Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

First of all let me say that I do believe this author has some good ideas. His basic strategy is to identify the strongest players in the new economy (tech stocks), then identify the companies which supply those companies, then find out who sells to those suppliers, and continue on in that fashion. Then you sit down and diagram the companies and their interrelationships.

So, he does know what he's talking about (I think)--it's just that the way he talks about it is just so damned annoying. I would estimate that 30% of the text is just his definitions of his own pet terms. Thus we have KVPs (Killer Value Propositions), "new, order-of-magnitude improvements in the status quo." There are ChangeWaves, FadWaves, SuperSpaces, and WaveRiders. There are AfterShocks and Emerging game-over dominators (E.G.O.D.) Since he uses these terms throughout his discourse, you'd better learn them if you want to get what's going on. Personally, I don't have the patience.

When I buy a book, I want to believe in the author. After all, I've made an investment. But this sort of jargon really makes me feel like I'm being sold a bill of goods. If I could give the author one piece of advice it would be to read The Elements of Style by William Strunk. We had to read it in middle school so we could learn how to write without making the reader suffer too much.

Some have criticized the book because it's a blatant advertisement for the author's website. This is true. However, I would like to say that the author's writing is much better in his website articles. These articles are available to non-paying visitors. Also, he has a lot of other information, good information, on his website which is offered for free. Thus, in the balance, I think he has knowledge to offer and he knows a lot, and he's not a greedy used-car salesman type. But I suggest you visit the website, where you can sample portions of the book, before deciding to buy it.

I was lucky enough to get an advanced proof of this book andwas amazed at how easy it was to read. I have been a"ChangeWaver" via e-mail for over a year and have profited handsomely. The real power of this book and investment model will be the ChangeWave Alliance. Open Source Investing and ChangeWave.com will rock Wall Street. By linking 1,000's of new economy professionals who eat and breathe new technology every day and aligning their knowlege and investment goals with a singular investment model and investment analysis logic is one of the most powerful concepts I have ever seen. Those of us who realize that Wall Street is about creating fee's from investment banking ( I am one I should know) by using positive analyst comments to make and move a stock have often wondered when this dirty little secret would be unveiled in the open information world of the internet. Unbiased investment research is the key to discovering the next "Game Over Dominators" and with 20 million online investors by 2003 it will be their collective power (and ChangeWave research) that will move the markets.How else do you explain a person who "writes reports" earning up to $15 million a year...give me a break. When smart people see this for what it really is the mataphoical "Komona" will be opened. When a subset of highly informed and disciplined investors apply this model and make investing decisions accordingly watch out. Tobin Smith's network of ChangeWavers may become THE market movers of the future. Remember, the "Network is the Guru"!.

Read this a little while ago and am really writing this review to warn people considering having anything to do with Toby Smith. At the time I was impressed with the new jargon (I now realise that it was just nonsense),but after a while it also dawned on me that Toby was just fundamentally wrong and if you are also foolish enough to follow his website you will realise that he just makes things up as he goes along. This I suppose is how anyone would behave when they do not know what they are doing.
One need only look at his fund to see that does not know what to do with his own money let alone teaching people how to make money.
If I had not received any formal training regarding splitting investments, "sell stops" and when to avoid trading e.g. at announcements I would have wiped out my families entire fortune. God help those still stuck with his original recommendations -I know that some of you have had your retirement funds eliminated.
Also seen him on TV and he seems like a decent enough chap - shame that he does not know what he is doing.
Would rather go for teachings of Chris Manning or lessons learnt in the all time classic "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator".

I had the misfortune to follow this guy's newsletter advice from early June until I gave up in September; nothing but losses. In fairness, they did give me a total refund on my subscription.

The book is full of financial terminology, basically made up by the author, and not used in every day life. You can either follow the book, spend a lot of time making stock selections that won't work in a bear market, or you can subscribe to his newsletter and he will pick the stocks for you (that will lose in a bear market) -- your choice. If you really want to make money in stocks follow Bill O'Neill's strategies.

As the stock market has risen to new heights in recent years, high-tech stocks have led the way. However, most novice investors, do not truly understand the tech stocks they own or how they interface with our new economy. Tobin Smith, author of Change Wave helps to put it all together it terms of products and services that will dominate or play a supporting cast in the evolving technology world. This book would be a useful guide for investors, both beginners and pros. The book is insightful on how the tech sectors (communications, semiconductors, computers, software, and Internet stocks) interact and which companies will create dominant positions and stockholder profits. Smith presents his own strategy for picking tech stocks, and offers recommendations of stocks and technology. This stock picking strategy I found to be different , enlightening and lucrative.

This book is one big advertisement for the author's website. If only this "review" makes you check out the book from your local bookstore first, then it will have done its job.

I followed, on paper, the stocks recommended by this guy at the beginning of September 2000. At this time, the advice was to buy if not already invested and hold if fully invested.

He said that the road ahead might be a little 'bumpy' but 'temporary' corrections would be mild and being in these stocks was the best place for your money etc. etc.

Well, at the close of trading today 12/20/2000, those 36 stocks have lost 75% of their value - No! that's not a typo - 75%.

The web site has only being going since June, so one can only wonder about the loss from the March high!

I took a look at the web site today and see that the advice posted on 12/7/200 was:

"Don't let the pessimists scare you".

Two days later, the NASDAQ was over 3000 for the last time this year and it has lost 25% in the week and a half since that erroneous (and expensive) advice. Now, if he had advised liquidating everything at the beginning of September and to wait until this inevitable and wholly foreseeable rout was over, then that would be impressive - but he didn't - Why? - because he hasn't got a clue.

'Tech' is indeed every bit as wondrous as he describes but it decimates profits.

You're more likely to get Broadband free with a fill-up at the gas station than to see a company making a decent profit providing it. Just ask @Home/AT&T.

As they say - don't ever confuse brains for a raging and irrational bull market.

This book really changed my entire point of view concerning tech stocks for the next decade. Awsome for people familiar with Gorilla stock investing,potential 10 baggers and finding Game Over Dominant stocks(G.O.D.'s) If you're the type of investor that stays up all night looking to find which stock will be the next Dell,Emc,Cisco this book will straighten out your approach. Don't miss out,buy it,read it and profit.I liked it so much that i even subscribed to his online newsletter.Good luck!

Upon receiving this book, I was very excited. I run a hedge fund and am always looking for new ideas in terms of analyzing the markets and the individual stocks in these markets. So CHANGE WAVE intriged me. But I soon found out that this is nothing but a 300 page add for their websight. Do yourself a favor, buy something else. You might say well why 2 stars. I found one good idea. If you have a dominate company in an industry & a small company makes a deal with them; the small company is a good buy. I had not approached screening for stocks this way so this is helpful.

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!