The Four Elements of Financial Alchemy: A New Formula for Personal Prosperity [Paperback]

Jacques Vallee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2001

A guide using the four elements, earth, air, fire and water, to create a framework for a prosperous financial investment strategy. Includes realistic case studies, common pitfalls, useful Internet resources, and an empowering attitude. Softcover. DLC: Finance--Personal.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Financier George Soros, in The Alchemy of Finance (1987), already used alchemy as a metaphor to suggest that investing is less than a precise science. Now Vallee appropriates the term and pursues the analogy by using the four basic symbols of alchemy as a model to represent increasing levels of risk and reward--from earth to water to air to fire. He then identifies investment vehicles appropriate to each level and lists Internet resources one can use to find additional information about the particular category of investment. Vallee includes a separate discussion of real estate and insurance and considers investment strategies tailored to one's life stage. A brief but annotated bibliography and a helpful glossary are included. As a successful venture capitalist, Vallee understands risk. He is also a software engineer and has written books and articles on astrophysics, database management, and communications. In addition, he is an award-winning science fiction author. Although not acknowledged in this current effort, Vallee also happens to have written a number of titles on UFO phenomena. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 195 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press; 1st edition (January 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580082181
• ISBN-13: 978-1580082181
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,348,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jacques VALLEE holds a master's degree in astrophysics from France and a PhD in computer science from Northwestern University, where he served as an associate of Dr. J. Allen Hynek. He is the author of several books about high technology and unidentified phenomena, a subject that first attracted his attention as an astronomer in Paris. While analyzing observations from many parts of the world, Jacques became intrigued by the similarities in patterns between moderrn sightings and historical reports of encounters with flying objects and their occupants in every culture. The result was the seminal book Passport to Magonia, published in 1969.

After a career as an information scientist with Stanford Research Institute and the Institute for the Future, where he served as a principal investigator for the groupware project on the Arpanet, the prototype of the Internet, Jacques Vallée co-founded a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. He lives in San Francisco.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lucid and insightful, March 20, 2001

By 

Working Money Magazine (Seattle, WA (USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Four Elements of Financial Alchemy: A New Formula for Personal Prosperity (Paperback)

The Four Elements of Financial Alchemy is a unique and comprehensive introduction to the field of personal financial planning. Lucid and insightful - it should be required reading for all first-time investors.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars grand deception, December 21, 2010

By 

Gunnar Kossatz "Samvado" (Hamburg) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Four Elements of Financial Alchemy: A New Formula for Personal Prosperity (Paperback)

One star is too much for this book.

I am a great Vallee fan and have read most of his other books on UFO and science themes. He undoubtedly is a very intelligent person. The greater my disappointment in his faulty perception of the way money works on this planet.

He does not seem to have more than cursory knowlege of alchemy either. And he does not in any meaningful way combine money mechanics and alchemy in his book - as the title suggests.

It is utterly laughable to talk about the FED as a government institution and advise the reader to find it in the yellow pages under government. Because it IS a private bank. Their instruments are NOT stable and save - as anyone old enough to have lived thru 4 (!!!!) total losses of monetary instruments based on fiat currency in the last century alone (if you are German, like I am, and you are 90 (I am not) and you have lived in the eastern parts you have in fact experienced just that!) can vouch for.

Fannie Mae is a save heaven? and governemtal guarantees make your investment save?? no word about silver, gold and very little about real estate, the few REAL survivors of a meltdown.

All in all, anybody coming in contact with this book as a newbie would be far better off to have NOT read it. and the expert hardly needs Vallees questionable insights into the issue of living in a time of the collapse of world economies and the currency of his country.

Jacques, stick to what you are very good at!

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Framework for financial success, June 5, 2001

By 

Working Money Magazine (Seattle, WA (USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Four Elements of Financial Alchemy: A New Formula for Personal Prosperity (Paperback)

"Comparing the bandwagon-joining, daytrading-frenzied investors of today to the medieval alchemists who searched for a secret substance rumored to transform base metals into gold, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Jacques Vallee structures a less magical (but presumably more effective) framework for financial success in this brief primer on investment strategy."