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Thread: Read Any Good Books Lately?

  1. #1

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    If you've read any good books, articles, websites, etc., related to investing, trading, personal finance or whatever, and you'd like to recommend it to others, please tell us a little about it and why you may have liked or disliked it.

    * Please avoid advertising type posts. If anyone wishes to advertise on TSP Talk, you can go here for information.

    Thanks,
    Tom
    Tom
    Market Commentary | My Blog | TSP Talk Plus | |

    I am not a Registered Investment Advisor and this is not investment advice. Please do your own due diligence.


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  3. #2

    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Location
    , Montana, USA
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    39

    Post imported post


    Bestbook I've read fortiming the market is"Stock Traders Almanac" by Yale & Jeffery Hirsch Published Yearly. Another good book that gives a lot of good insight into how the stock market works and what to watch out for is "Riding The Bear" by Sy Harding. Both books are available at reduced costs from Amazon.com. Wish I had read both these books in 1999 before "I" rode the bear to the bottom as all the other "buy and hold" books I read reccomended.

    :@



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  5. #3

    Join Date
    Mar 2004
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    1,451

    Post imported post

    Montana wrote:
    ...Wish I had read both these books in 1999 before "I" rode the bear to the bottom ...
    More like the Bear rode you! ehehehehehehe

    Thanks for the recommendations...I will add that to my buy-list; I need more technical/trending market books.

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  7. #4

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    I'm currently reading Origins of the Crash by Roger Lowenstein. It's an excellent discussion of the mythic New Economy, corporate greed, investor stupidity, the inability, or unwillingness, ofgovernment to enforce disclosure, and of market failure, i.e. the market is nota magic solution or a substitute for good government. Mr. Lowenstein's previous book, When Genius Failed, chronicled the rise and fall of Long-Term Capital Management. Both are informative and good reads!

    In addition, for those of you still interested in the Social Security debate, check out this comprehensive discussion/history by Mr. Lowenstein.

    http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000209.html





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  9. #5

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    What if we still calculated cost of living adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security the way we did in the 1970's?

    From the book Worse Than You Think (the real economy hidden beneath Washington’s rigged statistics, and where to go from here) by Keith Quincy, Professor of Economics at Eastern Washington University. ISBN 978-0-9838797-1-8-51800, pp 158-168.

    This is an executive summary of the chapter on Social Security and retirement income. I strongly recommend the entire book.



    "If we calculated COLAs according to methods in use before 1980, Social Security and other benefits would be twice what they are today. How did Reagan and subsequent administrations manage to ignore the real increases in the cost of living?

    First, they substituted rental price inflation for inflation of housing prices. As every realtor knows, whenever house prices go up, rental prices go down. When interest rates fall, more people can afford the monthly payments on a new home. So they go shopping for a new house. The higher demand causes house prices to go up. With people moving out of rentals into new homes there are many vacancies. To fill them back up, landlords lower rents. You see the connection. House prices go lip, rents go down. Rents are therefore a terrible gauge of house prices.

    On the other hand, using rental costs as a measure of house prices is a great way to make house inflation disappear. It also takes an enormous bite out of the overall inflation numbers. Housing costs take up almost 30 percent of the CPI. The switch from house prices to rental costs in 1983 cut the CPI from 6.2 percent down to 4.3 percent

    In 2008, the average Social Security income was $10,189 when it should have been $21,405.

    Was the lower number of $10,189 enough to keep a person out of poverty? Not according to the government’s own poverty guidelines. That year, the poverty threshold for someone sixty-five or older was $10,326. Apologists for cutting Social Security income insist that seniors have many other sources of income. But do they?

    What about private pensions? Formerly defined benefit pensions were the norm, but today only 13 percent of those close to retirement have this kind of pension. Those who have pensions at all have 401(k)s, or defined contribution pensions.

    Today, both types of private pensions are in bad shape. Defined benefit pensions don't pay much because they are underfunded. And defined contribution plans have lost money. Many were invested in stocks and bonds backed by bad mortgages. When the stock market crashed and the housing market went bust, these plans lost tons of money. As a result, private pensions don't pay very much to retirees. Let's look at 2008. For people sixty-five and older, most (65 percent) got no pension money at all. And for those who had pensions, most didn’t get very much. The average was $4,768 a year.

    What about inheritance money? Could this make a difference? Not likely! One study found that only 15 percent of people close to retirement expect to get any inheritance. And it isn't very much. Of the few who get something, only 2 percent wound up with more than $100,000. So most people won't get much, if anything at all, from dead relatives.

    There is another possible source of retirement income, the equity a person has built up in a home. In late 2000, the housing market took off The Federal Reserve had lowered the interest rate it charged banks for money. The drop was big, from 6.5 percent down to 3.5 percent. Banks passed the savings People of retirement age (sixty-five and older) already feel the pinch. Most cannot count on any money from the equity in their home. And for those who do have some equity, the income it provides is small. The average is less than $5,000 a year.

    What about wages earned after retirement? Does this make a difference? A recent survey found that 72 percent of workers planned to be employed after they retire. But seniors have a hard time finding full-time work. Most who are employed work part time and what they earn amounts to only 2 percent of what they receive from Social Security and a private pension, if they have one. As a result, they cannot count on much help from finding a job.

    Even with an honest inflation adjustment that almost doubles Social Security benefits, most seniors would still fall below the poverty threshold. Nor would they break this barrier after padding their Social Security payments with income from a private pension, home equity, and wages. The extra income would boost their total to only $17,665, still short by more than $2,000 of breaking through a poverty threshold of $19,710. This bare bones income is not even what retirees receive today. It is what they would get if the COLA adjustment was accurate instead of rigged.

    An interesting read- here is the link to the book at Amazon:

    In paperback :

    http://www.amazon.com/Worse-Than-You...ink+%2C+quincy


    Or the Kindle Edition for .99 cents:
    http://www.amazon.com/Worse-Than-You...ink+%2C+quincy#_

    Enjoy.

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  11. #6

    Join Date
    Feb 2011
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    Washington
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    Default Re: imported post

    Which is why NO ONE should count on SS for anything... spare change maybe...

    It is also interesting that this last turn in the markets a few years ago started people to save more. It is also interesting that saving has gone down recently...

    Some people just don't learn.

    BTW, nice slip of the name Reagan in your commentary... just to set the record straight (well, to put names to your comment), George H W Bush, William J Clinton, George W Bush, and Barrack H Obama could have fixed this problem.

    To reiterate, NO ONE should rely on SS for anything.
    Rules:
    - Trade what you see, not what you believe
    - Don't put stuff in your signature that a Mod doesn't like

    "Government exists to protect all people’s rights, not some people’s feelings." - A. Barton Hinkle

    Great Tools:
    http://www.CreditKarma.com
    http://www.Mint.com
    http://www.SaveUp.com/r/nmJ

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  13. #7

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    Got into a couple of good books lately, and there is some application to stocks and life and such.

    Ferdinand and Isabella, by Malveena McKendrick.
    - The behind the scenes look at the folks who funded Christopher Columbus. The Spanish Inquisition starts with Isabella, and doesn't end well for non-Christians on the peninsula. That movement and other internal controls made Spain what Spain would be during the Spanish Armada days as well as the global exploration accomplishments in the New World.

    Alexander the Great, by Philip Freeman
    - As I read this narrative about the Macedonian prince who became king and marched from Egypt to Afghanistan to India, my jaw was dropping from the presentation of the life a person had during these times. This book is a literary exhibition at a museum of world history/culture.

    I read on my Nexus 6 when I am idling in a doctor's waiting room, disconnected from the internet on a flight, or when power if off at the house. External power for cell phones is a must for anyone, and having your books downloaded to read gives that Bug Out Location some activity other than firewood and trench digging.

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