Rating: 
Summary: A Fable about the market
Review: If Ron Insana could really read the message of the market do you think he would still be an anchor at CNBC? Of course not, he would be on his own private island sipping a soda. This book is more about marketing than informing. It uses old examples to prove its points, but these examples are far from convincing and really don't apply to the market in general. What readers get here is a small book(it is not even 200 pages so I guess the market has little to say)with a picture of Ron on the front. I wanted more for my money!
Rating: 
Summary: A piece of the puzzle unveiled
Review: Many underestimate the value the news can have on their investment strategies. Insana's research demonstrates the usefulness of correctly interpreting and acting upon the news. This reinforces the somewhat shorter-term "buy the rumor; sell the news" experiences my partner and I have had and discuss in our book "How to Start Day Trading Futures, Options, and Indices." Nothing occurs in a vacuum--not the behavior of the market nor that of other investment vehicles. Insana's book points this out in a easy to read, informative manner.
Rating:
Summary: A piece of the puzzle unveiled
Review: Many underestimate the value the news can have on their investment strategies. Insana's research demonstrates the usefulness of correctly interpreting and acting upon the news. This reinforces the somewhat shorter-term "buy the rumor; sell the news" experiences my partner and I have had and discuss in our book "How to Start Day Trading Futures, Options, and Indices." Nothing occurs in a vacuum--not the behavior of the market nor that of other investment vehicles. Insana's book points this out in a easy to read, informative manner.
Rating:
Summary: The Message Is Not There - bad investment
Review: Message in the markets is a reasonable book, however, I got nothing new here and think your money would be much better off invested in other books. Insana is a REPORTER and while that gives a unique perspective, you are better off reading books by William O'Neil, Peter Lynch, John Murphy and even the Motley Fool. The difference is these are practicioners of the trade, not just reporters.I also believe there is a rule that Financial News Reporters are not allowed to invest in individual stocks and are confined to mutual funds, so his book is on a more macro level. Nothing is wrong with that, but in a stock pickers market where the indices are not behaving well, and only individual stocks will help you stay afloat, Insana's book does not help.
Rating: 
Summary: A book on history, not investing
Review: Ron Insana's The Message of the Markets is an interesting read of financial market history. His thesis is that movements in the financial markets can foretell future events, but he ignores all those times the markets reacted irrationally. This book cannot make you a better investor, but it is one person's interesting perspective of history.
Rating:
Summary: A book on history, not investing
Review: Ron Insana's The Message of the Markets is an interesting read of financial market history. His thesis is that movements in the financial markets can foretell future events, but he ignores all those times the markets reacted irrationally. This book cannot make you a better investor, but it is one person's interesting perspective of history.
Rating:
Summary: What message? That the market's run by crooks?
Review: The world's biggest bear has nothing new to say. You'd be better off with books from someone who practices what they preach. If you pay for cable or a dish to get CNBC, you're already losing money. Don't waste any more.
Rating:
Summary: 2 Books My Investment Club Profited From
Review: This book and Nancy Lloyd's book, "Simple Money Solutions," have turned out to be investing bibles for my investment club. Both CNBC's Ron Insana and Nancy Lloyd have a deep understanding of financial issues and the integrity to present it in an objective way (unlike so many other "experts" who are trying to turn their infomation into a quick buck by appearing on television). Fortunately, my investment club started reading both of these books a few weeks ago and took the time to rebalance our portfolio before it was too late. If we had not read these books we would have taken a huge and avoidable financial loss. Bravo to Ron and Nancy for giving loads of thoughtful information and without a lot of fanfare. We profited from it and I'm sure others can too.
Rating:
Summary: 2 Books My Investment Club Profited From
Review: This book and Nancy Lloyd's book, "Simple Money Solutions," have turned out to be investing bibles for my investment club. Both CNBC's Ron Insana and Nancy Lloyd have a deep understanding of financial issues and the integrity to present it in an objective way (unlike so many other "experts" who are trying to turn their infomation into a quick buck by appearing on television). Fortunately, my investment club started reading both of these books a few weeks ago and took the time to rebalance our portfolio before it was too late. If we had not read these books we would have taken a huge and avoidable financial loss. Bravo to Ron and Nancy for giving loads of thoughtful information and without a lot of fanfare. We profited from it and I'm sure others can too.
Rating: 
Summary: Good point - wrong emphasis in presentation
Review: This is a well-informed and very readable book on the informational value of the financial markets. However, this is not a how-to book on stock picking. What Mr Insana is concerned with in this book is not so much what price movements can tell us about an individual stock, but the macro information that the financial markets can tell us about the economy, geopolitics, major news events etc. There's almost no advice on individual stock picking based on price movements (too noisy), but there are advices on how to choose a job, time the purchase of a new home, move cash in and out of the market etc. based on the message of the markets. In retrospect, some of the messages from the markets identified in the book are quite prescient. A good example is the rapid deterioration in the A/D line at the height of the Internet bubble. Of course that phenonmenon did not go unnoticed by the market pros. I clearly remember numerous analysts assuring viewers on CNBC that the stock market was not over-valued (and therefore in no danger of collapsing) because so many stocks were in the doldrums! The book was filled with anecdotes about how major economic and geopolitical events (from Fed rate cuts to border wars between Egypt and Libya) are foreshadowed by unexplained market movements. Had Mr. Insana focused on the rationale behind these movements his argument would've been a lot more convincing. Instead, the book had a tendency to ascribe a sort of magical, oracular power to the market and the "smart money" that makes the market. Of course the real reason is a lot more mundane. Sometimes it's rampant insider trading (as in the oil futures mkt). At other times anyone who has bothered to read a newspaper would have seen it coming from a mile away. A good example is the collapse of the Thai baht. Any regular reader of the Far Eastern Economic Review would not have needed the markets to send a msg - for months the magazine was filled with dire warnings of imminent collapse in its op-ed pages. Another issue that Mr. Insana did not address is the very important question of how to separate the signal from the noise emanating from the market 24 hours a day. As someone who had (foolishly) dabbled in the futures market, I know first hand that wild swings in the market can be triggered but nothing more dramatic than a 1/2-hr T-storm in downtown Chicago. (I always susepct that if I wait at a 2nd fl. window at the CBOT and sprinkle water on the head of a particular trader as he leaves the building, I can make a killing in soybeans.) In the days of old when the market was almost the exclusive domain of the Smart Money in the know, the msg. of the mkts was probably a lot more reliable than today, when the unwashed masses can steamroll the smart money based on the most ludicrous rumor posted on Pump-n-dump.com. How to separate the grains from the chaff is something we'll have to leave to another CNBC author. BTW, there really is a web site called pumpanddump.com.
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