Customer Reviews

Far from Random: Using Investor Behavior and Trend Analysis to Forecast Market Movement (Bloomberg Financial)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I read a lot of innvestments books...10-12 a year and have for years..evey book, point of view and methodology teaches you something to add to your own processes.

I liked this book because I appreciate clarity. In order to be clear and to makes something seem easy, an author has to have a profound knowledge of the subject matter and the ability to communicate clearly. Richarde Lehman ahs both of the those pre-requisites.

Investor behavior and motivation are two keys to understanding market behavior. Understanding who those investors are, how they are rewarded (or compensated), what motivates them are keys to insight into the confoundingly contradictory movements that drive everyone crazy. . You will have a much keener understanding of the news that is being reported to you and have real insight into what is being told to you after having read the book.

With a perpective, the author then provides you with a charting method that will enhance your ability to enter and exit markets..this is a rather useful skill. Your probabilities of executing profitable trades, realizing a greater percentage of the profits in the moves you have chosen, and your peace of mind while doing do will be enhanced with the background and techniques shared in Far From Random.

This will also go on my periodic re-read list and not many books make it there.

I am a successful private investor.

Best wishes,

John

In Far From Random, we learn we aren't so removed from our ancestors as we might think. This highly readable book demonstrates that markets are neither efficient nor random, and that being stone-cold frozen with fear (a saber-tooth tiger eyes us for lunch) is akin to buy-and-hold-no-matter-what (our securities portfolio drags us down to our doom). Rick Lehman boldly states that human emotion, and not green-eyeshade analysis, is what really drives prices --whether it's Dutch Tulips, Stocks on margin, or 30 X 1 leverage on illiquid credit default swaps and subprime mortgage derivatives. Far from being nonsense, this view makes perfect sense. Far From Random shows how our collective emotional behaviors, and the markets they move, become predictable. That's an edge any investor would want, and Far From Random will give you a tantalizing glimpse at that edge.

Jim Glidden, veteran Wall St. Bond Salesman

1) The theory (behavioral finance) this book tries to explain in over half way through the book is not new, and there are many other books on the same subject are much better written and more readable.

2) The "meat" of the book "channel charting/analysis/trading" is not new either. Many books have been written about it in clearer and more practical manner (such as "Channel Surfing" by Michael J. Parsons). But this author made it as if it's a virgin territory that he alone discovered and exploited. The book's explanation on channel trading is extremely mediocre and almost all are based in hindsight.

Personally speaking this book is worthless, because none of its contents or points of view is new or useful to me. Reading it is completely a waste of time.

As an avid investment student of age 61, I read "Far from Random" entirely. The book is close to worthless. It should be dismissed.

FFR purports to teach us how trend analysis can make investors money in the market. The treatment is superficial. If you have interest in technical trading, there are many more superior books starting with the classic from Pring.

My great dissapointment is because Bloomberg Press printed the book. I thought the publisher would impose a respectable standard of quality. They did not. Henceforth, investbook books from Bloomberg should be considered suspect. McMillan, of Options Writing fame, should be ashamed of his endorsement.

One can learn from investment books and apply ideas profitably. However, FFR is not the book in any manner. The book is not appropriate for any level of investor, nor any age.

I ordered this book for a class at UCB Ext.but recommend it to anyone who wants to better understand how human behavior impacts the stock market. Far From Random reviews the leading random market theories in easy to understand language. I am glad I enrolled in this class and read this book.

This well-written book provides extremely valuable insights on the psychological nature of the stock market. Even experienced investors will find relevance and utility in the analytical approach to trend analysis suggested by the author. I say this as a full-time investor with many decades of experience.

While I know next to nothing about finance, I do have an advanced degree and extensive background in the social sciences. Who knew that there is actually a close connection between human behavior and the workings of the stock market? Finally, an entree into the world of finance accessible to folks like me. From the first chapter opener - a literary nod to Lewis Carroll - I was hooked. "Far From Random" is well-written, readable, and highly provocative - and as far as I can tell, long overdue. Given all the research Mr. Lehman cites in behavioral finance, it's remarkable that so little of it has been brought to public attention or adopted by the financial industry. Their eyes must have been closed. This book opened mine, and should do the same for many other worried investors. Kudos to Lehman for his keen insight and his ability to make foreign concepts comprehensible.

Lehman cracks open a door we should all be looking through. This book goes way beyond his first one on options (which is still a great primer on covered call writing, by the way). Not only does he shoot holes in the traditional (and always self-serving) rhetoric on Wall Street, he offers an alternative -- and a doggone provocative one at that! Thankfully, someone credible is willing to hit Wall Street between the eyes with their blind obsession to buy-and-hold. I'd been seeing references to Behavioral Finance and thinking it was just marketing spin, but I now see things quite differently. We will sit around for decades waiting for Wall Street to change the way they think. If you're tired of being herded into a convenient but untenable philosophy about the stock market, you want to read this.

Author emphasizes a lot (or maybe too much) on the behavior finance. Although it is informative and interesting, it takes too less pages on how to really construct an useful technical charts (the Trend Channel Analysis introduced in this book is too subjective and always is a tentative chart) with higher probability to enter and exit the market.

My expectations were very high, because Bloomberg published this book. It is a disappointing read. Lots of words. 9 chapters and 182 pages worth of hearsay and pseudo science. When the book finally does get to investing/trading using TCA, the treatment is very light. The author seems to be very knowledgeable about what was written by other people but the book lacks any depth about his own insights into actual investment.