Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

if you have a rudimentary knowledge of speculation (i.e. you know how to translate pop culture into hypothesis of mkt bubbles), then this book has absolutely nothing to offer you. if you don't know how to, suffice it to say you shouldn't speculate, and if you still want to, then this book is definitely going to lead you to the same ruin that the author himself found. vic knows how to build an audience / loyal cadre far better than he can write, which in turn is far better than he can manage a hedge fund. ---i make this statement on the premise that some 70-odd lunatics thought this book was insightful! ---outside of running some rudinemtary regression analyses that offers support to preconceived notions (i.e. selective interpretations as a result of selective data sets), the authors take it upon themselves, high in their ivory towers, to tear down such sacred cows as value investing, trend following, ben graham (and likewise buffett), and market timing. ---and the fact that the authors have no success to show for themselves is not lost on this reader (whereas buffet's success speaks for his philosophy). as an aside, i find that any book, ANY, that finds it necessary to put in testimonials and stories about individuals is obviously lacking in content, insight, and data. this book is full of testimonials (both in support and contrast of the authors). here's a great example of non-information that the authors package as profound: if a stock went up 3 weeks in a row, would you bet that next week it would go up or down? decide! --vic's answer is that its more likely to go up--did you bet wrong? probably. i did....but i don't know, i'd like to look at the stock, the news, developments, chaikin $ flow, inst ownership, overall mkt sentiment, etc etc before i decide, thank you very much! for the rest of you who would throw your $ into an investment / object of speculation without asking any questions, then vic is your guy. i often go back and re-read select investing books (eg: alchemy of finance: 3x; reminisces of a stock operator: 3x; intelligent investor: 4x; etc). this book: 1x, and my strongest recommendation to avoid.