Rating: 
Summary: Well written, short on facts, long on Levy's story.
Review: A hundred pages into the book, I stopped and said "Wait, where's the psychology of Wall Street this book touts?" and realized the book is no more than a work touting Levy's every move.
While entertaining and well written, the book is a fast read that is short on substantial information. The book is interesting; it just falls very short of providing any sort of substantial fact or opinion on his psychology of the street premise.
Rating:
Summary: A Master of the Universe goes Soft in the Head
Review: After reading the Foreward by Alan Abelson I was prepared to like the book, its author Leon Levy, and I was looking forward to reading it.Having finished it I am fairly disappointed. Reading it was a chore and kind of embaraasing. Levy is a good guy no doubt. A lover of all things good and true, liberal, well read, and charitable. He gives us a leisurely stroll though his career, you get to meet some knaves and good investors, and you can mull over maxims and wall street lore, and listen to tales of Levy's philanthropy. Unfortunately, the books title, the Mind of Wall Street, isn't much in evidence. I wore though every chapter trying to find evidence of this "Mind of Wall Street" and was just about to give up, when I found something in the next to the last chapter. In this chapter, Levy tells us that he never thought of himself as rich. A founding partner in Oppenheimer funds isn't rich! A legendary financier isn't rich? A guy who goes to parties with Sandy Weill and other luminaries isn't rich? So I'm thinking, well maybe he had some bad luck or something. But no. In the same chapter he tell us that in the course of many years he gave away 100 million to a college? There is the mind of Wall Street: He can give away 100 million and he isn't rich. Now take me home to Main Street!
Rating: 
Summary: A Fresh Perspective
Review: Finally, a description of what happened in the late 1990s from someone who clearly knows what he is talking about. Most importantly, Levy has no axe to grind. His book offers a window into how big gains and losses are really made and includes lots of stories I've never heard elsewhere. Unlike other Wall Street books, the tone is not high brow or that of a "know-it-all" but rather one of someone who has a real interest in what makes people do the crazy things we do. If you are tired of the same old hogwash, then read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining, but not very informative
Review: I generally agree with Leon Levy's thesis that behavioral finance moves markets and stocks. It took me a while to grasp this idea after 4 years of Wharton where market efficiency and investors' rationality were expounded. Working as a practioner on Wall Street and living through the recent Internet bubble and subsequent collapse has taught me the value of respecting the effect of investors' psychology on stock prices. That said, I found this book disappointing. Some of Levy's economic and finance theories are dubious, and there were few ideas on how to actually make money from shifting investors' sentiment. Still, the book only took me a couple of hours to read (large print, 200 pages), and it did have some interesting anecdotes. All in all, it's pretty light-weight fare, and ok for a quick browse.
Rating:
Summary: Nice but not memorable story
Review: I like to read business biographies and hope to also gain some perspective on investing. I found this book to be lightly written in that there is not much depth in any subject. While there are many business stories, they really provide nothing insightful not covered from reading business periodicals. This does give a complete history of Mr. Levy's family and his entry in Wall Street but there is really nothing compelling there except that his dad was an economist and this shaped Mr. Levy's career through the years. This is not a bad book and it was quite easy to read. But compared to Sandy Weill's recent biography, it is pale in comparison.
Rating:
Summary: Rare Insight from a Seasoned Professional
Review: If you are looking for a secret formula to accumulate wealth in the stock market, don't buy this book.
Leon Levy, a founder of Oppenheimer Funds, Odyssey Partners and legendary investor, reflects on his more than 50 years of investing experience to explain why the market confounds so many. He borrows from his avocations, psychology and archaeology, for perceptive insights into the financial landscape.
Success in finance, he says, is an art form, not a science. It relies on the vagaries of the human condition. Readers who search this book for a secret wealth formula will be disappointed. The only door, Levy says, that leads consistently to wealth, is access to privileged information. As many have recently discovered, this path is fraught with peril.
Yet, if investing is an art form, it can be learned. The best way is to put yourself on the line. Take a position. Players outperform professors. Recognize your weaknesses. Seek to control them.
I was particularly interested in Levy's insights into the collapse of Savings and Loans, the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management and the Internet Bubble.
This book does not belong in the class bad books written by bored billionaire investors, too many of whom have confused luck with insight. Although these individuals have a high regard for themselves, clarity, coherence and conciseness are not among the qualities which contributed to their success.
Leon Levy is likeable, incredibly informed and nothing short of brilliant. Investors for generations to come will be grateful he finished his discourse on of greed's perils and the market's mysteries.
Rating: 
Summary: Psychology and Experience
Review: Leon Levy died in December 2002. He was one of the grand old men of Wall Street. The founder of the Oppenheimer mutual funds, he built himself a truly substantial fortune in the market (Forbes 400 list). This book is not a compendium of investment techniques but the history of an astute trader and a glimpse of how he saw the market. His outlook is largely a combination of basic economics and psychology which appear to have about equal weight. Just before Levy died he wrote an interesting but pessimistic essay on the future of America's economy. He pointed out that there is more than a sniff of deflation in the air. He may still be right. The deflation may be masked by government sponsored financial inflation. On balance, a very interesting book.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read!
Review: The late, legendary Wall Street investor Leon Levy offers a glimpse into his financial mind in this easily digested work, which is part memoir and part study of investor psychology. Writing with journalist Eugene Linden, he persuasively argues that investors' moodiness often drives the market as much as any fundamentals. Unlike many Wall Street investment strategies, Levy's approach was long-term. And as this book shows, Levy's ego was refreshingly understated. Yet his modesty proves this memoir's biggest weakness. He declines to criticize his rivals and walks us through his triumphs in only a cursory way. At the same time that he's leaving juicy details out of his memoir, he also gives short shrift to his study of investor psychology. Still, the biggest criticism of this book is that it should have been longer. We recommend this memoir to investors interested in learning from a master.
Rating: 
Summary: Total Waste of TIME
Review: This book is an example of how someone with a decent track record in investing thinks they can be as successful in writing, but then fail miserably at creating anything meaningful. I was able to finish this book in less than 9 hours! The author actually makes an attempt at explaining the market based on the theories and doctrines of Behavioral Finance, or so he says. Unfortunately, the book is nothing more than a ramble about the "excess of the late 90's", as if we need more literature on that subject. In reality, the book would be thrown out of Behavioral Finance class rooms as a miserable failure. In one instance, the author refers to Amazon.Com as "nothing more than a mail order house". He also suggests that Amazon's model of selling books is not going to be sufficient to bring this company to profitability. Hmm...Maybe an update is required but this book was published in 2002!! Throughout the book, the author constantly refers to his and his firm's success, suggesting this to be nothing more than a $15 advertisement. There is no resemblance to work such as "Reminiscence of a Stock Operator", which is the classic book on speculator psychology. Unless you have never ever invested in the market and have nothing more than a basic understanding of what an investment is, don't buy this book. Instead, consider work by Schwager, LeFevre, Bernard Baruch and even classic Technical Analysis work such as "TA of Stock Trends", which goes more into the psychology behind successful investing than this author. I also highly recommend the two books written by Victor Neiderhoffer. In instances where the author actually begins to discuss anything remotely close to behavioral finance, he immediately drops off into another subject. He continually refers to the subjects of Greed and Fear. However, greed and fear are merely symptoms of the herd mentality. Nothing new there! On the plus side, Ch. 12 covers EuroDollar Call Options and the benefits of trading these instruments when playing the interest rate curve. Unfortunately, in the middle of this discussion which was no more than a page, he changes the subject abruptly and begins talking about the benefits of archeological digs in present day Syria and why one should make philanthropic donations based on trust. This is literally the next paragraph after EuroDollars!!! If you have an advanced grasp of markets, read "Alchemy of Finance". This is in fact the greatest work on the subject and quite honestly, the recent implementation of Behavioral Finance as a course of study amongst many universities is based on the work of George Soros, the greatest speculator of all time, and his "Theory of Reflexivity", which was first introduced in Alchemy of Finance.
Rating:
Summary: Total Waste of TIME
Review: This book is an example of how someone with a decent track record in investing thinks they can be as successful in writing, but then fail miserably at creating anything meaningful. I was able to finish this book in less than 9 hours! The author actually makes an attempt at explaining the market based on the theories and doctrines of Behavioral Finance, or so he says. Unfortunately, the book is nothing more than a ramble about the "excess of the late 90's", as if we need more literature on that subject. In reality, the book would be thrown out of Behavioral Finance class rooms as a miserable failure. In one instance, the author refers to Amazon.Com as "nothing more than a mail order house". He also suggests that Amazon's model of selling books is not going to be sufficient to bring this company to profitability. Hmm...Maybe an update is required but this book was published in 2002!! Throughout the book, the author constantly refers to his and his firm's success, suggesting this to be nothing more than a $15 advertisement. There is no resemblance to work such as "Reminiscence of a Stock Operator", which is the classic book on speculator psychology. Unless you have never ever invested in the market and have nothing more than a basic understanding of what an investment is, don't buy this book. Instead, consider work by Schwager, LeFevre, Bernard Baruch and even classic Technical Analysis work such as "TA of Stock Trends", which goes more into the psychology behind successful investing than this author. I also highly recommend the two books written by Victor Neiderhoffer. In instances where the author actually begins to discuss anything remotely close to behavioral finance, he immediately drops off into another subject. He continually refers to the subjects of Greed and Fear. However, greed and fear are merely symptoms of the herd mentality. Nothing new there! On the plus side, Ch. 12 covers EuroDollar Call Options and the benefits of trading these instruments when playing the interest rate curve. Unfortunately, in the middle of this discussion which was no more than a page, he changes the subject abruptly and begins talking about the benefits of archeological digs in present day Syria and why one should make philanthropic donations based on trust. This is literally the next paragraph after EuroDollars!!! If you have an advanced grasp of markets, read "Alchemy of Finance". This is in fact the greatest work on the subject and quite honestly, the recent implementation of Behavioral Finance as a course of study amongst many universities is based on the work of George Soros, the greatest speculator of all time, and his "Theory of Reflexivity", which was first introduced in Alchemy of Finance.
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