The Either/Or Investor: How to Succeed in Global Investing, One Decision at a Time [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Clark Winter (Author), Stephen Hoye (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 6, 2008

People today are inundated with advice, opinions, and information about how to invest. The more data you accumulate, the thinking goes, the better decisions you'll make. In The Either/Or Investor, global investment strategist Clark Winter shows that the opposite is the case, introducing a revelatory way of thinking about the markets based on finding and assessing just enough of the right information and using your common sense.According to Winter, investing comes down to making choices. All great investors employ an "either/or" filter for evaluating and simplifying the many investment opportunities available to them. The Either/Or Investor reveals how you can emulate this thought process while remaining realistic about your own goals and needs, and gives you the tools to choose among the options that modern investors face, such as:-Fear versus greed: In an anxious post-9/11 world, discover when it's smart to make an aggressive financial move.-Developed world versus developing world: Find out if you should stick with opportunities in the United States or risk those available in the emerging economies of China, Russia, India, Mexico, and Turkey.-Anti-immigration versus migration of talent: Learn to evaluate the products that immigrants introduce to the rest of the world in order to assess the value in investing in American companies that cater to new immigrant groups.-Too much information versus too little information: Use the Internet, newspapers, and TV to your advantage. (For example, get the pros and cons about China's growing economic power so you can become informed enough to act.)-Rising interest rates versus falling interest rates: Understand how changing interest rates are a good barometer for how to spend your money.Winter shows how anyone can learn to make sound decisions in a changing world by discerning trends early in an investment cycle, and then taking advantage of these trends or steering clear. Winter also explains how to choose a money manager and how to determine what the next investment opportunities might be.Armed with Winter's methods, any investor can improve his or her own investment prowess. The Either/Or Investor is a way-both judicious and daring-for choosing a better future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Winter, managing director at Goldman Sachs, delivers an admirably clear and encouraging guide to informed investing that is refreshingly free of jargon, theory or scare tactics intended to propel individual investors into his firm's advisers' waiting arms or related mutual funds. Winter also shies away from the standard introduction to broad concepts that leave readers ready for a pop quiz, but unclear as to how they will make any money. Instead, his direct approach hones in on the four cardinal rules to navigate through the noise machine that is the investment industry and to prevent investors from falling prey to clever sales pitches or... hubris. He champions simple and pragmatic binary thinking (the developed world versus the developing world, Tokyo or Shanghai, fad versus trend) to decide which investment possibilities to pursue. Even more usefully, he explains how investors have been making money recently and points readers in the direction he believes future profits will most likely be found. Novices and seasoned investors alike will find much to relish in this crash course in making sound investment choices. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Prominent investment strategist Winter presents a new approach for investors facing an overwhelming number of choices—an either/or way of assessing markets. To avoid making random choices, he suggests making calculated, informed decisions that result from thinking about "binaries" on topics including the developed versus the developing world, too much versus too little information, and rising versus falling interest rates. The first binary of investing is fear versus greed; when fear dominates, perfectly sound investments stay constant or decline, while in times of greed, investors are overly optimistic and drive up prices. Winter offers advice on a wide range of investing topics, including how to select a money manager. He sets out in this valuable book to reformulate the advice he has given during the past decade to bankers and high-net-worth clients with a focus on investment ideas rather than products to help readers "comprehend the most obvious and elusive investment concept of all—opportunity." Whaley, Mary --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged,Library - Unabridged CD edition (October 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400138116
• ISBN-13: 978-1400138111
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 6.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,105,706 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A valuable resource for serious investors, January 2, 2009

By 

John Chancellor "Mentor coach" (Spring Hill, TN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Either/Or Investor: How to Succeed in Global Investing, One Decision at a Time (Hardcover)

This is a very valuable resource for serious investors. It is not for everyone. The concepts presented in this book take a certain level of knowledge to implement. It takes time to learn the concepts and to stay abreast of what is happening in the world.

The first thing that Mr. Winter does is to dispel the myth that you can become automatically wealthy by following the buy and hold method of investing. He does a good job of showing the dangers of the buy and hold philosophy of investing.

Unfortunately, far too many Americans will not take the time to understand the basic factors controlling the domestic stock markets let alone trying to understand the more complex global markets.

There are, in my opinion, three major lessons in this book. The first is while buy and hold may have worked at one time, it no longer works.

The second major lesson has to do with effective decision making. Here Mr. Winter gives a good lesson on binary decision making. Simply reduce every decision to a yes or no outcome. It does not matter how much you study a question, eventually you need to make a decision. So learn to structure your research so that you arrive at an either/or decision.

The third major portion of the book is a set of concepts or questions that an astute investor needs to examine. These questions concern where and why you will invest or choose not to invest in a given situation. For example, should you invest in the developed world or the developing world? Should you invest where a country is ruled by the rule of power or the rule of law? Should your investment decisions be based on fear or greed? It is interesting that he defines greed as a sub-set of fear, that is, we actually fear that we are not going to get our share.

There are twenty-one either/or questions that he presents with a full explanation of the significance the question has on our investment choices.

The book is well written and easy to understand. However, it is not for the casual reader. While understanding the concept of binary decision making will improve the decision making process for some, I would not recommend you read the book just for that purpose.

If you are a serious investor, with a strong desire to become a successful investor, then this book should be high on your reading list. It does not dwell on the fundamentals verses the technical charts. It looks at investing from a higher perspective. The book examines the various factors that impact successful investing. In a changing world, where events happening around the world affect what happens everywhere, you really need to understand the interactions. This book does a very good job of making the complex financial world at least understandable. Mr. Winter also gives you are detailed model to follow to stay informed about how the changes will affect your investment decisions.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Focuses on how to make good investment decisions so you can then make good investments, March 18, 2010

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Either/Or Investor: How to Succeed in Global Investing, One Decision at a Time (Hardcover)

While this book came out BEFORE the recent economic troubles, the decision model Clark Winter shows you still makes sense. He is not advocating a specific investment model or advising you to target certain markets. He says that you can't make good investment decisions until you know how to make good decisions and that makes a lot of sense to me.

He points out that one of the reasons the United States has a negative savings rate is that we tend to buy and hold and that life gets in the way of our creating wealth. We have life emergencies, unexpected needs, divorces, death, and so forth. Instead, Winter wants you to be more active in keeping your money deployed. Not so much as a stock picker or a technical trader, but in making a series of binary (either / or) choices.

You should balance fear versus greed, compare the developed and the developing world, look at anti-immigration versus talent migration, whether or not you have too much or too little information, and whether or not interest rates are rising or falling.

Winter's four basic rules for investing are:
1) Don't lose money - because when you do you put pressure on your investments to produce unrealistic returns just to get back to even.
2) Don't invest where the big investors are putting their money - because their large purchases push the price higher and you end up paying too much for the return you will get.
3) Find a waterfall and put your bucket under it - Winter credits this to George Soros.
4) Open your mind - because the world changes from moment to moment and you will miss opportunities if your mind is blinded by focus on the wrong things.

He also points out the relevance of Col. John Boyd's OODA loop for aerial combat to investing. You need to Observe the investment environment, Orient yourself to take advantage of the situation, Decide what you are going to do, and Act quickly without hesitation.

Winter points out that too many ordinary investors try to invest like the best investors and end up trying to do things they cannot do. Instead, you should stay within your talents, experience, and make the most of them by making the best decisions available to you and you can still do well. Consistent good choices are better than erratic and only occasionally excellent choices.

Interesting reading that you might find helpful.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For those who want a primer on things to consider when getting started with investing, then this little guide might be helpful!, December 26, 2008

By 

Jeff Lippincott "JLIPPIN" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Either/Or Investor: How to Succeed in Global Investing, One Decision at a Time (Hardcover)

I liked this book. As I read it I kept telling myself there is some really good content included between its covers. I'm not sure I can say it was particularly well written. But it passes as a great primer for someone who is thinking of taking the plunge and getting involved in the stock market. It covers all the basics that one should consider before taking their hard-earned money and investing it into something that hopefully will generate a reasonable return.

This book is clearly aimed at an audience of want-be investors who really have no clue as to how to go about getting started as an investor. It is not a technical book. It does not go into fundamental analysis or technical analysis. But it does talk about earnings reports, risk, and things that have an impact on both: politics, economics, environment, and exogenous factors. It talks about the need to keep an open mind, avoid unecessary risk, and to follow the money. In a nutshell, this book explains that investing can be a very complex thing. But successful investors try to keep it simple as possible in order to avoid information overload because overload leads to indecision which is not good.

This book is the first one that I have read that goes into how investing and everything that goes into it is in a state of flux. When the world revolved around the US it was pretty easy to keep track of things. However, today everything is being globalized. The US is no longer the center of things - it is turning into just another player. As a result, it's getting more difficult to stay on top of investments. If this subject is one that interests you, then I suspect the instant book will be right up your alley.

I would have liked the book better if it had been better written. Each of the first four parts felt to me like chapters themselves. And the fifth part felt to me like a conclusion. I was totally shocked when the introduction to a 195-page book totalled 29 pages. That's just way too long! And if Part V is considered the conclusion, then it totalled 14 pages. And I didn't feel as though the conclusion really pulled the book together. However, after subtracting out the intro and conclusion, that leaves just 152 pages to be divided among 21 chapters. You do the math. That's just not right. 4 stars!

PS. I encourage you to examine the Search Inside feature for this book offered by Amazon. There you can see the chapter titles included in the book's Table of Contents.