Rating: 
Summary: equal parts humor and wisdom
Review: Much to my surprise, I find myself in agreement with a prize winning economist (Paul Samuelson has dubbed the book a "modern classic," and it is). A brief but insanely great read, Adam Smith made me laugh out loud at least half a dozen times with his dry sarcasm and sardonic wit. If 'Reminiscences of a Stock Operator' is the all time ultimate classic for traders, then 'The Money Game' is the all time ultimate classic for investors. Written almost a decade before I was born, the book is just as relevant today as it was in the latter half of the sixties. The high flyers Smith writes about are so similar to those of the 1990's bubble, it is literally as if nothing but the symbols have changed (and perhaps the clothing styles). Sixties screamers like Brunswick and Solectron were bid up to hundreds of times earnings, then flamed out and fell through the floor with spectacular declines of 90% or more- just like the JNPR's and CMGI's and JDSU's of our more enlightened age. The Great Winfield, master tape reader of his day, is the perfect 1960's equivalent to the modern daytrader banging bids on Island or Selectnet. The technical analysts of the sixties, with their punch cards and their vacuum tube computers, are in perfect harmony with the high powered number crunchers and stochastics trackers of today. And when Smith discusses the complete and utter wackiness of corporate accounting methods, complete with a hundred and one ways to massage earnings statements six ways to Sunday while technically remaining within the law, you would swear he is foreshadowing the fall of Enron. And of course there is good old John Jerk, proud representative of the general public, buying high, selling low and getting taken behind the woodshed by the smarter players, just as he still is today (but don't worry John, you'll come out okay in the "long term," really truly you will, snicker). Smith also takes some time near the end of the book to roast the gold bugs, who were the same bunch of pessimistic doom mongers back then as they are today (surprise!). The uber-pessimists had their brief moment in the sun in the early 80's, but of course 99% of them gave it all back too. What self respecting bug would have cashed in with gold at $800 an ounce when it was surely going to infinity? ... The old hands are always saying that the game is the same. Young gunslingers and wet behind the ears traders nod and smile, because they know the old timers are wise- yet the youngsters are still naïve enough to harbor doubts in the back of their minds as to whether it is true. Is the game always the same? Couldn't it be different this time? Couldn't it? 'The Money Game' really, seriously puts the issue to rest. There is no way a book written in 1966 could sound perfectly suited to 2001, no way that bowling stocks and fiber optic packet switching stocks could give the exact same performances under mania circumstances, unless the game is always indefinitely, immutably the same. And why shouldn't it be? We can put a man on the moon, but we certainly aren't any more humble or mature than we were yesterday. Our knowledge may increase but our greed and our fear stay the same. Bravo Adam Smith (or should I say George Goodman). I don't know if you are even still alive to read this praise, but your book is as fresh today as it was on the day you wrote it.
Rating:
Summary: Amazingly Eternally Relevant- more than just a Classic--
Review: Sophisticated or not, YOU NEED this BOOK !! A most creative piece of complete writing [ as real literature, an insider's nearly-journalistic report: if not how-to, perhaps how-not-to and here are you consequences; ].... Hard to imagine that the depiction of computer investing applications of 25 years ago would be insightful and contemporarily funnier than one can imagine. After all, most of us have more computing power on our desk top than a high- powered university might have managed using an entire air-conditioned city block. And certainly the opportunity to do practically unimaginable things with it, Who would believe that the 'new economy', 'new concepts', 'nifty-fifty' go-go era of the previous generation looks like deja vu- all-over- again, with respect to hightech electronics and the 'net. If you're skeptical that anything THAT OLD could be applicable to our high powered nouveau 'we're- so- much- more- sophisticated', real-time capabilities, perhaps it's time for you to visit, or revisit... * the gunslingers of the past, barely out of adolescence- invincible and bulletproof; * the earliest portrayals of computerized trading, and finagling; * 'the Great Winston' and the Kids: you think 1000 x earnings, and dreams versus reality is a new- millenium concept? * 16th century tulips.. It's inciteful, more sustainably clever and funny than the topic of wealth generation schemes should be possible... I read it [ then , reread it for fun ] a number of years ago.. went back to it again.. because when human nature is involved, nothing really changes- crowds and mobs really haven't changed; and we panic just as well today, only more efficiently and spectacularly in this day and age..
Rating:
Summary: Catch up on those 60s cocktail parties with fund managers...
Review: This is a great book on many levels, for both investors and non-investors. The setting is Wall Street in the late 1960s. Alcohol flows freely, and smoking is not taboo (don't forget about sex, these were the "Go-Go Years"). It is an almost exclusively male, smaller, whiter, and more white-shoe environment (most women in the book are referred to as "pretty young things"). Nevertheless, don't let the differences fool you; there are many things to be learned in this tale told from the inside. New York has come into its own as a financial center in the 1960s, and the electricity in the air is communicated through the pages. London, which was more of a co-equal in the prior, twenties bull market, is now a shadow, with Wall Street houses decorating their dining rooms with (page 223) "...paneling [that has] been flown over from busted merchant banks in the City of London..." The foundations of the confident World Trade Center are being drawn up. Older Depression-era Wall Street hands are still dominant, but as the Vietnam War hovers in the background, cracks in the establishment are beginning to show as twenty and thirty something "gunslinger" investment managers show up on the scene. Almost every major investment paradox or problem we face today is foreshadowed in miniature in this book. As a work of literature, it combines an engaging text with profound underlying meaning. The chapter "What Do the Numbers Mean?" on aggressive accounting was eerily prescient. The constant presence of John Maynard Keynes and Sigmund Freud as background figures to the culture of the times left an odd taste in my mouth, but the author (George J.W. Goodman, writing under the pen name "Adam Smith") never missed a beat in deftly applying their insights to the world of finance. The book has a strong undercurrent of behavioral finance, but it's about much more than that. There's a lot of humor, but there is also tragedy, when he recounts the tale of burnt-out and broke ex-millionaire Harry (many names are changed in the book to protect anonymity): (p. 93) "Time is getting shorter," Harry said. "I'll be forty soon. You have to do what you're going to do. All professionals use leverage. You have to, or you end up just another face in the crowd, someone who worked on the Street thirty years and saw a lot of markets and retired with a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. That's no reason to be on the Street." (p. 96) "[Goodman comments on Harry's misfortune] We all know what a millionaire is, and when the adding machine says, "$1,000,000," there is a beaming figure facing it. But when the machine says 00.00 there should be no one at all because that identity has been extinguished, and the trouble is that sometimes when the adding-machine tape says 00.00 there is still a man there to read it." Read this book, whether you are an investor, English major or engineer. You'll get a lot out of it.
| 
