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Here's a Forbes review of the book "Yes! You Can Time the Market!"

""Its thesis: The price at which you buy stocks matters a great deal, and it is much wiser to buy when stocks are low than when they are high. That sounds obvious enough, but it is routinely denied by money managers, investment "experts" on television, and stock brokers, whose interest, as it happens, is to sell stocks (or advice) to the "ordinary investor" whenever they can. "

http://www.forbes.com/2003/07/24/cx_da_ ... eview.html

Interesting article, hocus.

What did you make of it?

I was alarmed that using their system the last time you would have bought stocks was 1984 at S&P of 167 and by 2000, 988.61. I would be interested to learn what the P/E was on both figures to see whether the difference is just speculation in which I might agree with them. I cannot determine that from the comments in the article. Can you know that from the book?

What do you think of their 15 year average price idea? This might not cover decade or 2 decade long business cycles on performance.

Value of the book as a purchase? (No, American book, cannot get from a UK library!)

Petey

hocus wrote:Here's a Forbes review of the book "Yes! You Can Time the Market!"

""Its thesis: The price at which you buy stocks matters a great deal, and it is much wiser to buy when stocks are low than when they are high. That sounds obvious enough, but it is routinely denied by money managers, investment "experts" on television, and stock brokers, whose interest, as it happens, is to sell stocks (or advice) to the "ordinary investor" whenever they can. "

http://www.forbes.com/2003/07/24/cx_da_ ... eview.html

Interesting article, hocus. What did you make of it?

It's another sign of the times, like the article I posted yesterday. I think you are going to see more and more of this in the months ahead. People are starting to ask questions that they have not been willing to ask before. People are developing a desire to learn about what sorts of "timing" work and what sorts don't.

We are ahead of just about anyone else on this, so far as I can tell. We have considered angles that others are not worrying about. That's good in a way and bad in a way. It's good because we are being more careful. It's bad because we are sometimes losing sight of the forest for the trees.

What has already been demonstrated here is of great importance. I want to get to work publicizing tht stuff as soon as possible (which means early next year). We shouldn't hold back any longer on forming tentative conclusions on the basics. At the same time, we shouldn't stop looking deeper into unresolved questions either. You never know what will turn up as a result of doing that.

The strangest aspect of this matter is that it seems to me at times that we have too much proof on some of the points. It helps sometimes to clear your head and just look at one thing we have done and take in how important it is. When you consider it all together, you can get hung up on the aspects which we have not yet resolved to our satifaction. We do not know everything there is to know about SWRs at this point, not by a long shot.

But we do know some things for sure. We need to move forward on those things as soon as possible while holding back on the things we do not yet know. The first step, of course, is reaching some sort of consensus on which things fall into which categories. We need to distinguish between the things we now know for sure and the things which remain unresolved.

One of my hopes for this board is that it will help in the effort to set priorities. We need to make an agenda for this SWR Reform Project. What are the three top tasks for early 2004? We need to list them, one, two, three, and then set dates by which we hope to accomplish things in regard to them. We need to set goals and then assign tasks for completing them, and then see that those tasks are carried out.

That's not exactly what you asked, Petey. But it relates to it. My view is that this book helps us because it shows that other people are finding that the data takes them in similar direction to where it has taken us. My personal view, however, is that we are a few steps ahead of the authors of that book. You could learn from it if you have the time to read it. If your time is lgreatly limited, I think you would learn more by going through some of the best threads that have been posted to this board. I believe that the work we are doing here is going to have more long-term importance.

It seems that you didn't answer any of the questions asked.

Petey

hocus wrote:Interesting article, hocus. What did you make of it?

It's another sign of the times, like the article I posted yesterday. I think you are going to see more and more of this in the months ahead. People are starting to ask questions that they have not been willing to ask before. People are developing a desire to learn about what sorts of "timing" work and what sorts don't.

We are ahead of just about anyone else on this, so far as I can tell. We have considered angles that others are not worrying about. That's good in a way and bad in a way. It's good because we are being more careful. It's bad because we are sometimes losing sight of the forest for the trees.

What has already been demonstrated here is of great importance. I want to get to work publicizing tht stuff as soon as possible (which means early next year). We shouldn't hold back any longer on forming tentative conclusions on the basics. At the same time, we shouldn't stop looking deeper into unresolved questions either. You never know what will turn up as a result of doing that.

The strangest aspect of this matter is that it seems to me at times that we have too much proof on some of the points. It helps sometimes to clear your head and just look at one thing we have done and take in how important it is. When you consider it all together, you can get hung up on the aspects which we have not yet resolved to our satifaction. We do not know everything there is to know about SWRs at this point, not by a long shot.

But we do know some things for sure. We need to move forward on those things as soon as possible while holding back on the things we do not yet know. The first step, of course, is reaching some sort of consensus on which things fall into which categories. We need to distinguish between the things we now know for sure and the things which remain unresolved.

One of my hopes for this board is that it will help in the effort to set priorities. We need to make an agenda for this SWR Reform Project. What are the three top tasks for early 2004? We need to list them, one, two, three, and then set dates by which we hope to accomplish things in regard to them. We need to set goals and then assign tasks for completing them, and then see that those tasks are carried out.

That's not exactly what you asked, Petey. But it relates to it. My view is that this book helps us because it shows that other people are finding that the data takes them in similar direction to where it has taken us. My personal view, however, is that we are a few steps ahead of the authors of that book. You could learn from it if you have the time to read it. If your time is lgreatly limited, I think you would learn more by going through some of the best threads that have been posted to this board. I believe that the work we are doing here is going to have more long-term importance.

Petey, there was an interview with Ben Stein about his book on PBS last Friday, July 25, 2003. I don't know how long the URL will be good but here it is: http://www.pbs.org/wsw/tvprogram/ There is no date in that URL so it may hold only the latest transcript of the program, Wall Street Week. The interview with Stein starts about half way down the page. To avoid taking anything out of context, I won't post any excerpts here. If it weren't for copyright problems, I'd post the entire transcript. Ben Stein talks about Yes, You Can Time the Market. Mitch Zacks talks about his book Ahead of the Market. Robert J. Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance, talks about his new book The New Financial Order.

Editted to add this URL to replace the one I gave above: http://www.pbs.org/wsw/tvprogram/20030725.html Any reaction?