by Dick Stoken
I read two thirds of this book on a flight back from Mexico.
I was disappointed to find that the bulk of the book comprised charts and past
data which the author showed supported his theories and investment ideas. Of
course, that’s easy when you get to pick the data. More than that, however,
this book has some other problems.
Although , I won’t argue against anyone, including this book’s
author, who says the stock market is a living system and can be analyzed
scientifically using biological theories and methodologies, I will argue that
diversification (of investments) is not the same as biological variation, and
portfolio re-balancing is not the same as adaptation. Stretching the definitions
may be a good investment angle, but it won’t necessarily make you money. Also,
several elements seemed out of place, like starting off with a discussion of
Newton so that he could show Darwin to be “more applicable” to investing, or
his tendency to resort to describing bubbles and how they could be avoided as
defense of his methodologies. I just kept wanting to say, yeah, the ten years
from 1929 on were a bad time to be investing, we get it. So, now what?
If I had read this entire book, it is possible I may have
found some useful nuggets at the end, but the first two thirds of the book were
so drab, I just had to put it down. There is stuff to be learned in this book,
and I really like the author’s original idea, but overall, it’s just not that
useful and really only worth two dollar marks.
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