Riding the Bull, Beating the Bear: Market Timing for the Long-Term Investor [Hardcover]

Edward M. Yanis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 21, 2001

Investment techniques that make money, while saving time
Riding the Bull, Beating the Bear offers a simple, straightforward market timing technique. Using his extensively researched and back-tested Y-Process method, Edward Yanis shows investors how they can improve their portfolio performance-by doing one simple calculation every week. With a minimum of work, readers can benefit from a buy-and-hold, index oriented philosophy, and at the same time, preserve capital by getting out of the market before prolonged dips. For readers who don't want to get bogged down in complex investing strategies, Riding the Bull, Beating the Bear provides a low-intensity, active management style that is easy to learn and even easier to implement.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It may be a truism that investors can't outperform the market in the long run, yet Edward M. Yanis, chairman of Yanis Financial Services, claims to have beat the system. His book Riding the Bull, Beating the Bear: Market Timing for the Long-Term Investor describes the "Y-Process," a mathematical model that supposedly allows investors to predict the upcoming fluctuations of the market. Yanis cautions, however, that this technique is only for "sophisticated" investors, and much of the book is taken up with more conservative and familiar advice (diversification, mutual funds) for beginner and intermediate players.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...unique guide..." (Banking 2000)

It may be a truism that investors can't outperform the market in the long run, yet Edward M. Yanis, chairman of Yanis Financial Services, claims to have beat the system. His book Riding the Bull, Beating the Bear: Market Timing for the Long- Term Investor describes the "Y-Process," a mathematical model that supposedly allows investors to predict the upcoming fluctuations of the market. Yanis cautions, however, that this technique is only for "sophisticated" investors, and much of the book is taken up with more conservative and familiar advice (diversification, mutual funds) for beginner and intermediate players. (PublishersWeekly, February 11, 2002)

"...an excellent tutorial from a man who really knows his stuff..." (M2 Best Books, 6 August 2002)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (December 21, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471208035
• ISBN-13: 978-0471208037
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,602,998 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sorry, but the strategy is flawed, October 24, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Riding the Bull, Beating the Bear: Market Timing for the Long-Term Investor (Hardcover)

I read the book with great interest and I was initially really excited about the trading strategy proposed, i.e. to use a exponential moving average to trade S&P 500 (i.e. SPY, which is listed on AMEX). The author concludes that the strategy will help you to increase returns AND reduce risk. The problem is that the author has made, explicitly or implicitly, a couple of crucial simplifying assumptions that are flawed, e.g. no transaction costs, prices move in a straight line from one Friday to the next (the author backtested his method only on weekly data although the strategy should be executed on a daily basis), no intraday or intraweek whipsaws, no spreads, perfect market liquidity etc.

I backtested the strategy on a daily basis (using the daily closing prices) for the last 62 years and concluded that even with no transaction costs/spreads you cannot increase your return compared to the buy and hold strategy. However you can reduce your risk by being out of stock market roughly 1/3 of the time. I also backtested the strategy for the last 14 years taking into account the opening, high, low and closing prices during the day to better account for intra-day swings. The conclusion was the same.

To sum it all up - it seems to be possible to reduce the risk of your SPY holding (i.e. the S&P 500 ETF listed on AMEX) if you are prepared to do extensive trading (i.e. at least one trade a month, which is twice as many trades as the author predicts is necessary), but do not expect any extra returns. In fact, I conclude it's more likely that you'll achieve slightly lower returns than a buy and hold investor over the long term.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Fudging the numbers, March 3, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Riding the Bull, Beating the Bear: Market Timing for the Long-Term Investor (Hardcover)

Yanis, with an impressive bio listing time at GE on defense contracts and the Navy's AEGIS system, pitches his personal (Y-anis) system to beat the market. Problem is, he is so focused on backtesting the system, he fails to realize that he never defines the rules for using his system in real time. Y-factor is an exponential moving average of Friday's closing price for the S&P500 for the last 16 Fridays. Yanis finds buy and sell signals when the daily S&P index crosses the interpolated moving average between Fridays. Of course, the investor will not be able to compute the buy or sell signal until the following Friday's numbers are posted! Yanis never says how the real time investor is supposed to get his buy/sell signals. If Yanis's buy and sell signals are used when they can actually be computed, that is after the following Friday's numbers are in, the backtested results lose major money. One wonders how this got past the editor and publisher.

Net result? This book makes me wonder what has been going on between GE and the Navy with all that defense money during the author's career there.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Simple and Useful methodology, September 26, 2002

By 

Tom G (Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Riding the Bull, Beating the Bear: Market Timing for the Long-Term Investor (Hardcover)

My background is as an auditor and computer programmer. I read every book I find on stock market timing and run them through personal computerized back testing. Very few market timing systems work - at least the ones that are published.

Mr. Yanis uses a simple moving average to time the market but with a couple technique twists. Most moving average systems used by themselves cause excessive trades and false signals. The Y-Process system also suffers from that but to a lesser extent. The meat of this book is all in one chapter.

The book is well written and the system's weaknesses honestly reported. The actual returns are documented. He uses a hard to understand method to show buy/sell points and to calculate returns - it should have been done differently.

The timing process requires tracking a few numbers but nothing complicated and it has beaten buy and hold by avoiding major downturns. What's more, this book was published in 2000 prior to the worst of the market collapse and would have gotten you out close to the top. As of September 2002 it's still signaling to stay clear of stocks. If nothing else, this may provide a way to determine when the current bear market has spent most its energy. I'd say that's worth the price of admission, wouldn't you?