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.
Rating: 
Summary: 2 Books That Boosted My Net Worth To the High 6 (6!) Figures
Review: Those other reviewers (as well as CNBC, Amazon and financial experts) are right. SIMPLE MONEY SOLUTIONS by Nancy Lloyd (a Federal Reserve Board economist who I see frequently on CNBC and read in the New York Times Sunday Business) and this book by Ron Insana are all I needed to finally make sense of my personal finances and begin making good investment decisions for my personal portfolio as well as my 401(k) plan. By using the outstanding, original and easy-to-follow advice in these two books my net worth has actually risen into the high six (6) figures!!! Not bad while the market is stagnating or dropping. My friends, whose portfolios have been plunging in value, are in awe of my newfound financial savvy and skyrocketing bottom line. And I owe it all to the information I picked up in these two incredible books. Ron and Nancy should patent this advice. It beats anything I've read elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: 2 Books That Boosted My Net Worth To the High 6 (6!) Figures
Review: Those other reviewers (as well as CNBC, Amazon and financial experts) are right. SIMPLE MONEY SOLUTIONS by Nancy Lloyd (a Federal Reserve Board economist who I see frequently on CNBC and read in the New York Times Sunday Business) and this book by Ron Insana are all I needed to finally make sense of my personal finances and begin making good investment decisions for my personal portfolio as well as my 401(k) plan. By using the outstanding, original and easy-to-follow advice in these two books my net worth has actually risen into the high six (6) figures!!! Not bad while the market is stagnating or dropping. My friends, whose portfolios have been plunging in value, are in awe of my newfound financial savvy and skyrocketing bottom line. And I owe it all to the information I picked up in these two incredible books. Ron and Nancy should patent this advice. It beats anything I've read elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary Book
Review: Whether stock or bond prices are rising or falling there is always some pundit who will be more than happy to attribute it to some canned response like disappointing earnings or political uncertainty. But what these pundits rarely own up to when they make their observations is that they are guessing and usually don't know any more about the real reasons than the rest of us at home. Or, even worse, many pundits will hype a financial offering because they stand to make money if they can stir interest. Not so with Ron Insana or his masterful book. Ron's book does dole out great information and a behind-the-scenes look at what's really going on in the markets from someone who isn't working for a financial services firm. The editors at Amazon made a good call when they named this book one of the 10 best of the year. I also liked one of their other choices: "Simple Money Solutions" by Nancy Lloyd. After seeing Ron interview Nancy on CNBC I bought her book and it is the best Personal Finance book I have ever seen. These two books should be rquired reading for anyone who hopes to achieve financial security.
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