The Faber Report: CNBC's "The Brain" Tells You How Wall Street Really Works and How You Can Make It Work for You [Hardcover]

David Faber (Author), Ken Kurson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2002

These days, when CNBCs David Faber talks, Wall Street listens. Unlike the talking heads that populate the financial news channels, Faber is a down-and-dirty investigative reporter. For six years, on CNBCs popular Squawk Box and in his own segments, Faber has broken story after story. Each day over one million people tune in to hear his daily report. Those who know the score know that Faber is the one to listen toespecially now that the market isnt doing as well as it used to. Now Faber has written the smartest, most innovative investment book to be published in years. Like Harvard Business Schools famous case study method, each chapter is built around a storythe story of how a stock was presented to the public. Then Faber extracts clear, easy-to-follow lessons and instructions on how readers can learn the stocks real story, just as he does everyday on CNBC. Readers learn not just how to pick the stocks they want to invest in, but how to avoid joining the penguins lining up for big losses. The Faber Report combines practical, down to earth investment advice with wild accounts of investor fraud, company misdeeds, and famous investors and banks that have led investors astray. A quantum leap beyond the usual investment books, The Faber Report is essential reading for anyone who wants to profitbulls or bears.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

David Faber's The Faber Report is a scathing critique of the greed that permeates all levels of Wall Street, from analysts and investment bankers to money managers and brokers. Faber, who has been covering Wall Street for some 15 years--first as an editor and reporter at Institutional Investor and then, more famously, as a correspondent on CNBC--relates story after story about the conflict of interest that runs rampant between Wall Street and the companies it represents and the investing public. Organized into chapters such as "Why I Hate Analysts," "Why I Love Short Sellers," and "The Truth About Your Broker," the book mixes firsthand observations with advice to individual investors. For example, in the chapter on stock analysts, he advises investors to "Use mass upgrades and downgrades as a contrary indicator" and "Give less credence to positive calls, more credence to negative calls." While some readers may be put off by Faber's self-congratulatory tone, most individual investors would do well to consider Faber's main point about what really happens on Wall Street every day. This book should especially resonate with fans of CNBC's Squawk Box. --Harry C. Edwards

From Publishers Weekly

Faber, a financial industries reporter who hosts The Faber Report, a CNBC segment, promotes an aggressively skeptical attitude in his first book. Predicated on what he calls Wall Street's core conflict of interest investment firms that analyze companies and also hope to do banking business with them Faber's work critically addresses the current economy. Analysts often assign ratings to stocks, not based on actual value, Faber says, but with an eye toward bringing in millions in fees for their own firms (and, by extension, themselves). He organizes his book as a series of case studies of how various companies' stocks were presented to the public, at times referring to the players simply as Big Firm X and Company A. Playing up his broadcast journalism background, Faber punctuates the finance talk by inserting pointed sidebars on understanding hedge funds and price/earnings ratios, profiles of high flyers like Lucent CEO Rich McGinn and even some Enron gossip. It's refreshing to see Faber's cynicism toward the industry he covers, but his tortured rationalization for why he has continued is unexpectedly touching: of the many thousands of bankers, traders, money managers, and brokers I've spoken to, not one came to Wall Street in order to do good for his or her fellow man, he says in the introduction. But... I would counter, he writes later, that it is better than anything else I've seen. Faber has penned a helpful, instructive book with appropriate amounts of doubt and optimism.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown; 1 edition (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316087424
• ISBN-13: 978-0316087421
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,534,175 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good for novice traders, June 17, 2002

By 

"gannite" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Faber Report: CNBC's "The Brain" Tells You How Wall Street Really Works and How You Can Make It Work for You (Hardcover)

IMHO, an essential part of being a good trader is having a good sense of how things function on Wall Street. If you are a new trader this a book you should consider picking up. Beyond entertaining, it will offer you a good set of anecdotes to help you frame who the players are and how things work on Wall Street. Beyond this book, you should consider other anecdotal books that feature successful traders like Market Wizards, New Market Wizards (both by Jack Schwager), and The Best by Marder and Dupee. When you have built your framework for understanding the trading environment, take a look at a simple book on technical analysis - Dave Landry on Swing Trading or Bulkowski's Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns. If you have a decent grasp on the technical analysis part, then try a simple strategy like the 1-Day Breakout Method, it looks pretty good from what I've read so far and I look forward to trading it shortly.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A pleasure and a (painless) education, May 30, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Faber Report: CNBC's "The Brain" Tells You How Wall Street Really Works and How You Can Make It Work for You (Hardcover)

This is the kind of book on Wall Street I have waited years for. First, the writing is terrific; too rare a treat in books on stocks and markets. Second, the anecdotes and examples, while highly instructional, can stand alone as exciting tales - you needn't even be interested in Wall Street to find much of this material fascinating. And if you are interested in Wall Street - even if you're a regular Joe who's a little intimidated by markets, as I am - the book goes a long way toward helping you tap into the Street savvy you've long suspected was necessary to even the score. A first-rate effort.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Something For Everyone, September 13, 2002

By 

Peter Lattman (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Faber Report: CNBC's "The Brain" Tells You How Wall Street Really Works and How You Can Make It Work for You (Hardcover)

Decades from now, when historians want to get a better understanding of what Wall Street was like at the turn of the 21st century, they won't need to look much further than The Faber Report. Faber's book paints an amazingly clear and comprehensive picture of today's investment climate, giving the reader gobs of insight into the inner workings of the Street.

The book has something for everyone; whether you're a novice investor trying to navigate the world of mutual funds or a hedge fund manager with a penchant for short selling, you'll find it eminently useful. (And if you happen to be the New York state attorney general looking for a blueprint to prosecute Jack Grubman and the rest of Wall Street, you'll find the book very worthwhile!) While the book covers investing basics with exceptional clarity (it has a paragraph on the P/E ratio that is one of the best I've seen), it also contains some headier material that more sophisticated investors will find helpful (his 12 point checklist for uncovering financial shenanigans is a keeper).

It's difficult to write a book that is both entertaining and instructive, but Faber has pulled it off in spades.