ChangeWave Investing: Picking the Next Monster Stocks of the New Economy

Rating:
Summary: Post Mortem eternam.
Review: Basically became a "b.seller" thanks to the publisher buying ten of thousands of books. Trickery and deceipt are the name of the game. However so many people lost $$ because of the empty analysis, made up terms and let's face it ignorance.

Rating:
Summary: Post Mortem eternam.
Review: Basically became a "b.seller" thanks to the publisher buying ten of thousands of books. Trickery and deceipt are the name of the game. However so many people lost $$ because of the empty analysis, made up terms and let's face it ignorance.

Rating:
Summary: Strategies for the Future
Review: The book attempts to forecast the development of a technology-based economy within the next decade. It provides a roadmap for investing with every twist, turn, and curve clearly marked. The evolution of such an economy contains periods of changing waves where investors should depend on non tech stocks to give stability during the changeover. Additionally, the book pinpoints changes which may or may not be accurately portrayed. There appears to be so much rapid and furious change in almost every sector of the markets that it makes the advice given obsolete by the time you read it. The biggest success of Change Wave Investing is the system's intelligence gathering ability and its expertise in communicating that intelligence in a convincing manner. To that I would say "Buyer Beware."

Rating:
Summary: (Gorilla Game 2.0, Motley Fool 2.0, and IBD 2.0) Cubed
Review: This book deserves a rating of 5 stars cubed!

Anyone who isinterested in picking stocks for themselves must read this book. Ifyou don't, you will miss an important improvement on how to find stocks that will grow at a vast multiple of the market's overall growth rate. The book extends well beyond three of the best growth stock investment approaches that I have seen, and puts these improvements together in a new way. It is almost like a two generation improvement on picking top growth stocks.

The book goes beyond Gorilla Game by building on a successful approach that has already delivered 150 percent annual profit gains for 4 years. In other words, there is a track record to go with this idea . . . not just a back testing on how one might have picked the past winners.

The book goes beyond Motley Fool because it has a much more sophisticated approach to screening for top stocks and a more sophisticated network for developing and checking out stock ideas through the ChangeWave Web site. At that site, the ideas are rated, and those whose ideas don't perform well are dropped after a year. I thought that the process described was a good one: Start by looking for change quakes (new irresistible forces of the largest magnitude) then for the Killer Value Proposition that will win out in serving the new trend, then locating which will be the leading change waves (currently such as B to B and virtual enterprises), then to the fastest growing sectors within the change waves, on to Superior Space, and finally to locating the Wave Runner Companies. Then you are given lots of technical ideas for when to buy and sell.

The book goes beyond the ideas reflected in Investors Business Daily by providing much more understanding of the reasons why a company will prosper in the future.

I also liked the logic of how to diversify a little in a concentrated portfolio so your winners can squeeze out the losers.

However, from reading the book, I can see that there will have to be a ChangeWave Investing 2.0 at some point. Mr. Smith is a little hazy on some of his basics. Where he describes how a company gets valued is both simplistic and wrong. I also saw an overreliance on extending trends, rather than understanding the underlying elasticities of technologies and demand that create the growth that he is trying to forecast. I think this Alliance idea will work well in helping investors to more quickly understand the implications of new technology standards, but I think that it will be less helpful in assessing the potential of disruptive rather than follow-on technologies. I could go on, but you can see that the idea requires further building to reach its full potential.

This book is well beyond anything I have read about picking stocks. I plan to start visiting the Web site to better understand the process. I suggest that you do the same as well.

If you have been burned in the past with ways to pick stocks, don't fall prey to the disbelief stall that something new cannot work better. I think this book and the Web site combined can give you an edge over the bulk of investors that should yield above-average results. Practice with a small part of your portfolio in the beginning -- perhaps 5 to 10 percent.

Good hunting!

Rating:
Summary: Advanced Concepts for Stock Picking . . . Weak on Valuation
Review: This book deserves a rating of 5 stars cubed!

Less than 3 percent of all investors will outperform the market with their total portfolio over a five year time period. That means that most people should have their stock money in indexed mutual funds. But if you want to put a small portion of your money into picking stocks, this approach can help. Do be aware that you still have to buy stocks when they are cheap. Even though technology stocks have come down a lot in the last 11 months, most are not yet cheap. So, the entry point is ahead.

Anyone who is interested in picking stocks for themselves must read this book. If you don't, you will miss an important improvement on how to find stocks that will grow at a vast multiple of the market's overall growth rate. The book extends well beyond three of the best growth stock investment approaches that I have seen, and puts these improvements together in a new way. It is almost like a two generation improvement on picking top growth stocks.

The book goes beyond Gorilla Game by building on a successful approach that has already delivered 150 percent annual profit gains for 4 years. In other words, there is a track record to go with this idea . . . not just a back testing on how one might have picked the past winners.

The book goes beyond Motley Fool because it has a much more sophisticated approach to screening for top stocks and a more sophisticated network for developing and checking out stock ideas through the ChangeWave Web site. At that site, the ideas are rated, and those whose ideas don't perform well are dropped after a year. I thought that the process described was a good one: Start by looking for change quakes (new irresistible forces of the largest magnitude) then for the Killer Value Proposition that will win out in serving the new trend, then locating which will be the leading change waves (currently such as B to B and virtual enterprises), then to the fastest growing sectors within the change waves, on to Superior Space, and finally to locating the Wave Runner Companies. Then you are given lots of technical ideas for when to buy and sell.

The book goes beyond the ideas reflected in Investors Business Daily by providing much more understanding of the reasons why a company will prosper in the future.

I also liked the logic of how to diversify a little in a concentrated portfolio so your winners can squeeze out the losers.

However, from reading the book, I can see that there will have to be a ChangeWave Investing 2.0 at some point. Mr. Smith is a little hazy on some of his basics. Where he describes how a company gets valued is both simplistic and wrong. I also saw an overreliance on extending trends, rather than understanding the underlying elasticities of technologies and demand that create the growth that he is trying to forecast. I think this Alliance idea will work well in helping investors to more quickly understand the implications of new technology standards, but I think that it will be less helpful in assessing the potential of disruptive rather than follow-on technologies. I could go on, but you can see that the idea requires further building to reach its full potential.

This book is well beyond anything I have read about picking stocks. I plan to start visiting the Web site to better understand the process. I suggest that you do the same as well.

If you have been burned in the past with ways to pick stocks, don't fall prey to the disbelief stall that something new cannot work better. I think that using this book and the Web site combined as aids to your thinking can be part of a program to give you an edge over the bulk of investors that could yield above-average results . . . if you are careful about buying when prices are low! Practice with a small part of your portfolio in the beginning -- perhaps no more than 5 to 10 percent.

Since I read first read the book, I decided to use this approach for 10 percent of my portfolio. I wanted to buy 10 stocks that way. I have only been able to find one that became cheap enough, so I have 1 percent in ChangeWave stocks and 9 percent in cash. My gain on the one stock I bought is about 20 percent.

Good hunting!

Rating:
Summary: Advanced Concepts for Stock Picking . . . Weak on Valuation
Review: This book deserves a rating of 5 stars cubed!

Less than 3 percent of all investors will outperform the market with their total portfolio over a five year time period. That means that most people should have their stock money in indexed mutual funds. But if you want to put a small portion of your money into picking stocks, this approach can help. Do be aware that you still have to buy stocks when they are cheap. Even though technology stocks have come down a lot in the last 11 months, most are not yet cheap. So, the entry point is ahead.

Anyone who is interested in picking stocks for themselves must read this book. If you don't, you will miss an important improvement on how to find stocks that will grow at a vast multiple of the market's overall growth rate. The book extends well beyond three of the best growth stock investment approaches that I have seen, and puts these improvements together in a new way. It is almost like a two generation improvement on picking top growth stocks.

The book goes beyond Gorilla Game by building on a successful approach that has already delivered 150 percent annual profit gains for 4 years. In other words, there is a track record to go with this idea . . . not just a back testing on how one might have picked the past winners.

The book goes beyond Motley Fool because it has a much more sophisticated approach to screening for top stocks and a more sophisticated network for developing and checking out stock ideas through the ChangeWave Web site. At that site, the ideas are rated, and those whose ideas don't perform well are dropped after a year. I thought that the process described was a good one: Start by looking for change quakes (new irresistible forces of the largest magnitude) then for the Killer Value Proposition that will win out in serving the new trend, then locating which will be the leading change waves (currently such as B to B and virtual enterprises), then to the fastest growing sectors within the change waves, on to Superior Space, and finally to locating the Wave Runner Companies. Then you are given lots of technical ideas for when to buy and sell.

The book goes beyond the ideas reflected in Investors Business Daily by providing much more understanding of the reasons why a company will prosper in the future.

I also liked the logic of how to diversify a little in a concentrated portfolio so your winners can squeeze out the losers.

However, from reading the book, I can see that there will have to be a ChangeWave Investing 2.0 at some point. Mr. Smith is a little hazy on some of his basics. Where he describes how a company gets valued is both simplistic and wrong. I also saw an overreliance on extending trends, rather than understanding the underlying elasticities of technologies and demand that create the growth that he is trying to forecast. I think this Alliance idea will work well in helping investors to more quickly understand the implications of new technology standards, but I think that it will be less helpful in assessing the potential of disruptive rather than follow-on technologies. I could go on, but you can see that the idea requires further building to reach its full potential.

This book is well beyond anything I have read about picking stocks. I plan to start visiting the Web site to better understand the process. I suggest that you do the same as well.

If you have been burned in the past with ways to pick stocks, don't fall prey to the disbelief stall that something new cannot work better. I think that using this book and the Web site combined as aids to your thinking can be part of a program to give you an edge over the bulk of investors that could yield above-average results . . . if you are careful about buying when prices are low! Practice with a small part of your portfolio in the beginning -- perhaps no more than 5 to 10 percent.

Since I read first read the book, I decided to use this approach for 10 percent of my portfolio. I wanted to buy 10 stocks that way. I have only been able to find one that became cheap enough, so I have 1 percent in ChangeWave stocks and 9 percent in cash. My gain on the one stock I bought is about 20 percent.

Good hunting!

Rating:
Summary: Avoid this and avoid wipeouts.
Review: Tobin's book is to be read now after the market collapse. Stuffed with made up terms "GOD and EGOD" for example,(GOD) standing for Game Over Dominators, the book is organized in a logical way but the stock picking method doesn't make any sense unlike Peter Lynch's seminal 1989 book, One Up on Wall Street. Let's not forget that Lynch had the billion $ Fidelity Magellan to manage. Smith only had the Journal and may be tons of other reference materials to make up for inexperience. Anyway his next book should be called "Tsunami"