Rating: 
Summary: Start your invest off right DON'T waste money on this book.
Review: Bullish on the markets into 2006. A Dow Jones Industrial Avg. at 40,000. Please folks, anyone can make these ridiculous predictions. The key to determining market direction is simply to take a look around. Do you currently have job security? If you decide to leave your job could you easily find another one? Is your spending tightening up or are you spending freely? It's the consumer that keeps the economy going and company profits up. The NASDAQ has already dropped from 5000 to 2150 down 57% from its peak. The DOW from 11,000 to 10,500 only about 5%, but a far cry from the 40,000 + by 2006-8 as Dent predicts. Company after company announcing layoffs. How can people without jobs spend money? For those asleep the last eight years it might be time to start looking at investing. For those who have watched their porfolios get cut in half the last couple years PLEASE don't continue to hold on to that thread of hope named Harry Dent and his ridiculous predictions. The only credit I can give him is that he was smart enough to make a bunch of money sellin g a pipe dream. My only regret, I didn't think of it first. DOW 60,000 by 2010 anyone?
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating analysis, but ....
Review: When I first read the Great Boom Ahead I found it compelling and when The Roaring 2000's was published I rushed right out and bought it. Dent uses a demographic concept he calls the spending wave to predict the future of the economy and stock market. I was so intrigued by this idea that I decided to replicate his analysis and to extend it back in time as far as I could (just to see if it worked). For a graph of my results seehttp://csf.colorado.edu/authors/Alexander.Mike/spendwav.gif As that graph shows, the spending wave 'worked' for 1929 too. But Dent's predictions really changed between The Great Boom Ahead and The Roaring 2000's. He projects a Dow of 23K to 35K by 2007-2010! He ignored the *level* predicted by his model and simply extrapolated the recent rate of rise to the 2007-2010 date his timing projects. This is a critical error (there could be an intervening bear market between now and 2007 for example). If you focus on the levels predicted using his methods you arrive at the conclusions that the bull market would end in the neighborhood of 1450 (in 1999 dollars) on the S&P500, which means it has ended already. One can interpret this result as a bear market is interposed between now and 2007 so that the index is only getting back to the prior peak (in real terms) by 2007 as Dent's model projects. Mr. Dent should have mentioned this in the Roaring 2000's. As a result I award 5 stars for the originality of the idea and the presentation, but only 1 star for the accuracy of his prediction for an overall three stars. I recommend the book Stock Cycles for a more careful projection of stock returns over the next 20 years.
Rating:
Summary: Dent is a fraud
Review: Dent's previous work, The Great Boom Ahead, started with some valuable theories based on quantifiable data. About one third of the way thru the book it lapses into making unjustified qualitative assertions which suggest he may not know as much as is suggested early on in the reading. In this follow-up book, he has condensed the good parts of the first book, and expanded on all the subjective garbage. He seems fixated on many n-year cycles. His 500-year cycle theory, if it had any basis, would require about 15,000 years of data to analyse properly. His diatribe on internet doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. He babbles about the alternating creative and the methodical generations, S-curves which can never be proved or disproved, and about the right-brain and left-brain. If economists don't know anything about the economy, and psychologits don't know anything about how the human brain functions, then an economist making statements about the brain is really stretching the limits of credibility. I found it difficult to finish this book, forever hoping that there may be a few morsels of information somewhere, but alas I came up empty handed.
Rating:
Summary: A load of rubbish
Review: This is the worst book I have ever read. Absolutely the worst. It's full of wild statements unsupported by any evidence or references, too many to list here but I'll give you two of the wildest: Dent says that every 80 years 'we see an economic revolution' and he draws a few graphs to show the period between 1920 and the present. If it's every 80 years, why not say what occurred in the period 1840 - 1920? And before that, 1760 - 1840? Is this a global phenomenon, or American only? He also claims that 'every 500 years unusually large population explosions over the course of a century set off a tidal wave of change and progress.' Really? Every 500 years? Where? All over the world in 1500? And in the year 1000 also? In Europe? Or did the native Americans have an 'unusually large population explosion' 500 years before Christopher Columbus got there? He claims that the developing world will be a paradise for American business as with the introduction of air conditioning, yes airconditioning, the people in those hot countries will work harder and buy all the American goodies: fridges, TVs, microwave ovens and no doubt vast quantities of junk foods which will ruin their health leading to massive purchases of medicines from the drug companies.So go ahead, make his day, buy stocks in the drug industry. At this point I decided to stop wasting my time and and to throw the book into the garbage. Save your money - Don't buy this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: After reading Dent's superb book "The Great Boom Ahead" I was really looking forward to this book. However, aside from repeating himself, this book provides little new insight. Stick with his other book, and don't waste your time on this one.
Rating:
Summary: A book worthy of the current stock market bubble...
Review: Simply put, Dent's predictions cannot occur. Consider the following figures. Dent's current projections for the Dow Jones Industrials is 41,500 by 2008, whereas he now expects the Nasdaq to reach 45,000 by the same date. Were this to occur, the total stock market capitalization would exceed $101 trillion (currently around $14-$16 trillion)! Were the nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to grow at a rate of approximately 6.5%, including a real GDP rate of 4.0% (Greenspan's best-case target) and inflation of 2.5% (Fed's and GAO estimate), the nominal GDP would reach $17 trillion in 2008. The ratio of total stock market capitalization to nominal GDP would reach 600%! The figure at the most recent highs was 185%. At the peaks in 1929, 1973, and 1987, the figures were 81%, 70%, and 64% respectively. At the height of Japan's bubble market in December 1989, this figure topped 150%. (The average of the past 129 years in the U.S. has been 50%.) This suggests that the ratio will TRIPLE in the next eight years. How can this happen? Answer: It cannot. Dent predicted a real estate market crash (30%-50%) in the U.S. in 1994-95, based on his demographic analysis. This was a fundamental blunder. Dent predicted in late 1997 and early 1998 that the Fed would raise rates in 1998, that the long bond yield would hit 7.25%, and that large-cap stocks would correct and recover but underperform small stocks. Such a failed prediction calls into question his very understanding of the business and interest rate cycles. There should be no doubt in any reader's mind the dubious nature of Dent's methodology and therefore his projections. More than anything, Dent is an expert marketer of Harry Dent, genius, forecaster extraordinaire. When the market flattens out or takes a massive dive in the decade or more ahead, Dent will be watching from his Puerto Rican plantation estate where he moved in 1998. I'll leave it to you to figure out why he would move from a spectacular beachside mansion in Half Moon Bay, CA to the Caribbean when he did . . .
Rating: 
Summary: Too Optimistic ... or Not Enough?
Review: I wonder if Mr. Dent is too optimistic. Many of his ideas seem sound but there are too many variable in economic systems to make accurate predictions. I hope he is right though. The sections about real estate are a little dull ... but that's just my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Just what we all want to hear
Review: I have skimmed this book and can say based on the content I saw and other reviews that this book is one-half solid buy-and-hold advice, and one-half pie-in-the-sky prognostication about the future of the market. It's human nature to want to extrapolate past trends, whether positive or negative. Most novice investors beleive that stock market returns of 20% or more are typical of not just the 90's bull market but of the future as well. This is exactly the kind of book they are looking for to reinforce such thinking. Attempting to predict the direction of the market is generally not a very fruitful endeavor. Warren Buffet, who is reluctant to discuss this subject, does not try to "predict" but he recently made a subjective, probabilistic judgement about the market's expected return for the next 17 years in a Fortune article. Most equities investors will likely be disappointed because based on the three inescapable factors -- interest rates, profit growth, and market psychology -- a return of about 6% a year would be fairly optimistic. In addition, technology, despite its tremendous potential to enhance the quality of our lives, is not necessarily a great investment and will likely reduce the profitability of businesses overall due to its effect of lowering costs. A study of the automobile and telephone -- two revolutionary technological innovations -- yielded very few successful businesses. Those that survived are subpar investments (see GM). Buy good companies and hold them for the long term. Watch what you pay. Realize that even over 10 to 20 year periods, the stock market may either exceed the average return (90's) or it may go nowhere (between '64 and 81 the Dow netted a gain of less than 1 point).
Rating: 
Summary: Such a positive way to view the on-going revolution!
Review: Dent provides an excellent view of the current changes, backed by data on family purchasing cycles. He does a fantastic job of bouying one's spirit to take advantage of the internet revolution and provides tips on where and how to find more information to capitalize on the future's developments. If you wish to prepare yourself for the rest of this decade, I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Convincing - Makes a lot of sense but Time will tell
Review: Great book. Very sound logic based on demographics and it all makes a lot of sense for folks who want to get steered in the right direction - if they want it. I loved it. Helped paint a better picture of the future. All said and done - Time will tell. Enjoy the book and use it.
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