Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation
Author: Edward Chancellor
List Price: $15.00
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ISBN: 0452281806
Publisher: Plume (05 June, 2000)
Sales Rank: 3,637
Average Customer Rating: 4.46 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Pop Go the Weasels: On Market Bubbles and Skullduggery
Chancellor's book is a highly entertaining history of market speculation taking in everything from the Tulip Mania of 17th century Holland and the English South Sea Company bubble to Japan in the '80s, the Savings and Loan Rip Off, Michael Milken's Junk Bonds, the Long Term Capital Management fiasco and the Internet craze of the late 1990's. Chancellor even covers the 90's art market.One constant stands out about market piracy: what is new is old - only the names and games have changed. Markets have always been manipulated and always will be. The reforms that follow in the wake of each bubble plant the seeds for the next. Often because the legislators who enact the reforms are beholden to those positioned to benefit from the loopholes.
There are several phrases that seem to pop up with every bubble:
"This time it's different."
"It's too big to fail."
"The business cycle is no more," or some nonsense about reaching a plateau of permanent prosperity.
Reading this book will make you think twice about investing in the market.
It'll make you doubt the foundation of the efficient market hypothesis.
It'll show how often the experts are wrong.
It'll show how often Nobel Laureates in Economics turn out to be fools.
It will make you think three times about investing in Japan.
Four times about investing in Latin America.
And you'll run away screaming from derivatives of any stripe.
In fact, one wonders why the whole shooting match hasn't imploded yet, ala Baring's Bank or LTCM.
Devil Take the Hindmost is a fun read. More important, the next time a Mania strikes - and it will - this book and a general understanding of the history of speculation just might just save you from rushing over the cliff with all the other lemmings.
Rating: 5 out of 5
It should be a required reading for everyone, I mean it
This is not just a history of financial speculation. This is really a history of mankind, of greed, of all the evil that we have repeated again and again through history. The author finished writing this book in Dec 98. Theoretically, if more people had known and read this book, much fewer would got "drown" in the internet bubble. However, when the Greater Fool theory was in full throttle, as prescribed by this book, that made no difference. Basically this book had covered all the financial catastrophes of the past 5 centuries: Tulipomania, South Sea Bubble, Fool's Gold, Railway mania, Great Depression, Japanese Bubble Economy ba ba ba. You name it. The most valuable thing being that the author had not just given an exhaustive account of what happened, but some reasoning why things repeated themselves, and how. Say, the government officials were corrupted, there came a so called technology innovation or a new market (the terms "New Era/Never coming back of the business cycle" were also there in 1929), the Greater Fool Theory in full gear, all the simple things you can tell from hindsight.
As a CFA Level III candidate (I might become a charterholder this August, ha ha), I strongly recommend AIMR to put this book into the required list of reading to warn its members of the limitation of the financial techniques/theories/calculations we try to preach. Anyway, a must read for anyone, especially serious players!
Rating: 4 out of 5
The More Things Change...
That's the central thesis to Edward Chancellor's book on the history of financial booms, busts, swindles, panics and manias: the more things change, the more they stay the same. As a law student taking a few securities classes and a dabbling buy-and-hold investor, the book provides incredible insight into the way markets have worked and failed since they came into existence. Written in chronological order and ending in 1998 as the tech bubble burst, Chancellor is your tour guide to the cheats, robber barrons, over-rated innovations, emerging markets and herd mentality behind financial euphorias and depressions from Holland to Japan, Britain and the States. Chancellor's greatest accomplishment is pointing to the commonalities behind every crash and letting people know how to identify the signals of future bouts of irrational exuberance. The book demands limited sophistication, but the less you know about currency exchanges, derivatives and hedge funds, the more you will be resorting to an online investment dictionary. You will have to learn in order to enjoy this book. Chancellor's subject matter necessarily demands a critique of economic and political theories, and it is clear that he champions Keynes and greater government control over markets. His criticisms of conservative political/ economic philosophies, however, are relatively restrained, intelligent, and do not irritate those of opposing viewpoints. In the end, you may not be thinking on the same page as George Soros, but this book is a great education that may even have you making better investments. Similar Products
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