But often, a company's published accounts offer clues to impending disaster, providing you know where to look. Through the forensic examination of more than 20 recent stock market disasters, Tim Steer reveals how companies hide or disguise worrying facts about the robustness of their business. In his lively style, he looks at the themes that underlie the ways companies hide the truth and he stresses that in an assessment of a company's accounts, investors should always bear in mind that the only fact is cash; everything else - profit, assets, etc - is a matter of opinion. Full of invaluable lessons for investors, the book concludes with some trenchant observations on what is wrong in the worlds of investment, audit and financial regulation, and what changes should be introduced.

    If you have not yet bought the original copy, make sure to purchase it before buying this unofficial summary from aBookaDay. SPECIAL OFFER $2.99 (Regularly priced: $3.99) OVERVIEW This review of The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis provides a chapter by chapter detailed summary followed by an analysis and critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the book. The main theme explored in the book is how corruption and greed in Wall Street caused the crash of the subprime mortgage market in 2008. Despite being completely preventable, the big firms in Wall Street chose to ignore the oncoming fall in favor of making money. Michael Lewis introduces characters—men outside of the Wall Street machine—who foresaw the crisis and, through several different techniques, were able to predict how and when the market would fall. Lewis portrays these men—Steve Eisman, Mike Burry, Charlie Ledley, and Jamie Mai—as the underdogs, who were able to understand and act upon the obvious weaknesses in the subprime market. Lewis’s overall point is to demonstrate how the Wall Street firms were manipulating the market. They used loans to cash in on the desperation of middle-to-lower class Americans, and then ultimately relied on the government to bail them out when the loans were defaulted. Using anecdotes and interviews from the men who were involved first-hand, the author makes the case that Wall Street, and how they conducted business in regards to the subprime mortgage market, is truly corrupt beyond repair, and the men he profiles in this novel were trying to make the best out of a bad situation. By having the words from the sources themselves, this demonstrates Lewis’s search for the truth behind what actually happened. Ultimately, we as an audience can not be sure if the intentions of these underdogs were truly good, but Lewis does an admirable job presenting as many sides to the story as possible. The central thesis of the work is that the subprime mortgage crisis was caused by Wall Street firms pushing fraudulent loans upon middle-to-lower class Americans that they would essentially not be able to afford. Several people outside of Wall Street were able to predict a crash in the market when these loans would be defaulted on, and bought insurance to bet against the market (essentially, buying short). Over a time period from roughly 2005-2008, the market crashed and huge banks and firms lost billions of dollars, filed for bankruptcy, or were bailed out by the government. These men, the characters of Lewis’s novel, were able to bet against the loans and made huge amounts of money, but it was not quite an easy journey. Michael Lewis is a non-fiction author and financial journalist. He has written several novels—notably Liar’s Poker in 1989, Moneyball in 2003, and The Blind Side in 2006. Born in New Orleans, he attended Princeton University, receiving a BA degree in Art History. After attending London School of Economics and receiving his masters there, he was hired by Salomon Brothers where he experienced much about what he wrote about in Liar’s Poker. He is currently married, with three children and lives in Berkeley, California. SUMMARY PROLOGUE: POLTERGEIST Michael Lewis begins his tale of the remarkable—and strange—men who predicted the immense fall of the housing market by immediately exposing himself as the exact opposite type of person from them. He explains to the reader that he has no background in accounting, business, or money managing.

    One was mathematician Claude Shannon, neurotic father of our digital age, whose genius is ranked with Einstein's. The other was John L. Kelly Jr., a Texas-born, gun-toting physicist. Together they applied the science of information theory—the basis of computers and the Internet—to the problem of making as much money as possible, as fast as possible.Shannon and MIT mathematician Edward O. Thorp took the "Kelly formula" to Las Vegas. It worked. They realized that there was even more money to be made in the stock market. Thorp used the Kelly system with his phenomenonally successful hedge fund, Princeton-Newport Partners. Shannon became a successful investor, too, topping even Warren Buffett's rate of return. Fortune's Formula traces how the Kelly formula sparked controversy even as it made fortunes at racetracks, casinos, and trading desks. It reveals the dark side of this alluring scheme, which is founded on exploiting an insider's edge.Shannon believed it was possible for a smart investor to beat the market—and Fortune's Formula will convince you that he was right.

    Baseball Prospectus 2007 continues that tradition, bringing together the top young baseball writers and analysts in the business to provide a definitive look at the season to come. Featuring humorous and incisive essays on all thirty teams and an in-depth look at every major league player and all the top prospects, Baseball Prospectus 2007 offers the cutting-edge analysis that has inspired nearly every major league team to seek the advice of current or former Prospectus writers. Also included are projections of player stats for next year, as determined by the groundbreaking PECOTA system, which Sports Illustrated has called “perhaps the game’s most accurate projection model.” The most authoritative and entertaining book of its kind, Baseball Prospectus 2007 is as essential to the baseball- watching experience as hot dogs and cold beer.

    You're trading against other traders who care about only one thing: taking your money. That's the #1 hard reality of trading - and most traders either don't know it, or don't act as if they do. In this book, top trader and hedge fund manager Quint Tatro shows how to win consistently in the "zero sum" game of trading, where there's a loser for every winner. You'll learn how to reflect your trading competition in every facet of trading and investing: choosing companies to invest in, knowing when to jump in and out of the market, and mastering the psychology and gamesmanship of trading. Coverage includes: Understanding the "other side of the trade": the thousands of pros you're trading against. Finding a technical edge with technical analysis you can exploit over and over again. Understanding sentiment and overcoming the human emotions and biases that cost you dearly. Utilizing the most essential strategies of fundamental analysis. Playing positions and probabilities, not P+Ls. Recognizing and capturing huge opportunities in down markets.

    Peter Bernstein has written a comprehensive history of man's efforts to understand risk and probability, beginning with early gamblers in ancient Greece, continuing through the 17th-century French mathematicians Pascal and Fermat and up to modern chaos theory. Along the way he demonstrates that understanding risk underlies everything from game theory to bridge-building to winemaking.

    A strategy simple enough for anyone to understand and one that runs on "autopilot" once it's set up.

    

    Each chapter contains integrated worked examples and chapter tests. This edition has the ancillary ATLAST computer exercise guide and new MATLAB and Maple guides.

    As aficionados of classic science fiction, Swedroe and Berkin saw similarities between the monumental struggle of Scott Carey, novelist Richard Matheson's Incredible Shrinking Man, and that of every individual investor trying to beat the market. Swedroe and Berkin explain in academic yet simple terms what is happening to the alpha for which so many investors yearn.Offering compelling data from decades of academic research, Swedroe and Berkin present the hard truth as they know it — it's not worth the time or effort spent battling to win those few extra cake crumbs. Instead, focus on the things you can control and discover what life has to offer beyond the quest for alpha.

    Learn the Alphabet and pronunciation as well as useful phrases in 8 categories, such as greetings, travel and directions, making friends to business and emergencies. Download, read and enjoy your vacation like never before.

    The nature of football continually changes, which means its analysis must also keep pace. This book is for students, thinkers, and theorists of the game.'Ted Hopkins - Carlton premiership player, author, and co-founder of Champion Data. Australian Rules football has been described as the most data-rich sport on Earth. Every time and everywhere an AFL side takes to the field, it is shadowed by an army of statisticians and number crunchers. The information they gather has become the sport's new language and currency. ABC journalist James Coventry, author of the acclaimed Time and Space, has joined forces with a group of razor-sharp analysts to decipher the data, and to use it to question some of football's long-held truisms. Do umpires really favour the home side? Has goal kicking accuracy deteriorated? Is Geelong the true master of the draft? Are blonds unfairly favoured in Brownlow medal voting? And are Victorians the most passionate fans? Through a blend of entertaining storytelling and expert analysis, this book will answer more questions about footy than you ever thought to ask. Praise for Time and Space:'Brilliant, masterful' - The Guardian'Arguably one of the most important books yet written on Australian Rules football.' - Inside History'Should find its way into the hands of every coach.' - AFL Record

    

    Theoretical, yet applied. Statistics for Business and Economics, Eleventh Edition, gives you the best of both worlds. Using a rich array of applications from a variety of industries, McClave/Sincich/Benson clearly demonstrates how to use statistics effectively in a business environment.The book focuses on developing statistical thinking so the reader can better assess the credibility and value of inferences made from data. As consumers and future producers of statistical inferences, readers are introduced to a wide variety of data collection and analysis techniques to help them evaluate data and make informed business decisions. As with previous editions, this revision offers an abundance of applications with many new and updated exercises that draw on real business situations and recent economic events. The authors assume a background of basic algebra.