- Hardcover: 432 pages
- Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (22 Nov 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0471708984
- ISBN-13: 978-0471708988
- Product Dimensions: 23.3 x 16.2 x 3.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
418,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #66 in Books > Business, Finance & Law > Personal Finance > Technical Analysis
- See Complete Table of Contents
Timing the Market
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.com.us
"...excellent, professional grounding for one's investing. Interesting, original contribution to the literature of the markets!" Steven Phillips
Futures Magazine, July, 2006
This review is protected by copyright law. Please see the July
issue of Futures Magazine on their web site: futuresmag.com
issue of Futures Magazine on their web site: futuresmag.com
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Charles got married just as the stock market peaked in 2000. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Charles got married just as the stock market peaked in 2000. Read the first page
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Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
With the ease and clarity of a teacher, Deborah Weir expertly fuses three critical elements investors must use in making more informed buy and sell decisions. By incorporating her insights on market sentiment, the yield curve and cultural indicators, one will strengthen his and/or her future portfolio changes. The ability to be flexible in adding these disciplines will make the difference in your performance. And this book will help make that difference.
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Having read many many trading books, it is infrequently that I come across one that is not full of the same old repetitive waffle. This is such a book. Slightly costly, but really good. I have found many a gem in it's pages and I am glad I bought it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
14 reviews
46 of 49 people found the following review helpful
Excellent trading foundation!
13 Nov 2005
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This work provides an excellent, professional grounding for one's approach to the markets. The theoretical basis for this foundation is ongoing analysis and interpretation of the U. S. treasury yield curve, bond quality spreads, and movements of the federal funds rate. The author's exposition of the yield curve is the best I've seen. She divides her analysis of the yield curve into short-term money market segments, the traditional spread between ten year bonds and three month bills, and longer-term bonds. Each of these segments affords the analyst important information as to the the present and anticipated state of the economy -- which determines the earnings expectations that drive markets.
The second section of this book affords a somewhat different take on technical analysis than is usually encountered. The author explains how to use the volatility index (VIX) and the put/call ratio as indications of short-to-intermediate term market turning points. She also indicates how margin debt and short interest levels can be used to reveal long-term market highs and lows.
The third section of the book describes cultural and demographic methods for gauging the market climate. These methods are qualitative only; subject to interpretational error; and questionable in the separation of "fact" from one's psychological projection. However, used strictly as adjuncts to yield curve analysis and technical indicator confirmation, they can be quite useful as further confirming tools.
The fourth section describes how to use market timing in a profitable, top-down approach to riding the business cycle through rotation from fixed-income investments into equities, then hard assets, foreign currencies, and back into fixed-income instruments. The author details how intelligent asset rotation leads to more favorable portfolio results than does buy-and-hold over the long run.
The market timing model which the author evolves over the course of the book substantially beats a buy-and-hold portfolio and does so while experiencing less volatility. The timing model's rationality, operations, and results are clearly explained and documented to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of her approach.
This book is well-written. Its thesis is logical; well-developed; and supported with numerous examples, data, and around sixty pages of appendices. I feel that its methodology will help investors understand and identify forces which move markets as well as avoid those traps of crowd psychology which lead to participation in mass buying at market tops and mass selling at bottoms. This work is an interesting, original contribution to the literature of markets!
The second section of this book affords a somewhat different take on technical analysis than is usually encountered. The author explains how to use the volatility index (VIX) and the put/call ratio as indications of short-to-intermediate term market turning points. She also indicates how margin debt and short interest levels can be used to reveal long-term market highs and lows.
The third section of the book describes cultural and demographic methods for gauging the market climate. These methods are qualitative only; subject to interpretational error; and questionable in the separation of "fact" from one's psychological projection. However, used strictly as adjuncts to yield curve analysis and technical indicator confirmation, they can be quite useful as further confirming tools.
The fourth section describes how to use market timing in a profitable, top-down approach to riding the business cycle through rotation from fixed-income investments into equities, then hard assets, foreign currencies, and back into fixed-income instruments. The author details how intelligent asset rotation leads to more favorable portfolio results than does buy-and-hold over the long run.
The market timing model which the author evolves over the course of the book substantially beats a buy-and-hold portfolio and does so while experiencing less volatility. The timing model's rationality, operations, and results are clearly explained and documented to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of her approach.
This book is well-written. Its thesis is logical; well-developed; and supported with numerous examples, data, and around sixty pages of appendices. I feel that its methodology will help investors understand and identify forces which move markets as well as avoid those traps of crowd psychology which lead to participation in mass buying at market tops and mass selling at bottoms. This work is an interesting, original contribution to the literature of markets!
42 of 45 people found the following review helpful
An overall disappointing effort
29 Dec 2006
Format:Hardcover
I approached this book with an inclination to like it. I'm a firm believer in market timing, and I jumped at the chance to learn some new ideas about using the fixed-income markets to time the stock market. I have to say, though, that I came away from Timing the Market frustrated and disappointed. Here's why.
Throughout the book, there is a chart detailing various buys and sells that one supposedly could have made using the author's timing system. However, rather than deriving these buy and sell points systematically, the author seems to choose buy and sell points that would have worked best in retrospect without regard for whether or not they fit into a coherent, replicable system.
For example, in chapter 7 the author adds buy points to her chart right after the waterfall declines in October 1987, September 1998 and September 2001. What is the rule that guides these choices? Apparently, it is that the Fed lowered the fed funds rate at least one-half of one percent after a crash of some kind. This rule is apparently a sufficient but not a necessary condition of buying because numerous other buy points on her chart don't involve this rule at all. So IF you hadn't already committed funds because of other rules, you MIGHT have been able to buy then.
Later in the book, on the basis of a breadth-based rule about the Dow 30, the author erases the September 2001 buy signal and records a buy signal for her system on July 19, 2002, near the ultimate bottom of the bear market. This is based on the fact that all 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks declined on the same day. I see IN RETROSPECT why she did this, but how would you have known in September 2001 to wait for the later buy signal? The author does not address these kinds of questions at all, as far as I can tell. As I said, frustrating and disappointing.
There may be value in Ms. Weir's concepts, but she has far to go if her aim is to develop a rigorous market timing system, in my opinion.
Throughout the book, there is a chart detailing various buys and sells that one supposedly could have made using the author's timing system. However, rather than deriving these buy and sell points systematically, the author seems to choose buy and sell points that would have worked best in retrospect without regard for whether or not they fit into a coherent, replicable system.
For example, in chapter 7 the author adds buy points to her chart right after the waterfall declines in October 1987, September 1998 and September 2001. What is the rule that guides these choices? Apparently, it is that the Fed lowered the fed funds rate at least one-half of one percent after a crash of some kind. This rule is apparently a sufficient but not a necessary condition of buying because numerous other buy points on her chart don't involve this rule at all. So IF you hadn't already committed funds because of other rules, you MIGHT have been able to buy then.
Later in the book, on the basis of a breadth-based rule about the Dow 30, the author erases the September 2001 buy signal and records a buy signal for her system on July 19, 2002, near the ultimate bottom of the bear market. This is based on the fact that all 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks declined on the same day. I see IN RETROSPECT why she did this, but how would you have known in September 2001 to wait for the later buy signal? The author does not address these kinds of questions at all, as far as I can tell. As I said, frustrating and disappointing.
There may be value in Ms. Weir's concepts, but she has far to go if her aim is to develop a rigorous market timing system, in my opinion.
25 of 29 people found the following review helpful
POS! Danger -- Don't make the same mistake I made!!
3 Aug 2007
Format:Hardcover
I bought this book awhile ago. Studied it. It all sounded so good. And then I tried to recreate the buy/sell signal data.... If you already own the book and are using it to make investment decisions, be sure to try this exercise and answer the question at the end.
Go to Appendix 2.1 on page 333. Let's dig into the sell signal on "2000-08-01" as an example. First of all, as Weir explains in her book on page 15-16, the Treasury data is a monthly average. The Three-Month Bill entry is 6.09. That is an average of the 3-month yields from 8/1/2000 to 8/31/2000 (using the daily rates from H.15 3-month Treasury Bill secondary market rate data). Since that is an average, it is known on 8/31/2000 at the earliest. The same is true for the Ten-Year note and therefore the yield spread. Other than the misleading date name in the table (2000-08-01), so far so good.
Now we have a signal to Sell on 8/31/2000, right? The S&P 500 Index for 8/31/2000 is 1517.68. (Yahoo's daily historical Prices for S&P 500 INDEX,RTH (^GSPC)). The "2000-08-01" entry in the book shows 1430 which is what the S&P 500 Index was for 7/31/2000, a month earlier. The same is true for all the entries in appendix 2.1.
So the question is: how is it that you can buy and sell an index based on signals you won't know until a month later?
What a scam!!
Go to Appendix 2.1 on page 333. Let's dig into the sell signal on "2000-08-01" as an example. First of all, as Weir explains in her book on page 15-16, the Treasury data is a monthly average. The Three-Month Bill entry is 6.09. That is an average of the 3-month yields from 8/1/2000 to 8/31/2000 (using the daily rates from H.15 3-month Treasury Bill secondary market rate data). Since that is an average, it is known on 8/31/2000 at the earliest. The same is true for the Ten-Year note and therefore the yield spread. Other than the misleading date name in the table (2000-08-01), so far so good.
Now we have a signal to Sell on 8/31/2000, right? The S&P 500 Index for 8/31/2000 is 1517.68. (Yahoo's daily historical Prices for S&P 500 INDEX,RTH (^GSPC)). The "2000-08-01" entry in the book shows 1430 which is what the S&P 500 Index was for 7/31/2000, a month earlier. The same is true for all the entries in appendix 2.1.
So the question is: how is it that you can buy and sell an index based on signals you won't know until a month later?
What a scam!!
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