Crash Profits: Make Money When Stocks Sink and Soar!

Rating:
Summary: Well-written description of bearish scenario
Review: By combining fiction with non-fiction, Dr. Weiss' had made his extremely bearish outlook a page turner. Advice on protecting yourself from loss during such a crisis is coupled with stratgies allowing you to prosper.

By now, it is common knowledge that many in the financial community gave bad advice to public investors with the sole purpose of lining their own pockets. Weiss' description of those abuses is worth the retelling, as it offers an additional warning to all of us.

Whether you agree with his outlook or not, there is much to be gained from reading this book. His suggestions on keeping your assets in the safest banks, money market funds and brokers is sound advice for everyone. Weiss provides lists of those safer institutions.

Rating:
Summary: Well-written description of bearish scenario
Review: By combining fiction with non-fiction, Dr. Weiss' had made his extremely bearish outlook a page turner. Advice on protecting yourself from loss during such a crisis is coupled with stratgies allowing you to prosper.

By now, it is common knowledge that many in the financial community gave bad advice to public investors with the sole purpose of lining their own pockets. Weiss' description of those abuses is worth the retelling, as it offers an additional warning to all of us.

Whether you agree with his outlook or not, there is much to be gained from reading this book. His suggestions on keeping your assets in the safest banks, money market funds and brokers is sound advice for everyone. Weiss provides lists of those safer institutions.

Rating:
Summary: 1 star is too generous
Review: By way of explanation, I read an excerpt from this book in a popular tout sheet and bought it merely to pad my order to get to the free shipping level. What a mistake. (The lesson here is to just pay your shipping charge and be done with it).
My own personal view of the equity markets is one of a longer term secular bear market and I�ve been trading options for a number of years so I should be sympathetic to Weiss� thesis. However, all of Weiss� insight in this area is summarized in 15 rules covering 4-1/2 pages. While mostly accurate, there are some glaring errors, e.g. Rules 3 and 4 advising you to avoid contracts of a certain price range. Option prices are based on the cost of the underlying shares so to avoid contracts over $500 is to limit yourself from companies with high share prices with potentially the most room to fall.
Perhaps I was expecting him to elaborate on some other bear option strategies, but all he offers is buying puts. As for directly short-selling (the only other way to benefit from �crash� markets) all he says is �don�t do it�. He fails to sufficiently describe the time decay problem with long options in his 15 rules. E.g. with respect to the interminable Japanese bear market, simply long puts may not have made you any money because of the graceful but inexorable decline punctuated with sharp rallies. You would have needed a bear-neutral strategy. The problem is that with a preponderance of contracts at a certain strike, the market makers may ride the underlying shares past the expiry so that they all close worthless.
The rest of the book recounts recent financial scandals such as the $6k shower curtain, but I found myself skipping over several chapters at a time because I�m one of those odd people who remembers what they read in the paper or saw in the news.
There were some odd chapters on real estate and moving your money to a safe bank, which suddenly struck me as the same stuff Prof. Ravi Batra was writing in the 80�s (to wit �The Great Recession of the 90�s�!). To his credit, Batra caught the �Great Recession� of 1991 (as did your local evening news) but by 1992, the stuff was all nonsense.
Could anyone benefit from this book?
Those interested in the subject would probably already be in the bear camp, but the book is insufficient as an introduction to options trading so there is little practical value. And those unfamiliar with his filler material probably don�t read the newspaper, so why would they read a book?

For any practical benefit, this book should have been published 3 years ago. So perhaps publication now is actually a contrarian indicator?
BTW some of the rave reviews are just bizarre, one guy recommending "9 Free Secrets of New Sensual Power" in the same breath. I can�t comment on that selection, but if you�re trying to pad your order to get free shipping, that is probably a better choice.

Rating:
Summary: Good help for investment advice
Review: I found this book helpful and full of sound information and advice. This market right now stinks and it will be a while before it soars. I found another book that I really liked as well. The Intersection of Joy and Money by Mackey McNeill looks at our relationships to money. How we make it and save/invest it. Great book...

Rating:
Summary: Nutty Nineties Explained
Review: I have spent literally thousands of hours over the last several years attempting to understand the nutty nineties stock market bubble, excess credit creation, global economic conditions, Federal Reserve policy implications, deflation/inflation, Austrian School of Economics and investment strategies in a post bubble world. I have no doubt that Dr. Weiss's book would have drastically shortened my learning curve!

Most financial publications are written in academic or industry lingo making them hard to digest for a novice, and just plain difficult to read. Dr. Weiss presents the clearest most simple explanation for many facets of our previous stock market boom and the potential aftermath of these excesses, while most other books over complicate the subject. Dr. Weiss combines fictional tales with facts to weave a boom and bust tapestry that all but the blind can see. I thought so highly of this book, I purchased extra copies for family friends who are complete novices, as a way of introducing them into our current investment climate.

I do not necessarily agree with all of Dr. Weiss's positions, I strongly recommend this easy to read and comprehend book for the novice and market maven alike.

Rating:
Summary: Misleading title, but story interesting in the beginning
Review: The title of the book is probably the most misleading one I have come across for a while, as it has nothing to do with the books contents. The cover would have you think this is a book about how to make money and give you the strategies promised on the back cover. It isn't. It is a storyline about a CEO and some friends who get caught up in some financial tricks and end up blowing the whistle in a financial thinktank called CECAR. It is designed to be a lesson in macro and micro economics. The problem is that the story is interesting at the start, but drags on and on with the unplausible existence of the thinktank (as no-one would fund such a thing) that grows in size, profile and importance to the point where there is a meeting with the US President. Get the drift ? I read all but the last 40 or so pages. My recommendation is not to buy this unless you want a few pages of an interesting story on how financial cover-ups can work.

Rating:
Summary: Misleading title, but story interesting in the beginning
Review: The title of the book is probably the most misleading one I have come across for a while, as it has nothing to do with the books contents. The cover would have you think this is a book about how to make money and give you the strategies promised on the back cover. It isn't. It is a storyline about a CEO and some friends who get caught up in some financial tricks and end up blowing the whistle in a financial thinktank called CECAR. It is designed to be a lesson in macro and micro economics. The problem is that the story is interesting at the start, but drags on and on with the unplausible existence of the thinktank (as no-one would fund such a thing) that grows in size, profile and importance to the point where there is a meeting with the US President. Get the drift ? I read all but the last 40 or so pages. My recommendation is not to buy this unless you want a few pages of an interesting story on how financial cover-ups can work.

Rating:
Summary: One of My Best Buys Ever
Review: There are two books that I thank the Lord for delivering into my hands. This is one of them, because it helped me to save my enitre net worth over just the past few weeks of financial market turmoil. The other book I wouldn't live without it "9 Free Secrets of New Sensual Power" by Clint Arthur, because it revolutionized my personal life with my wife and family. Thank you to both these authors for giving me and mine so much help in these difficult times.

Rating:
Summary: Plain simple language, just the facts
Review: This book is the BEST one you'll find that could be "Bubble Economy 101" or "Bear Markets for Dummies".

If you've felt betrayed and blindsided by the stock market declines since 2000; if you have ever felt the least bit intimidated by the economists, the Wall Street pros, and the guests on financial TV and assumed they know more than you do; if you have been arguing with yourself over whether to sell your stocks; if you have been debating over whether to buy a house; if you have wondered if the yields on corporate or muni bonds are a good deal; if you've ever wondered how our economy has gotten itself into the fix it is in; if you've looked around and felt like we aren't "bouncing back" and wondered why; READ THIS BOOK!

The book is practically worth it alone for the discussion of the government bond market, and why confidence MUST be maintained in it.

The author has a "followup" website at www.crashprofits.net.

Rating:
Summary: Crash Profits
Review: Truly a worthless book written by someone who has little insight into how the capital markets really work. Comments on high yield bond and guidance about which stock in your portfolio to sell demonstrated that the author is devoid to any true investment knowledge. My credentials to make the judgments: Certified Financial Planner, MBA Degree, fee based financial advisor.