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Title: Triumph of the Optimists: 101 Years of Global Investment Returns by Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh, Mike Staunton ISBN: 0-691-09194-3 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $99.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17
Rating: 5
Summary: Triumph of the Investigators
Comment: "In writing this book," authors Dimson, Marsh, and Staunton conclude, "we set out to answer four big questions: How have stock markets performed over the twentieth century, domestically and internationally? How has this compared with bonds and bills? What has been the impact of foreign exchange fluctuations? And what toll has inflation taken?"
In answering these questions, the authors have achieved perhaps the greatest triumph: assembling a 101 year database from 16 countries that is free from the "easy data" biases that result from utilizing readily available--but skewed--financial information.
In the spirit of their title, the authors find that stocks worldwide provide real risk-adjusted returns above and beyond bills and bonds. Interestingly, their estimates of risk premia are more modest than those offered by traditional sources. They also provide intriguing support for seasonality effects and the favorable returns associated with high dividend yields, value investing, and worldwide diversification.
Quite simply, I know of no other source of information on the "big picture" of investing that is as thorough or as lucidly outlined. This is a rare work of theoretical *and* practical significance.
Rating: 5
Summary: The most Important book for any investment professional
Comment: Any serious investor or student of the market should own a copy of this book. This book presents and analyzes data from many countries in a simple, easy to understand manner. It examines seasonal movements in stock prices, moves in different sectors, equity and bond risk premiums, size effects, effects of exchange rates, returns of various investment strategies, the list goes on. It presents over 100 years of stock and bond returns, from seventeen different countries, providing an incredible perspective on market movements.
In order to invest successfully, it is important to study the history of price movements, in various economic conditions. This book contains the information you will need, presented in an easy to understand manner.
To have this amount of data and analysis all in one book, is a huge achievement by the authors, and is of immense benefit to the serious investor.
Rating: 2
Summary: Very disappointing given the price
Comment: This is a very handsome book with lovely graphs etc. However I was after a useful summary of historical market performance.
This book was lacking in several respects:
1. The numbers behind the graphs are not provided and are not available so you cannot do any further analysis yourself. The graphs themselves are also drawn in such a way that it is hard to extract the numbers using a ruler.
2. The problem of survivorship bias. They claim that while the 16 countries analysed are an incomplete list (only 70% of world GDP in 1900), this is not a big problem, they feel. Their message that stocks do well in the long run supposedly remains intact, however they do not provide any solid evidence of this. The countries left out of course suffered terrible performance, with total confiscation of assets in most cases and major losses in others.
The countries left out include: Russia, China, Eastern Europe, Latin America. As an example, Argentina was the wealthiest country 100 years ago but was left out. They claim that their criterion for inclusion was the availability of data, but Switzerland was included even though the data is incomplete.
In my opinion, some attempt should have been made to adjust for this problem.
3. No assessment is made of the issue of capital controls etc as an impedement to implementing the world indexing strategy. It is simply assumed that equal dollar indexing could be implemented without any costs, and with no taxes.
All in all, this book fails to provide a realistic and convincing assessment of global investment returns in the real world.
Victor Niederhoffer uses this book to justify his bullishness on stocks, Sorry Vic, no cigar.
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Title: Practical Speculation by Victor Niederhoffer, Laurel Kenner ISBN: 0471443069 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 21 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Tomorrow's Gold: Asia's Age of Discovery by Marc Faber ISBN: 9628606727 Publisher: CLSA Pub. Date: 12 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.95 |
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Title: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb ISBN: 1587990717 Publisher: Texere Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip by Jim Rogers ISBN: 0375509127 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century by Robert J. Shiller ISBN: 0691091722 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 02 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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