Customer Reviews

The Mind of Wall Street: A Legendary Financier on the Perils of Greed and the Mysteries of the Market

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This is a book that every investor should read. People who are looking for a trading system or some cookie-cutter program that will make you rich will be dissapointed. Although he made hundreds of millions of dollars, I doubt Levy himself had an exacting system that he used. He knew how to manage risk and look for low-risk opportunities. He also knew how to take advtange of new investment markets - which are almost impossible for average investors. Leveraged buyouts for example.

Nonetheless, if they take the effort this is one of the most important investment books that someone can read in this moment in time. Levy's book is one that will make you think. As he recounts the past 50's years on Wall Street you'll see how the stock market changed and how the psychology around it did too. Going into the 1950's, people, remembering the 1930's, were extremely bearish about the market. Levy wouldn't hire anyone under 30 - not because he wanted youth, but because he feared that those older would be too cautious, because of their life experiences of the depression.

Contrast that bearish sentiment, with today where every down day is heralded as a bottom and a one week rally is called a new bull market, and you'll see how different the eras are. You'll also realize how different the risk to reward ratio for stock investors is.

I have come to the same conclusions that Levy has concerning our market and our economy and where the coming investment opportunities are in the world. I was already in agreement with him before I read his book. That is why I strongly recommend that people read it. This is one of the few mainstream investment books that you can find that will give you a good picture of what has happened to our markets in the past decade and where it is likely to go in the next 10 years - and where true investment opportunities lie in the world. This is all done in a crisp, engaging style, that makes for a quick read. If you want to understand what is going on read this!

Even if you have an investment/trading style where you don't think this is important you need to read this book. I personally trade mostly on charts and technical indicators. However, if you are trading a trend in the market it is helpful to have a knowledge about what is moving the market. That makes it easier to have believe that what the charts are telling you is real. You need to believe in your convictions. That is why it is important for investors and traders to keep up with the news and take the time to read books such as this one. I spend a lot of my time involved in the financial markets and usually read books as a way to get away from them. When I take the time to read a financial book it has to be a good one and this one didn't disappoint.

This book is never going to be one of the trading classics, like Jesse Livermore's Remicenses of a Stock Operator. However, 10 years from now it will be known as one of the few books that warned of what was to come.

This book is an example of how someone with a decent track record in investing thinks they can be as successful in writing, but then fail miserably at creating anything meaningful. I was able to finish this book in less than 9 hours!

The author actually makes an attempt at explaining the market based on the theories and doctrines of Behavioral Finance, or so he says. Unfortunately, the book is nothing more than a ramble about the "excess of the late 90's", as if we need more literature on that subject. In reality, the book would be thrown out of Behavioral Finance class rooms as a miserable failure.

In one instance, the author refers to Amazon.Com as "nothing more than a mail order house". He also suggests that Amazon's model of selling books is not going to be sufficient to bring this company to profitability. Hmm...Maybe an update is required but this book was published in 2002!!

Throughout the book, the author constantly refers to his and his firm's success, suggesting this to be nothing more than a $15 advertisement. There is no resemblance to work such as "Reminiscence of a Stock Operator", which is the classic book on speculator psychology. Unless you have never ever invested in the market and have nothing more than a basic understanding of what an investment is, don't buy this book. Instead, consider work by Schwager, LeFevre, Bernard Baruch and even classic Technical Analysis work such as "TA of Stock Trends", which goes more into the psychology behind successful investing than this author. I also highly recommend the two books written by Victor Neiderhoffer.

In instances where the author actually begins to discuss anything remotely close to behavioral finance, he immediately drops off into another subject. He continually refers to the subjects of Greed and Fear. However, greed and fear are merely symptoms of the herd mentality. Nothing new there!

On the plus side, Ch. 12 covers EuroDollar Call Options and the benefits of trading these instruments when playing the interest rate curve. Unfortunately, in the middle of this discussion which was no more than a page, he changes the subject abruptly and begins talking about the benefits of archeological digs in present day Syria and why one should make philanthropic donations based on trust. This is literally the next paragraph after EuroDollars!!!

If you have an advanced grasp of markets, read "Alchemy of Finance". This is in fact the greatest work on the subject and quite honestly, the recent implementation of Behavioral Finance as a course of study amongst many universities is based on the work of George Soros, the greatest speculator of all time, and his "Theory of Reflexivity", which was first introduced in Alchemy of Finance.

If you are looking for a memoir, then this one is well written and a worthwhile read. But unfortunately, if you are looking to glean some insights and wisdom from his years in the trenches, you will be disappointed. Except for a few references to interest rates and value investing he never really spells out his theories on economics and investing. He repeatedly makes mention of his brother who continued his father's work (economic theory) but never really explains it. He probably has much he could teach us, but fails to do so. What a shame.

If you are looking for a secret formula to accumulate wealth in the stock market, don't buy this book.

Leon Levy, a founder of Oppenheimer Funds, Odyssey Partners and legendary investor, reflects on his more than 50 years of investing experience to explain why the market confounds so many. He borrows from his avocations, psychology and archaeology, for perceptive insights into the financial landscape.

Success in finance, he says, is an art form, not a science. It relies on the vagaries of the human condition. Readers who search this book for a secret wealth formula will be disappointed. The only door, Levy says, that leads consistently to wealth, is access to privileged information. As many have recently discovered, this path is fraught with peril.

Yet, if investing is an art form, it can be learned. The best way is to put yourself on the line. Take a position. Players outperform professors. Recognize your weaknesses. Seek to control them.

I was particularly interested in Levy's insights into the collapse of Savings and Loans, the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management and the Internet Bubble.

This book does not belong in the class bad books written by bored billionaire investors, too many of whom have confused luck with insight. Although these individuals have a high regard for themselves, clarity, coherence and conciseness are not among the qualities which contributed to their success.

Leon Levy is likeable, incredibly informed and nothing short of brilliant. Investors for generations to come will be grateful he finished his discourse on of greed's perils and the market's mysteries.

A hundred pages into the book, I stopped and said "Wait, where's the psychology of Wall Street this book touts?" and realized the book is no more than a work touting Levy's every move.

While entertaining and well written, the book is a fast read that is short on substantial information. The book is interesting; it just falls very short of providing any sort of substantial fact or opinion on his psychology of the street premise.

I generally agree with Leon Levy's thesis that behavioral finance moves markets and stocks. It took me a while to grasp this idea after 4 years of Wharton where market efficiency and investors' rationality were expounded. Working as a practioner on Wall Street and living through the recent Internet bubble and subsequent collapse has taught me the value of respecting the effect of investors' psychology on stock prices. That said, I found this book disappointing. Some of Levy's economic and finance theories are dubious, and there were few ideas on how to actually make money from shifting investors' sentiment. Still, the book only took me a couple of hours to read (large print, 200 pages), and it did have some interesting anecdotes. All in all, it's pretty light-weight fare, and ok for a quick browse.

Levy's financial memoir tells of his 50 years on Wall Street. He highlights his contributions including the success of Oppenheimer. He tells many tales, including the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998. He blames that collapse on the fund manager's overconfidence in the efficiency of markets.

Levy offers his perspective on the recent stock market bubble, concluding the bubble continues (with lower prices ahead). His conclusion that Newt Gingrich's 1995 "contract with America" paved the way for the egregious acts of corporate executives and accounting firms makes for interesting reading.

This book is worth your time.

Leon Levy died in December 2002. He was one of the grand old men of Wall Street. The founder of the Oppenheimer mutual funds, he built himself a truly substantial fortune in the market (Forbes 400 list). This book is not a compendium of investment techniques but the history of an astute trader and a glimpse of how he saw the market. His outlook is largely a combination of basic economics and psychology which appear to have about equal weight. Just before Levy died he wrote an interesting but pessimistic essay on the future of America's economy. He pointed out that there is more than a sniff of deflation in the air. He may still be right. The deflation may be masked by government sponsored financial inflation. On balance, a very interesting book.

This is a book full of rambling thoughts from a mind that seems past its time. Mr. Levy spends several chapters with pointless stories about himself and his childhood. He also spends half the book talking about what a genius his father was and about the "great" book on economics his father wrote- then later admits that he never even finished reading his father's book because it was too boring. There are about 5 decent pages comparing the Internet bubble to past bubbles, but there are no new insights. The rest of the book wanders from pointless story to pointless story.

The late, legendary Wall Street investor Leon Levy offers a glimpse into his financial mind in this easily digested work, which is part memoir and part study of investor psychology. Writing with journalist Eugene Linden, he persuasively argues that investors' moodiness often drives the market as much as any fundamentals. Unlike many Wall Street investment strategies, Levy's approach was long-term. And as this book shows, Levy's ego was refreshingly understated. Yet his modesty proves this memoir's biggest weakness. He declines to criticize his rivals and walks us through his triumphs in only a cursory way. At the same time that he's leaving juicy details out of his memoir, he also gives short shrift to his study of investor psychology. Still, the biggest criticism of this book is that it should have been longer. We recommend this memoir to investors interested in learning from a master.