The Greatest Bull Market In History: 2003-2008: Investment, Business and Life Strategies for the Great Boom Ahead and the Great Bust to Follow

Rating:
Summary: Boom this bubble for all it's worth!
Review: Another bubble about to form? Yes! But "bubble" is no pejorative term when you learn from this book exactly how to time it. We're on our way to a bubble top of Dow 40,000! Wow! Whooooeee! I'm ecstatic, and you will be too after you read this book. The great times won't last forever (he forecasts stock/bond/real estate market trends year by year all the way out to 2024), so get on the money train while you still can...before it crashes.

What's that sound I hear? The train's rolling...no, it's BOOMING!

All you naysayers and all you bears better go back into hibernation for the next few years, because you'll get pummelled by the new bull market. Robert Prechter's and Martin Weiss's bearish careers should be ruined when the Dow makes a new all-time high later this year. They'll go down in infamy for advising that we short the 2003-2009 bull (if their bearish psychology proves unshakable, they'll lose to the market all the way from its 2003 bottom to its top)! If they read this book, it will absolutely devastate them and send them (not the economy) into a depression when they realize the embarassing immensity of their poor judgment.

You can come out and cry "but this is another bubble" and sanctimoniously refuse to invest in it, or you can profit it from it. The great thing about this book is that it fully acknowledges that the run-up will be a bubble, and instead of lecturing about over-valuation and telling you to go into T-bills for the next 5 years, it says, let the bubble boom! Boom bubble boom! Boom bubble boom bubble boom!

Rating:
Summary: Kondatiev Move Over
Review: During the Soviet period an economist named Nicolai Kondratiev did a cyclic theory of economic activity. It was looney but like all theories of its kind - it had a grain of truth to it. This book is not looney - except in that it purports to predict economic cycles for the next hundred or so years.

But the book does raise some very important issues. What is the relationship between technological cycles and growth and contraction in the economy? How do people spend their money at various times during their lives - is there a pattern? What happens to the US when our population begins a long trend in stabilization and decline? How should one invest - at least in the next several years to maximize return and minimize risk?

Dent argues that the next 5-6 years will be dandy for the stock market but after that we will move into a fairly long period of economic stagnation. He also argues that our apparent wealth will be overtaken by the emerging economies of Asia. Dent is a devotee of RN Elliot - a 1920s economic forecaster whose most famous current proponent is Robert Prechter.

Dent makes a strong case for a fairly robust stock decade - through 2009 based on a convergence of demographic and technological trends. He makes a good case for stocks over other asset classes - not all stocks but some. He gives you some wonderful data on the economic behavior of the baby boomers - their emerging consuming propensities and how to profit from those trends.

What he does not account for is epiphenomenality - that condition that economists sometimes call "who'd a thunk it?" Things happen unexpectedly - and often for the better. He also misses some trends that should worry us all - a recent OECD report decries the rapid decline in performance of American students on math and science - with that how can we maintain our technological edge that has carried us for most of the last 50 years.

This is a good read with lots of good information - just don't take the precision for gospel - remember that economists have successfully projected 11 of the last 3 recessions.

Rating:
Summary: Good Reasons for a BOOM -- BUT
Review: Harry Dent has a better record of forecasting than I do, still!

He sees five reasons the economy is going to sore from 2005-2009:

The Third and Final Bubble of the Recent Economic Boom.
The "Decade Hangover Cycle." <BR>The Laatest Technology Revolution is Not Over.
80-Year Technology Cycle.
The Baby Boomers Last Hurrah.

OK.

BUT!

Oil is at $50 a gallon, the demand for fuel from China and India is growing rapidly and we are not finding less than we are removing from the ground. What does $100 a barrel oil do to his forecast?

The war between the muslim culture and ours seems to just be beginning. Suppose this turns really nasty, atomic or biological? We certainly have the feeling that there are people out there who would be willing to use them.

His book is fascinating, and you need to read it before you can reject it. But after you read it, do some thinking.

Rating:
Summary: Want to look into the future?
Review: Harry Dent has made his reputation writing about the economic effects of the Baby Boom generation. Everything this generation of 73 million people has touched, has been changed. As this group has grown up, had children and now, begin to retire, they have changed the market conditions, products, and services for their generation.

Their buying, consumption,and investing habits are fairly predictable. By analyzing their tastes, needs, and preferences and making some simple economic assumptions, we can see with a high degree of predictablility, certain market patterns emerge.

Dent predicts that between 2005 and 2009, we will see:
Dow Jones of 30,000 - 40,000
NASDAQ - 12,000 - 15,000
Inflation - 3% or less
Interest Rates: lower than current levels
Strong economic growth
Investment Sectors: Financial Services, Health Care, Technology, selected interational markets
Strong growth in certain real estate markets

Whether you agree with a DJIA of 30,000 or not, this work is persuasive, thought-provoking, and compelling. If Harry is right, we are about to see the greatest leg of a roaring bull market our generation has seen.

HS Dent's work is essential for every investor.



Rating:
Summary: A Master Spin Doctor
Review: I can't dispute any predictions of the stock market, because nobody can know for sure until after the fact.

But I am really amazed at the shameless spinning by Harry Dent in his latest book about his past predictions. He makes it sound like he forsaw the crash of 2000-2002. But in fact, his previous book, The Roaring 2000s, published in late 1990's, made all sorts of bullish predictions that were totally 100% wrong in retrospect. When reading that book back in 1999, you'd get the urge of going all out to buy NASDAQ. In fact, his lucky streak of winning predictions for 1990s prompted the creation of the mutual fund AIM Dent Demographic Trends in late 1990s/2000 and of which Harry Dent is an advisor -- that fund underperformed SP500 by a wide margin, not to mention that SP500 was itself miserable for the past 5 years already. [...]

Now, I'd still respect Harry Dent if he had said in this latest book, "My predictions were wrong for the first half decade of 2000's, but I think the big trend will resume for the second half of the decade." But instead, he shamelessly spins his miserable track record of the past 5 years!

Rating:
Summary: Bourgeois Bohemians are coming
Review: I thought this was a very interesting book and extremely valuable at many levels. The demographic data is compelling as are the comparison of consumer trends. As a business owner specializing in Internet Marketing and Communication with the TMA Guild, I find the last couple chapters the most interesting. Dent sees a current trend of personalized, real-time services in consumers to increase in the coming years. The Internet, according to Dent, will play a more important role in this, enabling companies to narrowcast products and services down to the level of small groups and even individuals by including them in the process of defining the products they want. Without actually using the term, Dent describes the trend as Open Source consumerism, where consumers have greater input and control over where, how and when products are sold to them.

This is a very important message for corporate America to hear as it fundamentally changes how they also market to boomers ("Bourgeois Bohemians") in their retirement years. As investors we need to see which companies respond to this fundamental change from business as usual and see what companies respond with open source marketing to an open source customer market.

TMA Guild believes that you need to market to them in a similar fashion. By going Open Source in your marketing, you engage the consumer and make them stakeholders in the product and brand and create a sense of ownership in the company. This speaks to another trend Dent believes is occurring, which is back to the days of customer driven business instead of shareholder driven where companies value the customers' opinion over the institutionalized shareholders.


Rating:
Summary: Upwardly Exploding US Stock and House Prices from 2005-2009
Review: If you have been reading Harry S. Dent, Jr., you know that he has a real knack for taking demographic trends and turning them into investment insights. The U.S. stock, bond and real estate markets are strongly influenced by how many people are at what ages. That's because there are predictable spending levels and types of spending for each age group. For instance, young people are more likely to rent than to own and older people are more likely to buy a retirement home than a primary home.

In The Next Great Bubble Boom, Mr. Dent argues persuasively that we are about to see the best markets for buying and selling stocks and residential real estate for the next several decades . . . to be followed by a very poor period of economic performance that will last for many years beginning in 2010.

His demographic argument is buttressed by a look at technology cycles, historical economic and financial cycles, and various social trends. His demographic information on life cycle spending is much more developed here than in earlier books.

As far as it goes, this book is a wonderful resource that anyone can use to make more money by shifting their investment focus for the next five years. I strongly recommend that you read and apply this book!

What are the book's weaknesses? There are several.

1. He is overly impressed with back testing of various strategies. You will read more pages than you want to see how one focus versus another would have fared in the past. But the future is always at least a little bit different. For instance, the book doesn't look into the worldwide commodity boom and the rapidly deflating dollar . . . both of which will impact his scenarios.

2. He believes in risk adjusted returns rather than raw returns. But you cannot spend risk adjusted returns. Most people measure their wealth in the value of what they own. That often means that higher risk investments do better in boom times.

3. He doesn't think that politics matters very much, but shifts in tax policy can have a large impact on the values of various classes of assets . . . and the recent election suggests that tax policy is about to change. Stay tuned.

4. He likes the U.S. so much that he doesn't really consider the alternative investments to be very attractive, because of his sense of risk adjusted returns. For instance, even though Latin America looks great from the perspective of his tools, he says don't invest there because governments have been volatile in the past. I suspect that U.S. investments will do worse in dollar terms than investments in developing countries that export raw materials and have favorable demographics.

Rating:
Summary: His Guess Is No better Than Yours
Review: Law of probability: Enough people flipping a coin enough times, and, at some point, someone will seem to have the uncanny ability to call heads or tails correctly-- some may even take credit (and write books) about how they had some extra foresight in having predicted the outcome.

In the 90's Harry Dent did. He shrewdly touted his "skills" at having called the market by extrapolating from the spending/saving/investing patterns of the consumption-driven baby boom bulge. Prescient genius? More like an educated guess-- probability-based and confirmation-biased coin flips being what they are.

Even so, his much hyped demographic-based system did work for a while, then crashed-- along with the market-- when the decade turned. In the "Roaring 2000's"-- which came out near the top of the bubble-- he bullishly advised investors to jump into equities-- advice that if followed at that time, no doubt led to severe fiscal injury.

Apparently the last four years have just been a hiccup, because here Mr. Dent is again, back with his same old spiel, along with post hoc explanations about how he actually saw it all coming and that his demographically-driven boom may not have happened exactly as he predicted the last time around, but will untimately be correct nonetheless.

According to Mr. Dent, the demographic stars are properly realigned, and we can once again get ready for boom-times through the rest of the decade. As before, his data driven arguments seem compellingly rational, but, unfortunately, the markets are not.

Harry Dent, can bring out all the demographic tea leaves he wants, but tea leaves are all they are; and all he really is, is a marketer trying to sell books (he even lent his name to the AIM Dent Deographic Trends Fund, which has followed his investment strategy since 1999 and is down almost 35% since inception as a result: UNDER-performing the market).

Wishful thinking aside, there is no way to beat the market, and Mr. Dent doesn't know its future any better than you do. Diversify your portfolio, allocate your assets, and keep your debts low. That's all that works, or that has ever worked. Some people may guess right, but chances are, it won't be you. "Systems" may work in the short term, but to paraphrase Keynes: "in the long run, they're all dead." Save your money and your time and skip "The Next Great Bubble Boom."

Rating:
Summary: Another pet rock?
Review: So Mr. Dent has another book out, eh? The same guy who put a book out five years ago saying BUY NOW just as the Nasdaq was reaching 5000. Anybody who listened to this guy five years ago surely has a big DENT in his portfolio... or rather, a CRATER. If someone truly knew the secret to attaining market-beating returns, guess what? It would be A SECRET... and he certainly wouldn't be sharing it with you.

Mr. Dent has presented an extremely over-simplifying scenario for the next decade. Sure, demographics matter. But so do trade deficits, current account deficits, Southeast Asia exported inflation, the increased third world demand for commodities (including oil), under-funded corporate pension plans, S&P one-time charges to earnings that seem to happen every year, under-funded social security programs, tax law changes, fourth-world animosity/risk... the list just goes on and on.

Investors should take a few university-level statistics courses. 99.9% of the people with market-beating returns have done it through pure random chance... (or "blind luck"). But... of course, these market-beaters think it's due to their own "genius".

Mr. Dent knows he can't beat the market so he writes a book and makes his money by taking yours. He figures there are enough simple-minded people out there who will once again provide him with a `best seller'!

It does provide humor, however, to watch these carny hucksters at work, these sellers of pet rocks...


Rating:
Summary: Remember the Roaring 2000's!!!!!!!
Review: the last book written by Harry Dent has some insightful demographic information that should in theory support his recommendations. Unfortunatly, he was 100% wrong on his last book's recommendations that you shouldn't buy the spin and his self proclaimed success. Maybe 3 out of the last 4 cylces is pretty good in his mind(since he seems to forget the bubble), but he missed the biggest bear market since '73-74 and cost his readers millions. Save your money on this one.