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Summary: The most Important book for any investment professional
Review: Any serious investor or student of the market should own a copy of this book. This book presents and analyzes data from many countries in a simple, easy to understand manner. It examines seasonal movements in stock prices, moves in different sectors, equity and bond risk premiums, size effects, effects of exchange rates, returns of various investment strategies, the list goes on. It presents over 100 years of stock and bond returns, from seventeen different countries, providing an incredible perspective on market movements.In order to invest successfully, it is important to study the history of price movements, in various economic conditions. This book contains the information you will need, presented in an easy to understand manner. To have this amount of data and analysis all in one book, is a huge achievement by the authors, and is of immense benefit to the serious investor.
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Summary: This is a knowledge bank
Review: I was keenly looking for a topic that I did not find treated in this book either: some correlation between demographics and the performance of stocks and bonds. As the developed world faces unprecedented demographic challenges with decline of the working age populations, I was curious to see its implications analysed in a historical sense (positive or negative). For, this phenomenon alone may render the historical trends that we have come to rely on, irrelevant. All in all, this book has made a lasting impact on my investment thought process. Among the many titles that I have read on finance and investing, this is definitely the best. For me, this information bank provided insights and perspective like nothing else. I disagree with a previous reviewer that this is some kind of a Census Bureau document. Sure, a CD ROM would have complemented its utility (while potentially increasing the cost); but that in no way lowers the utility or readability of this great work. If anything, the book contains a lot of graphs, which is great.
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Summary: outstanding accomplishment
Review: If you remove good solid research and objectivity you have the foundation for 90% of the investment books at large. "Triumph", however, is a member of the other elite 10%. The authors have made a tremendous effort to present only the facts. And, they're given to you in a concise, clear fashion with corresponding color graphs for further elucidation. This is an especially gargantuan accomplishment given the wide breadth of data they've tackled. If you're interested in gaining an accurate perspective of the history of global markets, buy this book...if you're not, then all I can say is "eventus stultorum magister".
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Summary: Priceless
Review: This book, together with a good book on Warren Buffet basics, will provide the private stock market investor with the tools needed for extraordinary investment success. First, a book on Buffet basics will teach the investor how to identify exceptional businesses and how to value them correctly (by calculating the present value of the total cash that can be extracted from the business during its expected life). Next, Triumph of the Optimists will be of tremendous help in selecting the appropriate valuation variables, e.g. equity risk premium, discount rate, etc to be used. By incorporating the statistics provided in this book into your valuations, you will have 101 years of global investment history on your side. As a global investor for more than twenty years, I sometimes had to learn the hard way that "reversion to the mean" is a basic investment truth that dare not be ignored. This book will tell you what that "mean" is. Some may argue that this book is expensive, or that its statistics may be slightly distorted, but in real life this book's practical value makes it priceless.
Rating: 
Summary: Very disappointing given the price
Review: This is a very handsome book with lovely graphs etc. However I was after a useful summary of historical market performance. This book was lacking in several respects: 1. The numbers behind the graphs are not provided and are not available so you cannot do any further analysis yourself. The graphs themselves are also drawn in such a way that it is hard to extract the numbers using a ruler. 2. The problem of survivorship bias. They claim that while the 16 countries analysed are an incomplete list (only 70% of world GDP in 1900), this is not a big problem, they feel. Their message that stocks do well in the long run supposedly remains intact, however they do not provide any solid evidence of this. The countries left out of course suffered terrible performance, with total confiscation of assets in most cases and major losses in others. The countries left out include: Russia, China, Eastern Europe, Latin America. As an example, Argentina was the wealthiest country 100 years ago but was left out. They claim that their criterion for inclusion was the availability of data, but Switzerland was included even though the data is incomplete. In my opinion, some attempt should have been made to adjust for this problem. 3. No assessment is made of the issue of capital controls etc as an impedement to implementing the world indexing strategy. It is simply assumed that equal dollar indexing could be implemented without any costs, and with no taxes. All in all, this book fails to provide a realistic and convincing assessment of global investment returns in the real world. Victor Niederhoffer uses this book to justify his bullishness on stocks, Sorry Vic, no cigar.
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