Bull: A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982-2004
In 1982, the Dow hovered below 1000. Then, the market rose and rapidly gained speed until it peaked above 11,000. Noted journalist and financial reporter Maggie Mahar has written the first book on the remarkable bull market that began in 1982 and ended just in the early 2000s. For almost two decades, a colorful cast of characters such as Abby Joseph Cohen, Mary Meeker, Henry Blodget, and Alan Greenspan came to dominate the market news.This inside look at that 17-year cycle of growth, built upon
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39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
A Cautionary Tale for Investors, By Jeffery Steele (Taipei, Taiwan) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bull! : A History of the Boom, 1982-1999: What drove the Breakneck Market--and What Every Investor Needs to Know About Financial Cycles (Hardcover)
Beginning investors are sometimes told a few simple maxims to help them manage their portfolios. Never time the market. Buy and hold. Expect 10% annual return on stocks held for the long run (usually defined as seven to ten years).Maggie Mahar has done a service to these investors by showing how little evidence there is to support these maxims or, at the least, how easily they can be distorted. She does this by revisiting the last boom and showing it in historical perspective. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that most index funds will grow 10% annually so long as they are held around ten years, Mahar shows that the U.S. stock market - upon which most index funds closely track - has gone through several periods nearly twenty years long with little to no annual growth. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that you can't time the market, Mahar says that most savvy investors - including buy-and-hold strategists such as Warren Buffett - do time their investments, and feel no compunction about getting out of a severely over-inflated market. Mahar's history is also instructive in showing how industry leaders and government officials were complicit in allowing shoddy accounting and other questionable practices to contribute to the breakneck market. Rather than a rational market in which everyone can expect to be a winner given enough time (seven to ten years), "Bull" shows that investors must still exercise caution even when following the few simple investing guidelines that most people do not question.
26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
Captivating & Informative--Best I've read on the Bull Market,
By A Customer
This review is from: Bull! : A History of the Boom, 1982-1999: What drove the Breakneck Market--and What Every Investor Needs to Know About Financial Cycles (Hardcover)
I finished Bull! in two days, and I enjoyed every page. The problem that I've had with most books on economic history or investing (and particularly those, such as this one, that include considerable economic detail) is that they are miserable to plow through, and are invariably filled with dry and seemingly superfluous detail. This book is different. Mahar mixes witty anecdotes with incisive analysis, and her claims about investing are offered in intelligent often playful prose, surrounded with a copious amount of recent historical material. Even well known stock-market figures--like Warren Buffet--look new here: we get a sense of why they acted as they did, and often a hint of what they may have been thinking. Recommended for anyone interested in learning more about investing, uncovering what the last bull run was all about, or meeting some of the major Wall Street players that were made into near-celebrities.
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
Cautionary Tale, By Bob C (Manhasset, New York United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bull! : A History of the Boom, 1982-1999: What drove the Breakneck Market--and What Every Investor Needs to Know About Financial Cycles (Hardcover)
I have read many self-help financial books over the years, but I must place this one right at the top. Maggie Mahar is a gifted writer and tells her tale with wit and economy. The result is a lot more readable than your typical financial book, but more than that, it exposes the fallacy of many old bromides that I had read in all those other self-help screeds (like "buy and hold"). In fact, as she traces the history of the long bull market that began in 1982 and culminated with the late 90's mania for tech stocks with triple digit PE's, I recognized myself among the many fools who bought into the madness and squandered much of their retirement nest eggs.I found the most valuable investment advice in the book to be the musings of a few experienced money managers who had been through the long and punishing bear market of 1968-1982, and who saw the tech wreck coming. The reminiscences of these investment advisers--people like Gail Dudack, Steve Leuthold, Jean Marie Eveillard and Peter Bernstein--are worth the price of the book many times over. For people who are looking for a self-help investment primer that doesn't sugarcoat the risks, this book is the real deal, without the BULL! |
A Cautionary Tale for Investors,
Beginning investors are sometimes told a few simple maxims to help them manage their portfolios. Never time the market. Buy and hold. Expect 10% annual return on stocks held for the long run (usually defined as seven to ten years).
Maggie Mahar has done a service to these investors by showing how little evidence there is to support these maxims or, at the least, how easily they can be distorted. She does this by revisiting the last boom and showing it in historical perspective.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom that most index funds will grow 10% annually so long as they are held around ten years, Mahar shows that the U.S. stock market – upon which most index funds closely track – has gone through several periods nearly twenty years long with little to no annual growth.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom that you can’t time the market, Mahar says that most savvy investors – including buy-and-hold strategists such as Warren Buffett – do time their investments, and feel no compunction about getting out of a severely over-inflated market.
Mahar’s history is also instructive in showing how industry leaders and government officials were complicit in allowing shoddy accounting and other questionable practices to contribute to the breakneck market. Rather than a rational market in which everyone can expect to be a winner given enough time (seven to ten years), “Bull” shows that investors must still exercise caution even when following the few simple investing guidelines that most people do not question.
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|Captivating & Informative–Best I’ve read on the Bull Market,
I finished Bull! in two days, and I enjoyed every page. The problem that I’ve had with most books on economic history or investing (and particularly those, such as this one, that include considerable economic detail) is that they are miserable to plow through, and are invariably filled with dry and seemingly superfluous detail. This book is different. Mahar mixes witty anecdotes with incisive analysis, and her claims about investing are offered in intelligent often playful prose, surrounded with a copious amount of recent historical material. Even well known stock-market figures–like Warren Buffet–look new here: we get a sense of why they acted as they did, and often a hint of what they may have been thinking. Recommended for anyone interested in learning more about investing, uncovering what the last bull run was all about, or meeting some of the major Wall Street players that were made into near-celebrities.
Was this review helpful to you?
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