If you're really focused 20 years out, do yourself a favor and quit watching the ticker.

3. It respects both investing psychology and efficient markets. Psychology tells you that a) people behave within a context -- they do things that "make sense" -- and b) they don't make decisions the way mathematicians say they should, but they usually get pretty good results anyway (by using rules of thumb to simplify decisions). Similarly, markets are efficient, but only within a context. Investment analysts on Wall Street will reasonably argue today whether IBM is worth $130 or $135 a share, even while I may be convinced it's worth $400 or more over time. It can make perfect sense that many individuals have done extremely well over the last few years while investment analysts and fund managers mostly haven't.

4. It respects the fact that the world changes. If "past performance is no guarantee of future results," who do the pros behave as if it is? The market behaved differently prewar and postwar, in the 1950s vs. the 1960s vs. 1982-1994 vs. since 1994. Investors behave extremely differently now than before IRAs and 401(k)s.

5. Even if the conclusions turn out to be wrong, the advice is still good. Personally, I think these guys are probably right. But if you've taken their advice and the market doesn't do what they say, you've still bought fairly-valued stocks, saved and invested your money, and resisted short term churning and flailing. You'll probably still make out pretty well -- certainly better than most fund managers and day traders.

Despite the sensational title, Glassman and Hassett have written a very useful, and fundamentally conservative, book. It is really two books in one: the first half outlines an economically sound method for how to determine the "perfectly reasonable price" of a stock based on the future earnings of the underlying company. The second half is a very useful guide to the intricacies of the market for the beginning to intermediate investor: someone who is familiar with P/E's, but has not yet mastered REITs and DRIPs.

Unlike many financial books, the combination of a rigorously trained economist and market savvy journalist has lead to a very readable book, which none the less is based on sound principles. Anyone who is investing in the market should read this book.

Reading the other reviews, I was fascinated how they are split between 5 star and 1 star ratings. Clearly, many of the 1 star raters did not bother to read the book, or completely misunderstood its central message. Others claimed the mathematics is wrong.

As a Ph.D. scientist, I made the effort to run the numbers myself, and, given the assumptions of the book, they are right. Anyone who cannot follow the arguments presented probably should limit their involvement in the market to purchasing broadly based mutual funds: several good ones are recommended in the book.