Expectations Investing: Reading Stock Prices for Better Returns
Author: Alfred Rappaport, Michael J. Mauboussin, Peter L. Bernstein
List Price: $19.95
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ISBN: 159139127X
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press (February, 2003)
Sales Rank: 16,743
Average Customer Rating: 4 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
A must have book for today's investor.
This book should be required reading for every active investor today. Too often pundits throw out terms like market leader,growth stock, value stock, recession resistant as reasons to buy a stock, and try to predict where the "market" will go for the next six months. Expectations Investing will help you learn to throw away these lazy investor labels and instead provides a framework for evaluating a particular stock in terms of what the current price is saying about how good or bad the future for the company may be and whether it merits your purchase or sale. You will learn that every stock, market leader or not, has a whole set of assumptions embedded in the current valuation- this book will help you learn to think in these terms and evaluate whether those assumptions embedded in the current price are reasonable. The book debunks some popular myths and provides highly illustrative examples that make some technical issues easy to understand. For the pro, coverage of executive compensation, option analysis as well as key chapters on competitive strategy and other operating issues will definitely stimulate the thought process. At the same time the basics of valuation are covered in an easy to read fashion. Finally, the Notes section itself can lead the intellectually curious to a "pot of gold" of information. Turn off the business TV and put your popular financial magazine on the coffee table and read this book instead !
Rating: 5 out of 5
Excellent read
Rappaport and Mauboussin expertly utilize the often misapplied DCF model to identify and analyze market assumptions that determine stock price. In the age of irrational exuberance, the disparity between market value and intrinsic value is often dismissed as the product of a fickle and unpredictable market. Rappaport and Mauboussin, however, remind us that the market is indeed rational in the long term and changes in stock prices are the result of changes in market expectations. The "Expections Investing" methodology helps investors to understand current expectations and anticipate expectation revisions.A financial model is only as good the assumptions behind it. The forecasting process invariably reflects the assuptions of the analyst, which tend to be biased by experience and preconception. "Expections Investing" teaches investors to avoid predilection by reverse engineering DCF models from stock prices, allowing them generate figures that reflect market assumptions rather than their own.
This value-agnostic process produces greater accuracy in many areas that are frequently overlooked. Rappaport and Mauboussin expose the fallacious nature of models based on forecast periods and discount rates that are assigned in an arbitrary fashion. They correctly state that the finger-in-the-wind approach is not sufficient and can greatly distort the final analysis. "Expectations Investing" also highlights topics (i.e., valuation of employee stock options) of which the significance is often underestimated or ignored in traditional valuation analysis.
Rating: 2 out of 5
A Different Approach
Stock market investing books usually come in two flavors.The first group of authors tell you to look for certain price and volume patterns; that the stock price depends on those patterns because those patterns are a reflection on human behavior.
The second group of authors tell you to look for certain ratios in the financial statements; that the stock price depends on those ratios.
Then there's this book, which tells you that the price could depend on a lot of things, like mergers and acquisitions and the synergy they generate, executive compensation, competitive strategies, stock buybacks, etc. But they don't tell you how to calculate those factors into the stock price. The book is a good book which certainly provokes thought. And it's probably good for finding stocks for the long term investor. But for me, it's a little too impractical. And a little too academic intellectual guru voodoo. When I have money at risk, and I have to make quick decisions (which can affect my net worth), I like to keep things simple and easily measurable which technical and fundamental analysis allows me to do.
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